Epilogue

So how is it that travelling gets such a good rep as a ‘mind-enriching’ experience? In this entry I’d like to disseminate some characteristics of travel that may cause (positive) change. To achieve this, I’ll divide change into two parts: Individual and societal.

Individual change is the one that can be achieved the fastest. It arises when two (or more) individuals of different cultures interact with each other and exchange ideas and opinions. Of course, the extent to which this exchange is happening is largely dependent on a multitude of factors. One such factor is the nature of the exchange; it can be reasoned that sheer financial transactions (e.g. ordering food) is a less culturally meaningful exchange than a discussion with a local. This is somewhat related to notions of formal and informal encounters, terms I explained in a previous entry.

Societal change through intercultural exchanges is much slower. One crucial term that needs to be introduced here is the ‘demonstration effect’. Essentially, the demonstration effect happens when one culture ‘imitates’ or aspires to the behaviour of the other culture. For example, Jordan has recently adapted a ‘street name system’, very similar to how our infrastructure works in the West. Before the introduction of street names, people used to rely on landmarks. But with increasingly larger cities and complex alleys, street names have become necessary to navigate efficiently.

This is of course a very practical societal change, but changes in ideology and equality can also be achieved by intercultural exchanges. Women for example are receiving more and more rights, largely due to Western influences.

So those are the basic ways in which tourism (or travel; I used to terms interchangeably this time) can lead to positive change on a societal and individual level. In my next and final blog entry I will reflect on my journey as a whole.

Reference: Williams, Stephen. Tourism geography. Routledge, 2009.

How Travel can Change

So how is it that travelling gets such a good rep as a ‘mind-enriching’ experience? In this entry I’d like to disseminate some characteristics of travel that may cause (positive) change. To achieve this, I’ll divide change into two parts: Individual and societal.

Individual change is the one that can be achieved the fastest. It arises when two (or more) individuals of different cultures interact with each other and exchange ideas and opinions. Of course, the extent to which this exchange is happening is largely dependent on a multitude of factors. One such factor is the nature of the exchange; it can be reasoned that sheer financial transactions (e.g. ordering food) is a less culturally meaningful exchange than a discussion with a local. This is somewhat related to notions of formal and informal encounters, terms I explained in a previous entry.

Societal change through intercultural exchanges is much slower. One crucial term that needs to be introduced here is the ‘demonstration effect’. Essentially, the demonstration effect happens when one culture ‘imitates’ or aspires to the behaviour of the other culture. For example, Jordan has recently adapted a ‘street name system’, very similar to how our infrastructure works in the West. Before the introduction of street names, people used to rely on landmarks. But with increasingly larger cities and complex alleys, street names have become necessary to navigate efficiently.

This is of course a very practical societal change, but changes in ideology and equality can also be achieved by intercultural exchanges. Women for example are receiving more and more rights, largely due to Western influences.

So those are the basic ways in which tourism (or travel; I used to terms interchangeably this time) can lead to positive change on a societal and individual level. In my next and final blog entry I will reflect on my journey as a whole.

Reference: Williams, Stephen. Tourism geography. Routledge, 2009.

Culture for Sale

“Travel feeds the soul” is a statement I often hear from friends who are quite frequently on the move. And this is not an unpopular opinion. In fact I believe most people agree wholeheartedly with this, whether they be tourist or traveller. The underlying reasoning is that to travel, is to exchange cultures. It is this trade of ideas and opinions that can be an enriching experience.

But sadly, this is not always the case. In an earlier blog I discussed the notion of commodification; making an experience  or an other intangible object into a product open for sale. Although the commodification of cultural artifacts may bring newfound wealth to the country, it also reduces their cultural heritage to mere products that anyone can enjoy for a fee. I am of the opinion that this process makes the experiences less worthwhile, a notion closely related to the quest for authenticity.

One such example, where a cultural heritage was devalued is Petra. Petra was once the capital of an ancient people called the Nabataeans, who lived there for centuries. Later on it was inhabited by the Bedoon, a stateless people who still roam in Jordan today. It wasn’t until the 20th century that Petra became a popular destination for (mostly) Western tourists. The Jordanian board of tourism saw this as an opportunity and forced the Bedoon to resettle to a nearby encampment.

Isn’t it ironic that we value Petra due to its portrayal of a beautiful city, and yet force away those that make it an actual living and breathing city? Don’t get me wrong, Petra is still an amazing place to visit. But the experience would be that much more valued by me, and presumably others as well, when it would’ve kept its original valued function.

That’s enough complaining about tourism for now. In the following entry I will try to examine how tourism ‘feeds the soul’.

Reference: Williams, Stephen. Tourism geography. Routledge, 2009.

Addicted to Tourism

The past view blog entries gave a largely positive view of tourism, in this entry I’d like to take a more critical approach to tourism.

Let’s start of with the more obvious problem that arises when a large part of your economy is based on tourism: Dependency. After the tourism industry received initial entrepreneurial success, many people started to orient their business to the tourists. A quick glance at the enormous amounts of tour guides, hotel owners and street vendors reveals the presumably attractive nature of the sector.

This dependency on visitors makes the system vulnerable. And that is exactly what is happening in Jordan today. The Middle East has always been a portrayed as an unstable and conflict-ridden region, but recent problems with IS have made most muslim nations a no-go area for Western tourists. This, coupled with the financial crisis in the West which severely decreased travel to foreign countries, has led the Jordan tourism sector (and thereby its economy) to severely decrease.

The results are large-scale unemployment, peskier street merchants and in some cases even outright hostility. When we were in Petra, one of the street merchants became outwardly hostile after we denied his advances to buy something. Another time in Jerash, we were followed by a peddler of chewing gum for at least 20 minutes, after which he had to be removed by our tour guide.

Even through all the hardships, the Jordanians seem intent on maintaining the tourism industry. Their main weapon in this battle is their supposed safety: ‘The Switzerland of the Middle East’ as they like to portray themselves in order to attract more tourists. But will this approach succeed in alluring a Western audience? We’ll just have to wait and see.

This has been a short note on tourism dependency. In my next blog I will pay attention to a less well-known negative side effect of tourism: The devaluation of culture.

Reference: Ancient Petra Sees Few Visitors as Jordan Tourism Declines. (2015, March 30). Retrieved from http://nyti.ms/1Nr3NNH

The Meeting of Two Worlds

These past few entries have mostly been about theories and actual physical locations. I’d like to switch it up a little, by devoting this entry to the people; the Jordanians.

First of all, I’d like to make a distinction between two kinds of tourist encounters; formal and informal. The formal relationship is largely defined by some form of interdependence; one person needs the other and the roles are well defined. Some examples include street vendors, taxi drivers and more specifically our busdriver and our tour guide Omar Alamat.

Omar is a friendly and warm tour guide who knew (sometimes too) much about every place we’ve visited in Jordan. He was always accessible when I had a question, and he even learnt me how to tie a keffiyeh. Nevertheless, our relationship was clearly formally       defined: He was my tour guide, and I was one of the many people he had to guide.

Then there are informal encounters, where the partakers are largely independent from each other. I met one such individual at the local shisha joint, where a young man sat down next to us to start a conversation. We didn’t talk about anything particularly interesting, but it was nice to talk to a local, free from the possibility that he would try to sell me some kind of mosaic. After our chat we said goodbye, to probably never see each other again.

I am of the opinion that the nature of your relationship, be it formal or informal, makes a huge difference. On all accounts I should like Omar more than the local (I don’t even remember his name), and yet I don’t. In previous entries I’ve talked about authenticity or realness, and the same logic applies here. Formal encounters simply do not feel authentic, due to their inherent interdependency. It’s like a paid friendship, which is not really my thing.

Reference: Moufakkir, Omar, and Yvette Reisinger, eds. The host gaze in global tourism. CABI, 2013.

Commodivacation

In my previous blog entry I talked about the so called ‘quest for authenticity’. There is one issue I didn’t really touch upon then: How does an experience come to be perceived as authentic?

What we perceive to be authentic, in my opinion, is largely based on our subjective knowledge of the place we visit. This knowledge may stem from a wide array of different sources (e.g. travel brochures, stories and even movies). For example, all of us have a certain view of how a real desert should look, and that view (if you’ve never visited a desert) is entirely based on second-hand information.

Tourist companies know how to use this information to their advantage, and they are more than willing to do so. They essentially try to sell you an image; an image of what a real visit should look like. Can you imagine visiting Jordan without seeing Petra? Few people can, for Petra has become the embodiment of what a Jordanian trip should look like. That makes it possible for them to charge a hefty entrance fee of 50 Jordanian Dinar (63 euro!).

In this way Petra,or better yet; the experience to go to Petra, has become a commodity. This process, whereby a place or an experience becomes an object for sale is called ‘commodification’. It is commodification, that makes a large part of the tourism industry a viable enterprise.

Ironically, it is often this focus on making money that can make an experience feel inauthentic again; it has become ‘touristic’. When people speak about the real Paris, they probably don’t mean the Eiffel Tower.

And so we have a full cycle of places being portrayed as authentic, being commodified and finally being perceived as inauthentic again. Authenticity then, is just a matter of time.

Reference: Meethan, K. (2001) Tourism in Global Society,Basingstoke: Palgrave.

The Quest for Authenticity

In an earlier blog I mentioned some potential reasons of why we travel. Today I’d like to give some more attention to MacCannell’s notion of authenticity. His theory, in a nutshell, states that most (if not all) tourists are deeply dissatisfied in their home country, where experiences seem superficial and inauthentic. Tourism then is the exchange of the superficial life for another place, where experiences feel real.

Although I stated in an earlier blog that this theory does not apply to me as a whole, it does connect with me on some levels. For example, when we were in Jerash I bought a keffiyeh. Although I initially bought it to protect myself from the heat, I’ll admit I felt pretty cool wearing it. Especially when one of the local Jordanians came up to me on the street, to tell me I was wearing the thing horribly wrong; after which he taught me the proper way to tie a keffiyeh.

Fast forward a couple of days when we were riding a camel in the middle of the desert, and I was wearing my properly tied keffiyeh. Even though we just paid 10 dinars to a couple of tour guides who make their living off (presumably Western) tourists, the experience felt real.

So who’s to say what experience is authentic and which ones are inauthentic? I was acutely aware of the touristic nature of our ride and yet whenever I think back to our journey in Jordan, the image of us riding the camels springs to mind as one of the most authentic experiences. Authenticity, I think, is largely in the mind. You can stay in a resort, or travel the countryside, what matters is how you experience those events. If there is such a thing as the ‘quest for authenticity’ then it is an internal quest, unrelated to the actualities of the visitation.

References: Edensor, Tim. Tourism. Elsevier, 2009

                        MacCannell, Dean. The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class. University of                                     California Press, 1976.