Chapter 29

Remarks on the
Commodification of Cultures
Dean MacCannell
Much of my work is about the tourisc attraction and the motivation to leave
home, to experience otherness. I have tried to describe the 'ways Western institu-
tions of modern mass tourism produce, and attempt to satisfy, the need for other-
ness. \Vhat appears before us is the spectacle of the great success of tourism to
establish itself worldwide, a spectacle in vvhich we all have bit parts. But this
success is also accompanied by a feeling of loss of the sense of discovery and
adventure that one might have experienced traveling before everything was laid
out in advance by the travel industry
There have been many changes in formerly remote places as a result of their
having become popular lourist destinations. Can tourism (or anthropology for
that matter) ever ovcrcome the awkward and difficult quality of cross-cultural
understanding in settings that are organized for tourist visits' And there are real,
not just philosophical, pl'oblems of authenticity' Can faraway places be experi-
enced as authentic or natural when they are constructed, artificial habitats made
entirely for tourists to visit'
A culture of tourism has emerged on a global base, with the same hotels and the
Similar theme parks at every major destina.tion. Students who came late to tourism
research call the same cultur"l complex postm.odernity.The key characteristic of
the culture of tourism is that every place on Earth is theoretically a desUnation
and every tourist destination bcgins to resemble every other destination and that
tourist "destinations" increasingly resemble bom.e, the place where the tourists
are frorn.A question that emerges from this eVOlution is whether tourisnl itself, in
its drive to homogenize the travel experience and the destination, will eventually
destroy the reason to travd
Tourism, "Whet],.er we are the tourist or the host, profoundly influences the ways
we define place,Joreignness, and ourselves. Tourism beg"-n as an acknowledgment,
perhaps even a ce [ebration, of an almost s"cred connection between peoples, places,
and their symbols: Switzerland and its Alps, Africa and its animals, Egypt and its
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Remarks on the Commodification of Cultures 381
Pyramids, London and its Bridge,Japan and l\-lount Fuji It will bec()me e'-ldent tInt
tOllrism has ended up as something quite different.
Why Leave Home
There are t"Wo quite different reasons for trying to "get away from it all." Some
tourists leay:" home for the purpose of doing notbing, or having a good time,
playing vvith vacation friends, relaXing in the hot springs, lying on the beach, be-
ing entertained. For some, to he a tourist can mean a week at a nearby low-budget
vacation camp, while for others it involves a distant quest for exotic nature Or
cultures and the kind of travel undertaken by explorers. These latter may shun the
night life and the beaCh, undertaking visits to shrines, remote villages, and natural
monuments, ultimately turning their vacation into a kind of work, perhaps more
rigorolls than their actual work.The different varieties of tourist experience may
be correlated with the social class of the tourist, but money is not an absolutely
determining factor. Hitchhiking students from the '-Vest, with very little money,
seek exotic experiences on every continenLThey have made "hippie" a word that
appears in almost all the world's languages. '.
,-"'hat the two types of tourist (recreational vs. explorer) have m common IS they
feel they must undertake their quest for otherness, or for pleasure, away irom home
The common denominator of tourism in all its forms is that it constitutes a break
from the daily distractions and responsibilities of home and work. Ideally, when the
tourists are away from home and in the presence of tlie attraction, certain values
and pleasures ~ y become a kind of total experience. This could be a sense of
absolute freedom from care and utter relaxation on a perfect beach in tbe South
Pacific. It could be a release from ordinary social constraints at a weekend holiday
moteL It might be a near loss of self in a remote peasant village where ancient
cultural traditions are still followed precisely. Perhaps it is a feeling of sublime awe
at the site of a former natural or historic catastrophe or miracle-gazing upon Mount
Fuji for the first time, or the Egyptian pyramids, for example. Such magical experi-
ences are bracketed by the tour. They are ritually separated from everyday eXlst-
ence.They are heightened moments. One goes only to return home. . .
But tourism today does not resemble the first trips organized by the Bntlsh
inventor of guided tours, Thomas Cook. The earliest organized tours reduced thc
uncertainty of travel, but the early tourists were exposed to hardships and risks
similar to those faced by explorers and mountaineers. There areslriking images oj
women on the first Cook'sTour to Switzerland, in long skirts, Clown on their hands
and knees, crOSSing glaCial crevices bridged by narroW wooden boards These im-
ages stand in sharp contrast to the motor coach slowdown at an Alpine viewpoint
with through-the-window-only photo opportunities.
In the early days of packaged tourism, getting the,-e was as much a pan of the
experience of spiritual displacement as arrival at the destination Tile tourist could
feel the undulations of the sea or the mountain path, experience the changes III
temperature, hear and smell sharply etched local sensations en route Progress t o ~
ward a destination was a series of arrivals and departures, each constltlltlllg Itself,{O
a distinct experience. Even the nlOde of conveyance-steam railway, sailing ship,
horse-dra""n omnibus, rickshaw-was integral to the succession of differences one
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D. MacCannel1
felt each step away from home.Today, any sense of traversing space, especially spaCe
that is marked by local distinction,is almost absent from the travel experience.Travel
by air and highspeed motorways is marked mainly by the passage of time and the
droning of engines partially masked by a music system. The experiences one has
going between any two points on the face of the Earth are increasingly similar. They
do not resemble earlier travel so much as they reproduce the experience of sitting
in hospital waiting rooms. Now it is possible to travel around the world without
leaving a globally unified protective envelop in which ticketing, banking, hotels,
restaurants. airport lounges, shopping areas, tour buses, and the planes themselves
are utterly uniform. Only superficial decorative applique seeks to remind the tourist.
of former local specificity: "This used to be Tahiti, or Kansas."
As travel becomes increasingly homogeneous and generic, the tourists, for their
part, become nostalgic for any travel experience that might be claSSified as real Or
authentic.Thus, a second order of tourism is built on the first, a kind of antitourism,
which promises real as opposed to tourist experiences. Tour company entrepre-
neurs provide fly-and-walk trips to the North Pole, opportunity to retrace Darwin's
travels in the Galapagos, Cannibal Tours up the Sepik River in New Guinea,
ecotourism in the Yucatan, visits to Yurts in Outer Mongolia.
Even in these exotic destinations, it is still necessary to question the opposition
traveler versus tourist. \'Vhen the tourist is in an" exotic" place, the consequences
of a bus or a plane not showing up on time may be more interesting. The tourist
might have to spend the night sleeping outdoors rather than staying in an inferior
stopover hotel or trying to nap in an airport lounge. But the facrremains that even
in the most exotic destinations, the itinerary has been worked out in advance, and
the local arrangements, however crude these may be, have been nlade by the tour
operators. The villagers en route know in advance that the tourists are coming and
have prepared for them. The tourists may take a turn on the back of an ostrich or
an elephant, but mainly they ride in four-wheel-drive vehicles. Wealthy ecotourists
from the US visiting Central America in search of unspoiled nature,authenticpri1J2i-
tives, and undiscovered archaeological sites famously arrive in leather upholstered,
air-conditioned Land Rovers with concert hall-quality stereo systems. This kind of
adventuresome travel increaSingly resembles staying at home flipping through
the p"ges of a magazine, or rock climbing tethered from above on the plywood
cliffs ;:1 a sporting goods shop.
7rauel, in the sense of adventure and discovery, implies selecting one's own
rOllte, using the Same modes of transportation as used by the local people, and
worhng out one's eating and sleeping arrangements on the Spot rather than in
advance As such, it is no,y very rare. W'hen it does Occur, the traveler on every
contine1ll is iikely to trip across and fall into grooves already well worn by tour-
ists.The traveler would be hard-pressed to find a place anywhere in the world that
is not already set up in advance to accommodate him. In San FranCiSCO, tourists
ride real cable cars, not just the cute little rubber tired copies of cable cars used
by the sightseeing companies; not just the tourist cable cars. In Switzerland, tour-
ists are once again conveyed to the entrance of th.eir hotel in a horse-drawn omni-
bus.And in Virtual Reality, the tourist no !"'"'3er watches passively as Luke Skyvlalker
defends the universe; he takes over the controls of the Millennium FalCon and
defends the uniuerse himself.
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Remarks on the Commodification of Cultures
Is it Possible to Experience "Otherness"
While on Tour?
383
The worldwide distribution of images of local places, peoples, and monuments
once supplied much of the motive for touristic travel. The first contact a tourist
had with a destination was not the place itself but with a story about it in a maga-
zine or encyclopedia, its picture on a calendar, a colorful brochure obtained at a
travel agency, or perhaps an in.formational movie travelogue or video. The prolif-
eration of touristic imagery was great even before tJ' e information age. Charles
Dickens, in what appears to be hyperbole, makes a factual observation: "There is,
probably, not a famous picture Or statue in all Italy, but could easily be buried
under a mountain of printed paper devoted to dissertations on it" (Pictures From
Italy). Having seen a picture or read an account of the Egyptian pyramids, the
S'wiss Alps,Japanese pearl divers, the Northern Lights, etc., one 'Would want to go
to see for himself or herself.
This has always been the kernel of the touristic motive to travel-the desire to
be where I am not. The motive is conditional in that it does not involve a perma-
nent removal from one's everyday life. It is only a temporary change premised on
the assumption of a safe return home.The motive may be stated as a simple desire
to experience other peop-les' ways of life, to see a famous attraction or monument
for oneself, to discover if a beach lives up to the claims that have been made for it.
But at least in the West, there is also an element cf desire to become identified
with the paradoxical combination of remoteness, inacceSSibility, mysteriousness.
and fame of the site. The act of touristic travel begins 'With an image, a dream, or a
memory in which the tourist places himself or herself at an attraction. The actual
experience at the attraction is a different ,natter altogether.
Any thought one might have entertained about getting to kno .. ..' the life of the
native peoples as it is actually lived, 01' discovering for oneself the: actual feelings
and textures of a falnous stone ~ v l l or monUInent, or becoming identified '\-'lith
the remoteness and mystery of the place, quickly give ,yay to the realizatiop that
the dominant element in every tourist landscape are the tourists The others one
meets in tourist settings are other wurists and local workers whose job it is to
serve tourists. The primary experience will not be of the place so much as it will
be a collection of often insensitive and off-thepoint reactions to the place ex-
pressed by one's tello,y tourists. and forced con,iviality-forhire of tourist service
workers. Each tourist goes to the destination wanting :0 see it as a picture-perkct
image of itself; a perfect picture just like the one in the travel agency but D')'W
with nW in it. They come away with the realization that literally thousands of
other tourists have preceded them 'With a similar dream and millions more will
follow. Even the most remote attractions, the unspOiled highland villages of primi
tive peoples, accessible only to those who are willing to ,valk for several days, are
entirely organized around their function as an attraction.
Tourism Changes its Destinations
The past 150 years can be characterized as a period during 'Which the character
of the destination has changed radically. The changes that have occurred go well
384
D. MaeCannell
beyond the construction of hotels, airports, and restaurants to accommodate tour-
ists. Loca! traditions are modified to make them more attractive to tourists. Reli-
gious observances are transformed into tourist spectacles. For example, the croco-
dile ritual performed for tourists by the Iatmul people of the Sepik region in New
Guinea has been shortened from 3 days to under 45 minutes, and performed not
annually, but upon the arrival of the cruise ship.Wherever tourists are found, there
IS an emergent culture of tourism made from fragments of the local cultures that
tourism destroyed.
Ae obvious effect of this evolution has been to infuse tourist destinations with
anxIety-Each destination des,)erately attempts to mark and market itself as having
dlst1l1ctlOn, an identity. \Vhat occurs is not local specificity, but countless varia,
tions 011 the theme of generic locality, a kind of stressful existence that might be
called "trying to be distinctive for tourists." Even places with great former distinc-
tion feel the need to remake themselves according to the tourist formula. In the
\Vest, historic leaders and folk heroes reappear as cartoon figures; a version of a
French meal is served at McDonald's in Paris; someone wearing a Beefeater cos-
tume hands out informational brochures in London. Every other dav or week is set
aside to engage tourists in a celebration of "historic" or "mythic" 'events of little
current interest t<) local people.
There is a chancteristie transformatio, of places where the local and the global
are linked through tourism. First, a place of work, for example, a beach where
small fishing boats were hauled out, nets repaired, today's successes and failures
discussed and tomorro'w's activities planned, becomes a work display for tourists.
The entire scene becomes an object of touristic consumption to be taken in as an
example of the picturesque with a message: work is natural; work is beautiful;
"Work is picturesque. Perhaps some famous people, or beautiful people, members
of the international elite leisure class, discover the unspoiled beach village. After
initial contact bet\Veen the tourists and the locals it is no longer necessary for any
fishing or associated activities to take place, so long as some of the boats, nets, and
fishermen remain photogeGically arrayed as a reminder of their former purpose.
Eventually, the picturesque elements are selectively integrated into the decora-
tion of the beach bars and diSCOS, which will retain a traditional seafaring theme.
A place of \Vork becomes a place of entertainment. The fishermen, or their chil-
dren, are no'w integrated into the global economy as service workers for interna-
tional tourists. Every-where local practices and traditions are hollo\.vecl out thus to
make a place for this ne\V kind of work.
The Culture of Tourism Is Becoming World Culture
The erosion of the specificity of tourist destinations in favor of a homogeneous
culture of tourism is the result of the transformation of local economies as de-
scribed above and also of the movement and displacement of millions of natural
historical and cultural obje cts, including the things that tourists once had to travel
to see. It is no longer a Hutter of remOVing and assembling representative ex-
amples of artifacts and practices of diverse other peoples in museums of ethnol-
ogy Entire human habitats are now constructed from actual and inugined me-
mentos of otherness. ,Vith the possible ,:xception of deep wilderness and a few
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Remarks on the Commodification of Cultures 385
precious religious shrines, every tourist attraction now meets the tourist more
than halfway. The attractions are on tour.
This phenomenon begins, but does not stop, with the ",Vorld Tour" of the entou-
rage and elaborate stage settings of international rock-and-roll superstars, or the
"Treasures of Ancient Egypt." It extends to entire habitats for tourists. Disneyland,
a large and complex system of attractions, was once thought to be a "place," con-
sidered by many the most representative symbol of US culture. It was the only
place the Russian Premier, Nikita Khruschchev, asked to see when he visited the
US during the Cold War in the 1960s. Now Disneyland itself has traveled to France
and Japan, not to mention Florida. Some of the most famous and venerable monu-
ments of nature and culture have been moved or reproduced in a new location.
Hearst Castle on the California coast was constructed from entire palaces, abbeys,
and convents purchased in Europe by the newspaper multimillionaire, \V'iIliam
Randolph Hearst, then disassembled, crated, and shipped to the US for reassembly.
Even in its original use as a home, it functioned mainly as an attraction and trans-
formed its famous owner into a kind of tourist in his own house. The underwater
habitat of the entire Pacific Rim, including representative species of plants and
animals, is faithfully reproduced in the massive "Ring of Fire" aquarium in Osaka
The original London Bridge has been moved to a resort town in the Arizona desert.
Even the everyday life of peasant Villagers worldwide is subject to these displace-
ments.At "Little World" in Japan one finds entire Greek, African,Thai, ,mel American
Indian Villages, including some of their inhabitants, functioning as both a theme
park and a living ethnological museum.
The drive to embrace everything that once secured a sense of "locality" or local
distinction, everything that was once symbolic of cultural or natural distinction, is
central to tourism. At the end of this drive, we predictably find the reproduction
and redistribution of markers of locality to the point that the local is killed by the
very desire to embrace it. The culture of tourism may eventually be seen as the
millennial stage of colonialism and Empire. During the early phases of colonialism
and Empire, global powers marked their dominance by bringing things back from
campaigns that could be displayed in the Capital. Napoleon took an obelisk from
Egypt and had it erected in Paris. The Greek (so called "Elgin") marbles are still
displayed in the British Museum. Of course, these objects continue to be impor-
tant tourist attractions that seem to resemble contemporary displaced imagery in
tourist settings-the re-creation of the Paris Experience in a Las Vegas Casino-
Hotel, for example. The difference is that the earlier displaced symbols have the
dignity of marking actual historical events, however egregiOUS that history might
have been. Their contemporary relatives mark nothing but the power of global
capital to efface history and to construct generic localities, or to package identity.
The version of tourism produced by global capital has, in effect, declared itself
as capable of producing, reproducing, buying, selling, and moving anything and
anyone whatsoever to anyplace whatsoever. It does not restrict itself to a few
spoils of military victory. Walt Disney built replicas of the Caribbean Sea and the
Matterhorn at his Disneyland in California, and attempted to bring Abraham Lin-
coln back from the dead. These displacements are of such a magnitude that it is
almost impossible to think they were conceived by humans. Only a "God of Tour-
ism" could imagine replacing the Matterhorn, or resuscitating a dead president.
D. MacCannelJ
The drive to reproduce the past, nature, and other cultures seems to be moti-
vated by a limitless appetite for more otherness, but it is an otherness that is
under control, a comforting otherness, an otherness that has been domesticated
The latex alligators at Disneyland mount feroCious attacks on boats carrying tour:
ists.Thus, they respond to our ideas about the being of alligators much bett';r than
the real alligators sleeping motionless in a river or a zoo. Disney alligators are, at
once, Fnore realistic than real alligators and safe to be around. The
Mr. Lincoln is shorter in stature than the original, delivers a boring speech, and
appears to be somewhat palsied in his gestures. He comes off as quite a bit Eke
our leaders of today. He certainly does not measure up to the genius of his creator
Me Disney ,
\>;Ihen everything has been moved out of time and out of place, recontextualized
and domesticated, tourism is no longer a mere vacation activity, an entertainment.
It beco.rnes the primary engine of myth and culture in the making. With sufficient
capital accumulation, in Las Vegas for example, or the West Ednlonton Mall in
Canada, it is no longer necessary to attach this engine to existing social, physical,
or historical arrangements.At the \>;Iest Edmonton Mall (now enlulated on a grander
scale at the Mall of America) one finds Parisian Boulevards, an indoor lake With
. penguins, a submarine ride and replicas of Columbus'S ship, a reconstruction of
[\iew Orleans' Bourbon Street, performing dolphins, Siberian tigers, a 19th century
iron bridge from England.The culture of tourism has established itself to the point
[hat it is possible to create entire tourist habitats. It has become a phenomenon in
itself, capable of self-reproduction. Any distinction that might have once held be-
tween the resort vacation camp, theme park, shopping mall, and the city can be
broken down by tourism. Now these various functions or sites of formerly special-
ized activities have blended and merged into single universal arcbitecture of plea-
sure. Constructed historical and man-made natural places are being built through-
out the Western world and beyond, often replacing the actual historical and natu-
ral places they pretend to emulate.
Does the Change in Tourism Lead to a
Change in the Motive to Travel?
In the \Vest, when Cook arranged tbe first group tours of SWitzerland and Egypt,
"\""\"11co the first vacation canlps built, the tourists
1
the destinations, and the
motives were clearly different than they are today. Tourist was a temporary iden-
tity available and deSirable to the industrial middle class and upper working class.
In ttl(: late 19th century members of the new middle class obtained disposable
inCOI?1C and some free time that would allow them (with the assistance of some
smart entrepreneurs) to mock up a bourgeois version of the GrandTour.This same
moment was also one of bittersweet alienation and nostalgia for the new indus-
trial bourgeoisie. Comfortable at home but still alienated, the tour became their
sp.ecial expressive form. Having recently sacrificed traditions and land llse incom-
patible vdtl1 the requirements of career success in the industrial age, these early
tourists longed for cult'.!,"' distinction, unspOiled natural beauty, strong and au-
thentic relations with the family, the past, the soiL Tourism, travel, sightseeing, and
the guided tour to historic and natural shrines responds to these longings and
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Remarks on the Commodification of Cultures 387
desires. The tour, as a pastiche of fragments of culture, history, and landscape, mir-
rored the loss and detachment the new bourgeois consciousness imagined itself
to have experienced. The greater the career success, the greater the sense of loss,
the more elaborate and extensive the tour must be. The early tourists went iiter-
ally to the ends of the Earth in search of tokens of unspoiled nature, authen:,icity,
and tradition missing in their own lives, but still visible in the lives of others.
As each place visited by the tourists increasingly resembles every other place, a
process driven by tourism itself, the original motives no longer apply A Londoner
need not travel to Egypt to buy magnificent replicas 0:. Egyptian artifacts.They are
available for sale in the London Museum gift shop. Egypt in London (or New York,
or TokyO) is becoming as ubiquitous as a Londoner, a New Yorker, or a Nihongo
speaker in Egypt. Each major city of the world and much of the hinterland has
become fully transformed by the international culture of tourism to the point that
the ethnic neighborhoods, theme parks, shopping malls, restaurants, and natural
attractions of one's own city and region are no more or less other than those of
touristic destinations around the world.
The everyday life of the international middle class is now fully colonized by
global capital in a touristic cultural form.The adolescent tourist in [he US no longer
dream5. of a summer bicycle tour around Europe, at least not in innocent isolation
from the manipulative gaze of global capital. An entire commercial complex has
grown up around the European-style bicycle, The.re are things to buy: spandex
clothing, special shoes, smoother gear change mechanisms, sport water bottles.
Moreover, there is no particular reason to go to Europe as "European-style" bicy-
cling experiences are now marketed worldwide. The best Japanese restaurants in
San Francisco have branches in Osaka and Milan. As the places C'ne can visit in-
creasingly resemble the place where ont: is coming from, the r,-otive for travel
necessarily becomes narcissistic Or a matter of pure vanity: ont: travels only to
have traveled.
Tourists are evolving into pure consumers, spending hi Jions and ending up with
nothing to show for it. When a tourist from London travels to Egypt to take in the
sights, the act no longer leaves any tangible trace, except perhaps in his conversa-
tions: "011 yes, I've been there." It is possible to travel around the world, seei.ng all
the important sights. spending enormous quantities of money, and return home
with nothing but a bag of dirty laundry. Nothing was produced for purposes of
exchange to be carried home, used up, or resold, Tynically and ideally, while on
tour, every purchase made by the tOurist is of seryic<.:s or cOllsumab!es provided
by the international travel and hotel industry: food and drink, a night's lodging,
soap, throwaway chop sticks; other things immediately converted to v,aste Even
the lightweight things that are locally made by and for tourists-the souvenirs,
postcards, and photographs-end up stashed in boxes at the back of closets, a
difficult kind of rubbish that can neither be used nOr disposed of.
\\fill the Reason for International Travel Eventually
Disappear?
There are contradictions at the heart of international tourism that are no"", ap-
pearing as internal barriers to its future development.
388
D. MacCannell
First, international tourism is vulnerable as a result of its own previous SUCcess
and excess. When the culture of tourism succeeds in replacing local culture, it
becomes Increasingly difficult to distinguish between destinations. The more each
place comes to resemble someplace close to home, and the more tourist experi-
ence resembles everyday experience, the more difficult it becomes to justify travel
The Paris theme park, the Los Angeles theme Park, the Tokyo theme park, the Or:
lando theme park are all operated by the same company and staffed by the same
cartoon figures.The international culture of tourism increasingly resembles a kind
of corporate, high-technology feudalism in which the nation-state gives way to a
few tightly controlled corporations that exercise control over work, leisure, and
knowl.edge of the world and the place of the individual in it. The production and
marketing of experiences as the characteristic commodity of late capitalism may
have reached the saturation point.
Second, international travel and tourism is vulnerable to increasing acceptance
of virtuality and to the realization that media images of otberness are often Supe-
rior to actual experience. The media always get further bebind tbe scenes than
one can actuallv go as a tourist.Also, the more one travels, the more one realizes
that actual experience in tOllrist settings is always highly staged and m.anipulated.
Therefore, it is nOT much different from mediated experience, except that the
mediated exper.ience is usually better tball the so-called real experience. Mickey
Mouse on screen h enormously more ent,;rraining than the actor in the Mickey
Mouse suit at Disn"ylanci.
Third, potentially exacerbating these internal problems are at least two impor-
tant externalities.The first is that a relatively minor reversal in the world economy
can quickly relieve the international middle class of its discretionary money. Cer-
tainly touristic travel would be among the first sacrifices the international middle
class would make. The second is that tourist destinations are also vulnerable to
civil unrest and natural disasters.
The Next Tourism
How did it occur that the world's largest industry could leave itself open to
collapse at the moment of its greatest expansion? If the seeds of its destruction
have been planted, they are certainly being nurtured by its overinvolvement with
those aspects of culture that are dead and dying: with colorful peasantry, unspoiled
rain forests, outmoded forms of work, with ancient Egypt, Rome, or Greece.Inter-
national tourism embraces death and dying not as history but as entertainment.
Under these conditions, it would be surprising if the cultural subjects that emerge
from tourism were anything bm stillborn. On the rigbt, it is becoming increaSingly
difficult for the human subject to think itself as anything different from, or other
than, its place in an organization. There is no expressed desire except for that which
can be satisfied by a good paying job. As organizations become larger and more
powerful, alld as every communitv is increaSingly composed of decontextualized,
generiC syrrlbols of place, everyday existence becomes a kind of frenzy of boredom.
:In the left, the subject is sUf'.Josed to be nothing more than its micro-identities
(e.g., feminist, orThi "d world, or gay, or heterosexual white male).The only ideologi-
cal common ground is tourism. Left and right, imagination departs.The tourists now
1
Remarks on the Commodification of Cultures
389
depend on someone else-perhaps it is Walt Disney, or the new virtual reality facto-
ries, or the police of political correctness-to do their dreaming for them.We should
consider the consequences.A life that is lived without imagination, or one in which
all the imagery is supplied by others, resembles a kind of living death.
Still, it is premature to assume that tourism has no future other than collapse.
Tourism is logically self-canceling, but that does not necessarily mean that it will
go into decline. The international culture of tourism would not be the first death
cult humankind has devised for itself.
It comes down to the question: As every destination comes increasingly to re-
semble every other destination, why leave home? The answer is not obvious and
requires a logic of its own, a touristic logic. Tourism literally makes one's own
place, one's "home," into the ultimate destination. The tourist'S home may be with-
out style or distinction-just another postmodern box with superficial styling
references to tbe local provided by a design studio. Eventually, when the transfor-
mation of global culture is complete, the "home" may be no different from any of
the places visited on the tourist's itinerary, except for its singular designation as
the point of origin and final destination.
In such a world, rigid and homogeneous, leaving home is the only way to mark
it as distinct from other places; it may not be different from other places. but at
least it is the place you are "from."You may never be able to change your social
position but you can travel as a kind of simple-minded literalization of social and
geographic mobility. Real mobility is no longer technically possible once every
move takes the traveler to a place no different from the place he just left. \'lhat the
tourist discovers is that "home" is deeply arbitrary even if it seems to be the point
of origin and final destination. This realization can serve either to kill tourism, so
we can start to live again, or it will make touristic travel all the more frenZied.
\'lhat better way of marking status differences in a world in which we must "stay
in our places" than having visited just about every place? As tourists we come
home, making "our place" the most important place of all. At the same time, our
social standing is nicely inflated without the embarrassment of a heap of status
Objects that unfortunately can also be symptoms of insecurity. On his return home,
the tourist can enjoy a kind of euphoria of pseudo superiority that is not depen-
dent on any specific "thing." He can be "worldly" or "traVeled," which are now
entirely content free and duty free designations.
Summary
Tourism has been the ground for the production of a new global culture. In the
name of tourism, capital and modernized peoples have been deployed to the most
remote regions of the world. Tourism has coated almost the entire 'world with
decorative traces of the cultures it has consumed. Its reach is extensive, but it has
vet to find the majority of [he world's peoples. Most of the people in the world at
~ i s moment are not tourists, nor do they earn their Jiving by serving tourists
They are subsistence agriculturalists, lh-ing just beyond the reach of tourism in
Africa, Latin America, China, In..:i.d. (The persistence of cultures just beyond the
reach of global tourism and capital is not to be taken for granted, however, JUSt as
the chapters in this volume make abundantly clear.)
. i'
L __
390
D. MacCannell
The questions that I raised in The Tourist:A New Theory of the. Leisure Class
(MacCannell. 19B9b) are entirely inappropriate and out of place when they arc
applied to this other half of the world's people, which constitutes a living critique
of the anxieties associated with tourism and postmodernity. Paralleling and 01'-
posinKthe rnovements of the tourists, during the last 25 years there has been a
rapid increase of the movements of nontourists from formerly remote regions of
the world into centers of wealth and power: the African, Caribbean, and ASian
diasporas; the flight of peasant refugees from Central America; the migratiuns or
agricultural and other guest 'workers; Southeast Asian Boat People. The question of
whether these people are haVing an authentic travel experience is an insult. The
tourist follows the officially marked path, while for the refugee and the homeless,
the marked path, the road, the sidewalk, the trail, the reserved seat on a scheduled
flight. is only one way of going from place to place, and not necessarily the way
that offers them the least resistance. The refugee may even feel the need to stay
off the road for purposes of movement, Orto use the road for something e1se.They
may haevest it for information, for example. They travel by gripping onto the skids
of helicopters, onto sides of trains and buses, hiding in cargo'bays of planes and
boats, walking through enemy territory at night, hiring smugglers to sneak them
across international borders. They do not know where they will rest Or eat, Or
even if they wiIi rest or eae They become separated from family members travel-
ing with them sometimes for months or forever. They cannot be certain of their
destinatiOiLThese are not uirtual experiences, designed to produce a sensation of
a thrill or fear. They are real and consequentiaL The one defining certainty is pre-
ciselr the opposite of that of the tourist: they know they cannot return horne,
The [Ollrist can no more prove himself thail the refugee or the homeless can
exist as other than proof of intense commitment to survival, t.o life. In their very
drive to represent themselves as cOlnmunity,in their makeover that refers to tra-
ctilion, [he places tourists live and visit all the more perfectly become nameless
and placeless.
There are stil! vital grounds for human celebration on a global scale, but they
have nothing to do with the institutions of mass tourism as these have evolved.
They would involve celebrating the surviVal strategies and creative adaptations of
the immigrants displaced by the movement of global capitaL ,Ve should be tr}'ing
to invent a new celebration of otherness, one that honors life, not death, one [hat
focuses on current creative work, not just the creative work of the past. C;-U1 'Yve
acknov.,rledge those among us who must rnake new homes in alien environ!nents,
invent new family, "work, and community arrangements? Not the peoples, places,
and things destroyed by industrial society and memorialized by modern tourism
during its first 150 years. 'Not the world as it used to be, but the new world that is
emerging from the humus of the old, its heroes and herOines, their struggles, their
acts of epic bravery, their arts,
If 've were to do so, we would soon discover that the field of the absolute other
is not half a 'world a'way, but only a few miles, or blocks, or inches,
===
Contributors
Marvann Brent is a native of the eastern United .;tates, with a background in
mOd'ern languages and is a Certified Travel Counselor in th.e travel IIldustry.
In 1997 she completed the Ph.D. in Geography at the UmversILY of Waterloo III
Ontario and served as co-editor of the 25-year Special Index Issue,Annals ofT our-
. R' h (1999) Current research includes the application of ArcVIew (GIS)
urn . ...
to tourism research, space tourism at International Space {--'IllversIty, and resor,
morphology.
Magali Daltabuit is a Mexican biological/environmental anthropologist and full-
time researcher at the Centro Regional de InvestigacIOnes MultJdlsClpllIlanas
(Cuernavaca) of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de MexiCO: She has a
h'sto!'y of research and field'Work in southern .MexIco, BelIze, and Guatemala study
biocultural adaptations to rapid change. Her publications include monographs
and articles on Maya women's health, nutrition, and work, mIgratIOn and the envI-
d t1 . challenge of ecotourism. She has co-authored several papel S rOfuuent, an le
with R. Brooke Thomas and Orlol Pi-Sunyer
Michael Fagence teaches and researches at the University of Quef'nsland, Brisbane,
Australia. His principal fields of interesI [all viithin the scope of 'J}11fISm plannmg,
'With 'recent research fOCUSing on the means available in planning to Il1tnlIl11Ze the
. f' . j on special cultural groups sue! as the Old Order Impact 0 tounSIl1 ( ev,- '
Amish and Mennonites,
Nelson H. H. Graburn was born in England and studied anthropology at C.am-
b ' 1 e McGill and the University of Chicago. Since 1964, l1e has taught Antnro-
lie g " 1 , h h' I Curator a' the
pology at the University of California, Berkeley, were, IS a _. _, _ . c _
Hearst Museum of Anthropology His research mterests mclude tee ,t_udy of tour
iSIl1, museums, ans, identity, and representation. He Jus carried out neldwork 111
- - I j 1h Inuit (Eskimos) of Canad:l, Japan and among the Indians 01 Canac a anc (
Greenland, and Alaska.
R di Hartluann teaches tourism at the University of Colorado at Denver. He re-
his Ph,D. from the Technica! Uni\-ersity of l'vlunich (lC)83) :md has been
affiliated with the Clark University, University of California at Bcc;;:e!ev, and the
. . f' L d S -eden His rese'ucb interests include sustaieabllity of recre- Unlversttv'o un, W ., . . I
ational re-sources and spatial patterns, dynamiCS, and impacts of tourism (,eve]op-
ment.
. h '. t' of Zinlbabwe (formerlv Southern Rhodesia) whose grand- RobIn Heat a na lve... '- .. _
,,- t te ed the countrv in the ]8905. After teaChing in high schools tor a
pdJ.en sen r.. J ". "
nur.:-.';er of years and the University of Rhodes!a, she became Inte ," ,ounsm
h d ' 11er tenure as Resparcil Officer at the Institute oj SOClal and Eco- researc unng _ .
. R Cll Unl'''ersitv of Durban-WestVille, KwaZulu-Natal Presently, she !s nomIc esear, , , _.
391
Hosts and (;-uests Revisited:
Tourislll Issues of the 21 st Century
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Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and
Inany of our people need it sorely on these accounts, Broad" .
wholesome charitabfe views of men and things cannot acqUJred
by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lIfetIme,
-Mark Twain, The innocents Abroad, 1869