Universidade Nova de Lisboa Antropologia e Turismo Mestrado em Antropologia Culturas em Cena e Turismo

October 2011

Touristic Encounters and Relationships: Anthropological Perspectives

Valerio Simoni Postdoctoral Researcher Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA-IUL)

Contents

1.
2.

Introduction
Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

3.

4.

Conclusion

1.Introduction

Encounters and relationships between hosts and guests / tourists and locals. A key component of tourism A key subject of investigation: The view from Anthropology
Smith, V. L. ed. (1978) Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Smith, V. L. ed. (1989) Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism Second Edition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

1.Introduction
More than three decades of research: Has everything been said?
Nuez, T. (1978) Touristic Studies in Anthropological Perspective. In: Smith, V. L. ed. Hosts and Guests: the Anthropology of Tourism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp.207-216. What is the nature of the interaction between hosts and tourists? (Nuez, 1978, p.212) Urges anthropologists to study the indigenous population and the tourist population in interaction, by engaging with both sides of the divide (1978, p.212).

1.Introduction
More than three decades of research: Has everything been said?
Stronza, A. (2001) Anthropology of Tourism: Forging New Ground for Ecotourism and Other Alternatives. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, pp.261-283. the current literature on tourism may be divided conceptually into two halves, one that focuses on understanding the origins of tourism and one that aims to analyze the impacts of tourism (2001, p.262). missing from many current analyses is an attempt to learn more about the dynamics of host-guest interactions by observing and talking with people on both sides of the encounter (2001, p.272).

1.Introduction
More than three decades of research: Has everything been said?
While the importance of the issue has been repeatedly highlighted, few authors have actually put touristic encounters and relationships at the centre of their investigations. When it has been addressed this issue has often been summarily resolved, leading to evaluative judgments and generalizations.

1.Introduction
Contrasting and opposed generalizations
Touristic encounters and relationships constitute a realm of mere illusion and make believe association, a parody of human relationships (Krippendorf 1999 [1984], p.58; van den Berghe 1980, p.378) where deception and exploitation prevail. VS Portrayed as the building block for global peace and cultural understanding bringing ordinary men and women from around the world into contact with one another, and thus helping dispel the myths, stereotypes and caricatures that often hold sway from a distance. (KiMoon 2007).

1.Introduction
Negative assessments prevail in academic generalizations
Answering his own question on the nature of relationships between hosts and tourists, Nuez maintained that such relationship: is almost always an instrumental one, rarely coloured by affective ties, and almost always marked by degrees of social distance and stereotyping that would not exist amongst neighbours, peers, or fellow countrymen (1978, p.212). Instrumentality, social distance, stereotyping: repeatedly highlighted in the anthropological literature (van den Berghe 1980; 1994), Nash (1978; 1981; 1996), Cohen (1984) and Crick (1989).

1.Introduction
Negative assessments prevail in academic generalizations Early reviews and assessments:
Merit: Try to highlight and characterize some specific features of touristic encounters and relationships. Risk: Ambition to generalize and be conclusive on the matter, leads to close too early a field of research that has more to offer for the understanding of tourism and human relations.

1.Introduction
Empirically grounded research Reassess touristic encounters and relationships and their potential:
Question the view of ineluctably transient, impersonal, and commoditized relationships. Show the potential of touristic encounters to recreate social relationships, and eventually generate long-term, personalized, and reciprocal ties. Cohen (1971), Adams (1992), Tucker (1997; 2001; 2003), and Cabezas (2006).

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

Tourism as ethnic relations

van den Berghe, P. (1980) Tourism as Ethnic Relations: A Case Study form Cuzco, Peru. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 3 (4), pp.376-392. Researches on interactions between foreign tourists and members of the visited population in Cuzco (Peru) (1980).

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

Tourism as ethnic relations Ethnic Tourism:

that form of tourism in which the natives themselves are the primary, or at least a significant, attraction (1980, p.377). The tourist, the touree, and the middleman are the main protagonists of this type of tourism. Touree: designates the native exposed to tourists (1980, p.378).

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

Tourism as ethnic relations Tourist-Touree interaction:
Is often highly impersonal, segmental, uninvolved, manipulative, exploitative, based on mistrust and dislike, and patterned on crude stereotypes (1980, p.378). What emerges from these interactions is a parody of a human relationship, a make-believe association (van den Berghe 1980, p.378). Compared to other types of ethnic relations, what makes tourist ones even more open to deceit, exploitation and mistrust, is the transitory and mercenary nature of the situation (van den Berghe 1980, p.378).

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

Continuity in the assessment the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships
Transience Asymmetry

Stereotypical perceptions
Impersonal, de-humanized nature of relationships

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

Mass tourism, loss of individuality, and the deterioration of relationships
Pi-Sunyer, O. (1978) Through Native Eyes: Tourists and Tourism in a Catalan Maritime Community. In: Smith, V. L. (ed.) Hosts and Guests: the Anthropology of Tourism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp.149-155. Consequences of mass tourism Impact on relations between residents and tourists Tourists human qualities replaced by generalizing ethnic stereotypes

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

Mass tourism, loss of individuality, and the deterioration of relationships
Increasing numbers of tourists deterioration of relationships: Supports Nash view of tourist-host relations as transactions between strangers (1978; 1981), as interactions in which the partners tend to deal with each other not only as types, but also as objects (1981, p.467). As a consequence of the growth of mass tourism, tourists loose individuality and humanity in the eyes of the local population: Tourists can become less than ordinary folk, and this diminution in turn legitimizes hostility towards them, cheating, dual price levels, and so on (Crick 1989, p.329).

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

The evolutionary dynamics of tourist-local relationships The process of commoditization of hospitality
Cohen, E. (1984) The Sociology of Tourism: Approaches, Issues, and Findings. Annual Review of Sociology, 10, pp.373-392. As the numbers of tourists visiting a destination increase, they become less and less welcome are no longer treated as part of the traditional guest-host relationships (Cohen 1984, p.380) This transformation involves incorporating hospitality an area that many societies view as founded on values that are very opposite of economic ones into the economic domain (Cohen 1984, p.380)

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

The evolutionary dynamics of tourist-local relationships The process of commoditization of hospitality:
Anomic stage is likely to emerge: A phase during which locals develop a predatory orientation towards tourists (Cohen 1984, p.380). Locals attempt to extract as much gain as possible from each encounter, irrespective of the long-term consequences that such conduct may have on the tourist flow (Cohen 1984, p.380).

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

The evolutionary dynamics of tourist-local relationships The process of commoditization of hospitality:
Petty crime and tourism-oriented discrimination increase. Leads tourism entrepreneurs or the authorities to create and institutionalize a professionalized tourism system (Cohen 1984, p.380). professionalized local-tourist relationship does not take on the character of a wholly depersonalized, neutral economic exchange (1984, p.380). It becomes a staged relationship in which locals play the natives and tourism service is personalized (1984, p.380)

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

The evolutionary dynamics of tourist-local relationships The process of commoditization of hospitality

Native hospitality Anomic stage, predatory orientation Commoditized service relationships, staged as personnalized

2. Characterizing the nature of tourist-local encounters and relationships

The evolutionary dynamics of tourist-local relationships The process of commoditization of hospitality: Criticism:
Predatory locals VS Actors responsible for the institutionalization of a professionalized tourism realm

Native hospitality VS Commercialized service

Stereotypical, static view of peoples agency and of various types of human relationships

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Negotiating long-term and personalized relations

Cohen, E. (1971) Arab Boys and Tourist Girls in a Mixed Jewish-Arab Community. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, XII, pp.217-233. Shows the surprising significance relations with foreign tourist girls (1971, p.1) could acquire for the Arab youth amongst which the author carried out his ethnographic fieldwork

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Negotiating long-term and personalized relations
Interactions between tourists and locals are negotiated in ways that can generate long-lasting friendships. The local boys hospitality plays a very important role in the construction of such relationships. Giving hospitality becomes a way for the locals to encourage future reciprocity from the tourist girls: e.g. invitations to travel, and possibly even to marry, abroad. Local boys are able to establish a meaningful personal relationship with the girls, of a type they were not accustomed to in their own society (Cohen 1971, p.228).

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Negotiating long-term and personalized relations
What relationships do for the local Arab boys:
-Enable to satisfy emotional needs and sexual desires
-Reinforce self-reliance and raise the boys status in their peer-group

-Act as a window to the wide world and allows them to learn foreign

languages - Hold the (false?) promise of getting away from their problems by moving abroad

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Negotiating long-term and personalized relations Lessons:
Locals ability to fully take into account the long-term consequences of their encounters and relationships with tourists (VS predatory) Tourist-local relationships that cannot be simply reduced to a transitory, exploitative, and deceptive transaction between impersonal and objectified strangers or ethnic types

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Reconstructing reciprocity, recreating social relationships
Adams, V. (1992) Tourism and Sherpas, Nepal: Reconstruction of Reciprocity. Annals of Tourism Research, 19, pp.534-554. Study of Nepalese Sherpas involvement in mountaineering and trekking tourism. Demonstrates how traditional patters of wage labour and reciprocity, far from being undermined by capitalist commoditization, are reconstituted from within tourism.

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Reconstructing reciprocity, recreating social relationships
Through their interactions with tourists, Sherpas skilfully mobilize strategies to create social obligations. This enables them to establish long term bonds between hosts and guests (1992, p.549). Not a priory, fixed, and static view of native hospitality VS commercial hospitality Instead, dynamic, flexible, constantly re-constructed forms of hospitality.

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Reconstructing reciprocity, recreating social relationships
Experience of trekking and mountaneering, transforms the tourist-client into a friend/sponsor (Adams 1992, p.549) Wage labour relationship is transformed into a reciprocal alliance taking the form of a sponsorship (1992, p.549). Sponsorship by foreign tourists includes taking care of the expenses for the schooling of Sherpas children. Some of the long term tourist/Sherpa relationships develop into marriages.

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Reconstructing reciprocity, recreating social relationships Emergent hospitalities:
Tucker, H. (2003) Living with Tourism: Negotiating Identities in a Turkish Village. London & New York: Routledge. See also Tucker (1997, 2001) Reconstruction of notions of hospitality in the realm of encounters between tourists and locals in the Turkish village of Greme, Cappadocia

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Reconstructing reciprocity, recreating social relationships Emergent hospitalities
objections have been raised regarding the use of hosts and guests for discussing tourism relations because of the sheer commercialism these terms disguise (Tucker 2003, p.118) However, the roles of host and guest themselves are used by the Greme villagers in order to negotiate and determine their relationship with tourists (Tucker 2003, p.118) The power in hospitality (Tucker 2003, pp.122-125) is what enables villagers to exert a certain control over visitors, prescribing appropriate behaviour and involving them into profitable regimes of reciprocity.

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Reconstructing reciprocity, recreating social relationships Conditions of interaction: Emerging questions
To a certain extent, the researches of Cohen (1971), Adams (1992), and Tucker (1997; 2001; 2003) all deal with encounters and relationships between tourists and locals that developed in conditions of relatively small scale, alternative tourism development, or at least not mass-tourism. Could this suggest that in the case of more mass-oriented tourism, impersonal and commoditized service relationships are still the only ones that can develop?

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Reconstructing reciprocity, recreating social relationships Conditions of interaction: Emerging questions
Could we not simply readjust and update Cohens 1984 model of the evolutionary dynamics of tourist-local relationships? Could this confirm that what matters most are still numbers of tourists, development stages, quantitative thresholds, and related processes of institutionalization, professionalization, and commoditization?

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Reconstructing reciprocity, recreating social relationships Conditions of interaction: Emerging questions
Theoretical limitations of approaches that posit the commoditization of relationships as a sort of ineluctable end-result of tourism development, Other examples in the literature show the pertinence of adopting a dynamic view of relationships even in what tends to be considered the most mass-oriented, professionalized, and commoditized of tourism environments: the world of all-inclusive resorts.

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Beyond the staging of personalized service in tourism installations
Cabezas, A. L. (2006) The Eroticization of Labor in Cubas All-Inclusive Resorts: Performing Race, Class, and Gender in the New Tourist Economy. Social Identities, 12 (5), pp.507-521. Demonstrates that even the notion of a staged personalized service does not accurately make sense of the encounters and relationships that develop between foreign package tourists and the personnel employed in Cuba allinclusive resorts.

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Beyond the staging of personalized service in tourism installations
Cuban resort workers are employed in hospitality organizations that encourage friendliness, subservience, and flirting (2006, p.515) with hotel guests. They blur the line between the hotel management suggested behaviour and the pursuit of their own agendas. The workers strive to find opportunities to cultivate various forms of relationships and intimacy with hotel guests, notably relationships that create long term obligations and commitment (Cabezas 2006, p.516).

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Beyond the staging of personalized service in tourism installations
The potential for romance and marriage with tourists, loaded with opportunities to leave the country, can become for workers the most attractive prospect of their employment in all-inclusive resorts. Intimate relationships are forged between Cuban employees and foreign tourists. The supposedly staged personalization of service shifts into another realm which breaks down the client/worker divide, opening up other relational possibilities for the protagonists involved.

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Beyond the staging of personalized service in tourism installations Lessons:
Even in the most enclavic and mass-oriented tourist environments rigid notions of staged personalization and commoditization can obstruct subtler realities and understandings.
Dynamic approaches to relationships improve our understanding of these interactions and their implications. It is essential to consider how people themselves understand their relationships, rather than impose a model on them.

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Dynamic views of relationships and empirically based research Lessons and emerging questions:
Notions of commoditized service, friendship, hospitality, sexual relationships, romance should not be taken for granted. These notions are negotiated and reconsituted from within touristic encoutners. Under which conditions do these notions emerge? Who is using them in which situation? What do they achieve?

3. Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships

Dynamic views of relationships and empirically based research Further readings:
Denise Brennan on new practices and meanings of love that grow out of the tourist and sex-tourist trades (2004, p.22) in the Dominican Republic.
Ingrid Kummels on models of womanhood, partnership and love renegotiated in the transcultural relations between sex tourists and locals in Cuba (2005, p.10). Jill Forshee on how tourism gives rise to new forms of social interaction (1999, p.294) - including a range of perpetually evolving approaches to commerce (1999, pp.296-298) in Java (Indonesia).

4. Conclusion
The nature of touristic encounters and relationships A longstanding subject of investigation and the prevalence of evaluative generalizations:
In spite of early interest (Smith ed. 1978), few authors have actually focused their researches on touristic encounters and relationships.
Evaluative generalizations predominate:

Mutual understanding, intercultural communications, peace, establishment of positive connections between people from across the globe. VS Striking inequalities, deception, misunderstanding and reciprocal exploitation.

4. Conclusion
The nature of touristic encounters and relationships A longstanding subject of investigation and the prevalence of evaluative generalizations:
It the academia, nature of relationships between tourists and locals characterized as: - Transient, manipulative and exploitative (van den Berghe 1980). - Mercenary and sterile (Krippendorf 1999 [1984]) - Impersonal (Pi-Sunyer 1978; Nash 1978; 1981) - De-humanized (Crick 1989) - Staged as personalized following a linear evolution towards the commoditization of hospitality (Cohen 1984).

4. Conclusion
Risks and problems
These perspectives run the risk of reiterating taken for granted: - idealizations - when a navely positive stance predominates - critiques - once cynically negative assessments prevails. Generalizations too often rely on deductive assumptions and clear-cut judgments. They do not pay enough attention to the understandings of research participants.

4. Conclusion
Risks and Problems

Generalizing perspectives do not enhance our understanding of how touristic encounters and relationships emerge and develop in situ.

They neglect the transformations of tourists and locals understandings as a result of their encounters and relationships.

4. Conclusion
Risks and Problems
Tourists and members of the visited population may themselves preconceive touristic encounters and relationships to be manipulative, impersonal, or staged. However, their reciprocal interactions have the potential to open up other possibilities and scenarios. Their consequences cannot be predicted in advance. Only by paying close attention to these moments of interaction we can gain a clear picture of their generative possibilities.

4. Conclusion
Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships
Show how notions of - friendship (Cohen 1971) - reciprocity and hospitality (Adams 1992; Tucker 2003) - commoditized service (Cabezas 2006) - love and partnership (Brennan 2004; Kummels 2005) - market and commerce (Forshee 1999) are reconstructed and renegotiated from within touristic encounters.

4. Conclusion
Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships
Thesis on touristic encounters in Cuba (Simoni 2009) integrates and builds on these approaches Advocates the need for more empirically informed studies Recognizes and illuminates the complexities, ambiguities, and generative potential of touristic encounters and relationships. Leads to reassess notions of tourism harassment, economic transaction, friendship, festive, and sexual relationships in the field of tourism.

4. Conclusion
Empirical studies and dynamic views of relationships
Potential of touristic encounters to regenerate, from within, the meanings and expressions of various types of engagements and relationships. Profound implications for the ways we imagine and apprehend the encounters and relationships that develop through tourism. Building on these insights, further research can enhance our understanding of how people relate across differences and inequalities in the contemporary world. Ultimately shed light on tourism promises and challenges to build a common humanity.

5. References
Adams, V. (1992) Tourism and Sherpas, Nepal: Reconstruction of Reciprocity. Annals of Tourism Research, 19, pp.534-554. Brennan, Denise (2004) Whats Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic. Durham: Duke University Press Cabezas, A. L. (2006) The Eroticization of Labor in Cubas All-Inclusive Resorts: Performing Race, Class, and Gender in the New Tourist Economy. Social Identities, 12 (5), pp.507-521. Cohen, E. (1971) Arab Boys and Tourist Girls in a Mixed Jewish-Arab Community. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, XII, pp.217-233. Cohen, E. (1984) The Sociology of Tourism: Approaches, Issues, and Findings. Annual Review of Sociology, 10, pp.373-392. Crick, M. (1989) Representations of Tourism in the Social Sciences: Sun, Sex, Sights, Savings, and Servility. Annual Review of Anthropology, 18, 307-344. Forshee, J. (1999) Domains of Pedaling: Souvenirs, Becak Drivers, and Tourism in Yogyakarta, Java. In: Forshee, J., Fink, C. & Cate, S. eds. Converging Interests: Traders, Travelers, and Tourists in Southeast Asia. Berkeley: University of
California, pp.293-317.

5. References
Ki-Moon, B. (2007) Remarks to the World Tourism Organization in Madrid, 5 June 2007. [Internet]. Available from: <http://www.un.org>. [Accessed 3 July 2008]. Krippendorf, J. (1999) [1984] The Holiday Makers: Understanding the Impact of Leisure and Travel. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Kummels, I. (2005) Love in the Time of Diaspora. Global Markets and Local Meaning in Prostitution, Marriage and Womanhood in Cuba. Iberoamericana, 5 (20), pp.7-26. Nash, D. (1978) Tourism as a Form of Imperialism. In: Smith, V. L. ed. Hosts and Guests: the Anthropology of Tourism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 33-47. Nash, D. (1981) Tourism as an Anthropological Subject. Current Anthropology, 22 (5), pp.461-481. Nuez, T. (1978) Touristic Studies in Anthropological Perspective. In: Smith, V. L. ed. Hosts and Guests: the Anthropology of Tourism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp.207-216. Pi-Sunyer, O. (1978) Through Native Eyes: Tourists and Tourism in a Catalan Maritime Community. In: Smith, V. L. (ed.) Hosts and Guests: the Anthropology of Tourism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp.149-155.

5. References
Simoni, V. (2009) Touristic Encounters in Cuba: Informality, Ambiguity, and Emerging Relationships. PhD Thesis. Leeds Metropolitan University. Smith, V. L. ed. (1978) Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Smith, V. L. ed. (1989) Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism Second Edition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Stronza, A. (2001) Anthropology of Tourism: Forging New Ground for Ecotourism and Other Alternatives. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, pp.261283. Tucker, H. (1997) The Ideal Village: Interactions through Tourism in Central Anatolia. In: Abram, S., Waldren, J. & Macleod, D. V. L. eds., Tourists and Tourism. Identifying with People and Places. Oxford: Berg. pp. 107-128. Tucker, H. (2001) Tourists and Troglodytes: Negotiating for Sustainability. Annals of Tourism Research, 28 (4), pp.868-891. Tucker, H. (2003) Living with Tourism: Negotiating Identities in a Turkish Village. London & New York: Routledge. van den Berghe, P. (1980) Tourism as Ethnic Relations: A Case Study form Cuzco, Peru. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 3 (4), pp.376-392.