Place and power in tourism development: tracing the complex articulations of community and locality

              Vol. 1 Nº 1 págs. 13-32. 2003
www.pasosonline.org
© PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural. ISSN 1695-7121
Place and power in tourism development: tracing the
complex articulations of community and locality
Raoul V. Bianchi †
Centre for Leisure and Tourism Studies (United Kingdom)
Abstract: This paper outlines the case for the analysis of tourism, power and place in the development
process from a critical sociological perspective. It draws on recent trends in the sociology of develop-ment
to develop existing theoretical models in a manner which transcends the more rigid dualisms be-tween
structure and agency on the one hand, and, the concerns of power and identity on the other. As in
recent works from noted scholars such as Picard and Wood (1997), the relationship between tourism and
processes of development and social transformation are more nuanced and varied than previous ‘theo-retical’
models in tourism have recognised. Hence, this paper examines the issue by considering four
major thematic areas of relevance to the study of tourism and its diverse relationships to processes of
social change: the relations of community, consumption, production and place.
Keywords: Tourism; Power; Community; Consumption
Resumen: Este artículo esboza el caso del análisis del turismo, el poder y el espacio en los procesos de
desarrollo desde la perspectiva de la sociología crítica. Se sirve de las recientes tendencias en la sociolo-gía
del desarrollo por extender los modelos teóricos existentes de manera que trascienda el rígido dua-lismo
entre estructura y organismo de un lado, y acerca del poder y la identidad, por otro. Tal como han
admitido en recientes trabajos destacados investigadores como Picard y Wood (1997), la relación entre
turismo y procesos de desarrollo y transformación social están más matizados y variados que los mode-los
‘teóricos’ previos. Desde este punto de vista, este artículo examina el tema considerando cuatro áreas
temáticas de especial relevancia para el estudio del turismo y sus diversas relaciones con los procesos de
cambio social: la relaciones de comunidad, consumo, producción y espacio.
Palabras clave: Turismo; Poder; Comunidad; Consumo
† Stapleton House. University of North London. 277-281 Holloway Road. London. N7 8HN. E-mail:
r.bianchi@londonmet.ac.uk
14 Place and power in tourism development
Introduction
A cursory glance at the literature on
tourism development points to continuing
tensions between a problem-solving prag-matism
on the one hand, and the emer-gence
of critical analyses on the other. A
number of studies have tackled the critical
analysis of tourism from a more structural
and/or institutional perspective, including
research on the commodification of place in
post-industrial tourim (Britton 1991), the
economic geography of tourism systems
(Ioannides and Debbage 1998), and the
politics of tourism policy and planning
(Hall 1994; 2000a).
From an altogether different theoretical
angle, there is a growing field of research
that rejects the apparent essentialisms
associated with the neo-colonialist model in
tourism (see, for e.g. Britton 1982; Palmer
1994), and deals with a more nuanced
analysis of the complex strategies of nego-tiation
and engagement with capitalist
modernity as manifest in tourism (Picard
and Wood; Oakes 1998). Notions of ‘hy-bridity’
and ‘diversity’ are central to a
number of other recent studies which em-brace
a post-colonial stance (hence the cen-trality
of authors such as Foucault and
Bhabha within their writings), whose con-cern
it is to reveal the more composite na-ture
of power relations (Cheong and Miller
2000), and strategies of cultural production
within tourism (Hollinshead 1998, 1999).
While tourism development studies have
had a tendency to give primacy to structure
over agency, thus ignoring the creative
engagement of local populations with dif-ferent
modalities of tourism development,
others have emphasised the study of diver-sity,
in isolation from the hierarchical
structures of power which connect localities
to the wider political economy. Theoretical
shortcomings within the literature have
already been noted elsewhere (for e.g. All-cock
1983; Nash 1996; Milne 1998), how-ever,
it is argued here that an emergent set
of antagonisms can be discerned within the
now more mature field of critical tourism
studies. It is thus the intention of this pa-per
to analyse a way forward for our under-standing
of tourism, power and place in the
development process, that transcends the
dualisms between normative preoccupa-tions
with difference and diversity on the
one hand, and inequality and power on the
other.
This brief review constitutes a platform
upon which to argue for a more rigorous
and nuanced consideration of tourism and
social transformation, which considers the
relations of consumption, production and
transformation of space engendered by
historically-specific dynamics of tourism
development. It elucidates upon existing
and potential critical research into proc-esses
of tourism development which exam-ine
the historical variations in the forms of
capitalist development which condition the
development of tourism, in conjunction
with the political agency of the state. As
already stated by Hall (1994: 13), nor can
the complex articulations of power within
tourism be effectively analysed through
recourse to the apparently value-free ap-proaches
postulated by the pragmatic
school of tourism planning and policy-making
studies.
They are underpinned by a pluralist
conception of power which challenges the
possibility of revealing the systemic sources
of inequality and range of antagonisms
within tourism development processes by
virtue of their implicit acceptance of the
prevailing social order. An historical com-parative
approach to the study of tourism
development that is sensitive to the differ-ent
contexts of development offers an alter-native
paradigm of analysis which also
calls into question the anti-essentialism of
Foucauldain/post-colonial approaches to
tourism, which arguably privilege the un-derstanding
of diversity at the expense of
structural inequalities in the development
process.
Tourism Resort Development: Com-munity
vs Commodity ?
During the 1960s and 1970s, at the time
when the anthropology of tourism was be-ginning
to emerge as a discrete area of
study, the study of tourism’s ‘impact’ upon
host societies, served to consolidate the
notion of the ‘community’ as an entity un-der
threat from external forces of change.
In the 1970s, as grassroots movements
Raoul Bianchi 15
began to find a voice in international policy
forums, calls for local participation were
sometimes reflected in concrete pro-grammes
supported by international aid
agencies, such as the integrated village
tourism project in the Lower Casamance
region of Senegal (Saglio 1979).
Yet the emergence of the term ‘commu-nity’
in the tourism literature occurred at a
time when its analytical usefulness was
already beginning to be heavily questioned
in the social sciences (Boissevain 1975), an
issue to which I will return again below.
More recently, the community has re-emerged
as an object of social inquiry and
mobilising ideology (e.g. Etzioni 1993) in
response to the radical conservatism of the
1980s and its associated neo-liberal eco-nomic
policies which have de-stabilised
communities and led to the disintegration
of the social fabric in Western industrial-ized
societies (Hutton 1996). The attach-ment
to ‘community’ as a territorially fixed
notion, has received even greater impetus
as the impacts of globalisation and rapid
changes in communications technologies
serves to further accentuate feelings of
dislocation and up-rootedness (Lash and
Urry 1994).
The relationship between community,
place and power is relevant for the exami-nation
of tourism development, particularly
with regard to the ‘community-based’ ap-proaches
to tourism planning and develop-ment
(Murphy 1985; Haywood 1988; Broh-man
1996) and the evaluation of residents’
perceptions of tourism (Pearce et al. 1996).
Since Murphy’s (1985) well-known publica-tion,
there has been a proliferation of stud-ies
which share the basic proposition that
the involvement of residents in decision-making
is the key to sustainable tourism
development and furthermore would en-gender
increased acceptance and legitimacy
of tourism as an economic development
policy. A number of authors focused on an
attempte to postulate ‘normative’ models of
community planning in order to involve
different ‘stakeholders’ in the decision-making
process (Jamal and Getz 1995;
Timothy 1998), or foster cooperation be-tween
different government agencies and
the public and private sectors (Timothy
1998), whilst others have evaluate the ef-fectiveness
of collaborative decision-making
in the reduction of power imbalances be-tween
different stakeholders (Bramwell
and Sharman 1999). “Resident-responsive
tourism” has thus been viewed as a central
mobilising concept around which govern-ments
could construct more equitable plan-ning
of tourism development and simulta-neously
overcome resistance to tourism
within some segments of the community
(Brent Ritchie 1993).
Nevertheless, patterns of participation
and community involvement in tourism
have been the focus of critical attention in
recent years (see Milne 1998). For exam-ple,
Taylor (1995) argued that community
participation represents a highly romanti-cized
view of communal responsiveness and
cohesion, and furthermore, highlighted the
contradiction inherent in Murphy’s (1985)
model, whereby local residents are invited
to participate in the decision-making proc-ess
whilst simultaneously being expected to
become part of the product. Joppe (1997)
notes that in contrast to traditional notions
of ‘community economic development’,
which are locally-driven and embrace areas
such as the social economy, ‘community
tourism development’ tends to be top-down
and driven by governments. Both Hall
(1994) and Joppe (1997) have pointed out
that a major weakness of prescriptive
community tourism planning models is due
to the fact that they tend to be based on a
pluralist conception of power, in which con-flict
is overt and power is distributed rela-tively
evenly, and that furthermore, it is
assumed that consensus can be achieved
via the implementation of adequate delib-erative
mechanisms (eg. Simmons 1994).
Most, if not all, studies concerned with
community involvement in tourism, recog-nise
the complex and stratified nature of
communities (eg. Ryan and Montgomery
1994), however, they still do not go far
enough in terms of theorizing the nature of
power, conflict, development and political
agency in the context of tourism. Indeed,
Hall (2000a: 33) argues that the community
approach may offer little more than a use-ful
starting point for the formulation of
tourism policies. While there may be con-ceptual
differences with regard to the no-tion
of community participation in tourism,
it still holds sway as a mobilising concept
(Hall and Richards 2000).
16 Place and power in tourism development
Moreover it coalesces the current enthu-siasm
for notions such as ‘social capital’
within institutions promoting development
assistance in areas such as the former
Communist countries (Schuurman 2000:
18-19). Arguably, this reflects the North
American bias in much of the literature, in
so far as most of the case studies concern
communities within the industrialised capi-talist
societies in which socioeconomic divi-sions
between local residents, investors and
state bureaucracies are perhaps not as sig-nificant
as they are where tourism devel-opment
in more peripheral and/or economi-cally
deprived regions is concerned.
Indeed, the notions of local governance
and community-based decision-making
expressed in such models, tend to reflect
the experiences of capitalist development in
all but a few of the world’s industrial-capitalist
‘democracies’, whilst ignoring the
particular circumstances in which capital-ism
and political institutions have emerged
in other parts of the world. It is therefore
relevant that we theorize the boundaries of
place prior to an examination of how tour-ism
shapes the economy, society and politi-cal
structure of destination communities.
Conceptualising the Boundaries of
Place
Giddens (1991) argues that sociology
has been too preoccupied with bounded
notions of society, when in fact the proc-esses
of modernization linked to the his-torical
evolution of capitalism by their very
nature serve to undermine national
boundaries, a point famously noted early on
by Marx and Engels in The Communist
Manifesto. Indeed, static and bounded no-tions
of community were clearly reflected in
a number of field studies carried out in the
Mediterranean during the 1950s and 1960s
(Boissevain 1979: 82). In their attempt to
delineate the values which served to create
consensus and reproduce the boundaries of
community, they attributed a universal set
of values (principally, the ‘honour’ and
‘shame’ complex) across a variety of Medi-terranean
social systems which set them
apart from other European societies (God-dard
et al. 1996: 7).
By the 1970s onwards these accounts of
Mediterranean social structure began to be
criticised for their preoccupation with
small-scale, face-to-face (predominantly
rural) societies, viewed in isolation from
wider social processes (Boissevain 1975;
1979; Davis 1977; Gilmore 1982). At a time
when much of southern Europe was under-going
dramatic social, economic and politi-cal
transformations, uprooting agrarian
populations, fuelling urban growth and the
intensification of linkages to global mar-kets,
not to mention the expansion of tour-ism,
it was evident that the isolated ‘com-munity’
study was more a reflection of the
anthropological imagination than it was an
accurate rendering of the socioeconomic
reality of this region. In a particularly
stinging attack, Llobera argues that part
of this weakness stems from the fact that
Mediterranean anthropology is the creation
of the Anglo-Saxon anthropological imagi-nation,
underpinned by their monopoly of
the “knowledge-product” (1986: 30).
In his recent critical exploration of the
concept of ‘society’, Urry (2000:11) points
out that the concept of society reflects a
particular historical moment between 1700-
1900 which witnessed the emergence of
industrial capitalism in western Europe
and North America, in which societies be-came
synonymous with “a nation-state,
with clear territorial and citizenship
boundaries and a system of governance
over its particular citizens”. Increasingly,
he argues, the emergence of manifold
global flows and networks problematises
the raw material of sociological inquiry,
that is, the ontological status of society
itself. Indeed, Wood’s (2000) examination
of the effects of economic restructuring in
the global cruise line industry, demon-strates
the growth of transnational capital
and its capacity to distance itself from the
constraints of geography and state power.
The implications of this claim are signifi-cant,
not only for sociological inquiry into
the nature of tourism and how it interacts
with particular communities, but for the
inhabitants of different localities and the
need to locate oneself in relation to the
‘fixed’ coordinates of ‘community’, as well as
the policy-makers, who attempt to monitor,
regulate and control the numerous net-works
and mobilities that contest immuta-ble
boundaries of, for example, the ‘nation’.
With particular regard to the relation-
Raoul Bianchi 17
ship between tourism and local cultures,
Picard claims that “tourism cannot be con-ceived
of outside culture at all: it is bound
up in an ongoing process of cultural inven-tion”
(1995: 47). The implications of this
presupposition are clear; we need to con-struct
a more nuanced understanding of
the complex relations between tourism,
cultures, capital and the state. The trans-formation
of societies which become incor-porated
into circuits of tourism develop-ment
have thus lead to the dissolution of
clear and immutable boundaries between
the very ‘ethnicities’ that they originally
gave rise to, that is, the ‘tourist’ and the
‘resident’ (cf. Jafari 1984).
Arguably, this distinction has always
been more imagined than real, and never
as marked as it was suggested in some of
the earlier literature on the impacts of
tourism (e.g. Mathieson and Wall 1982).
Nevertheless, as the forces of globalisation
intensify, tourism destinations, much like
‘world cities’ (Sassen 1991), can perhaps be
envisaged as a nexus, situated at the inter-face
of a transnational web of flows in
which tourists, workers, migrants, and
residents intersect (King 1995). The growth
of regional economic unions (e.g. Asia-
Pacific Economic Cooperation, EU,
NAFTA), in order to facilitate the mobility
of capital (and tourists) across political
boundaries, is testament to the growing
importance of transnational relations (see
Hall 2000b). If the claims of Castells
(1996) and Urry (2000) are to be believed
then the question ‘who are the locals’?, and
‘to whom should strategies of community
involvement respond?’, are increasingly
problematic in a world defined by transna-tional
mobilities configured by networks
rather than nations and communities with
clearly delineated boundaries. Tourism
thus both epitomises as well as reproduces
the multi-layered mobilities which under-mine
mutually reinforcing hierarchies of
territory, culture and the structures of
power within the nation-state.
The identity of place can perhaps also be
envisaged as a series of over-lapping “imag-ined
worlds” or cultural landscapes which
are experienced and constituted by human
agency (Appadurai 1990). This is reflected
in the work of Waldren (1996), who traces
the shifting contours of insider/outside
identities in the touristic village of Deia in
Mallorca. Here, the categories of host and
guest, or rather, insider and outsider, are
conceptualised in relation to the symbolic
practices through which the different
members of the village identify themselves
in relation to each other, as well as distinct
groups of outsiders. Her analysis reflects
that of Harrison (1999), who deploys the
concept of ‘cultural boundaries’ in order to
examine the manner in which members of
particular communities construct different
representations of boundedness in opposi-tion
to either, the ‘pollution’ of putative
notions of indigenous culture, or its ‘appro-priation’
by outsiders.
Similarly, Fees (1996) demonstrates
how the boundaries of local identity change
over time, as different groups of residents
seek to appropriate and regulate the means
of authentification. Hollinshead (1998), is
also a forceful exponent of the view that
tourism exemplifies the discontinuous na-ture
of boundaries between peoples, cul-tures
and ethnic identities. In this respect,
in so far as it is argued that tourism pro-motes
the invention, reinvention and dein-vention
of difference, tourism highlights
transitional spaces within cultural prac-tices
rather than transnational relations
between classes.
Yet at the same time it is vital that we
do not lose sight of the material economic
and political circumstances which condition
the struggle over the control of resources
by the different interest groups brought
together in the context of tourism develop-ment.
Arguably, the work of anthropolo-gists
on the ground in a number of different
contexts, has made a significant contribu-tion
to our understanding of the differenti-ated
and uneven responses to tourism
within specific localities (Boissevain 1996).
Culture rather than being seen as a
static or organic entity, can be considered
in terms of “a configuration of resources”
which are appropriated, on the one hand,
by political elites in order to reinforce a
particular ideological construction of his-tory/
heritage - as evidenced in the Balkans
(Allcock 1995), or alternatively, as a tool of
resistance and appropriation of the forms of
cultural representation sanctioned by state
agency for tourism - as demonstrated by
the complex tapestry of responses to tour-
18 Place and power in tourism development
ism in the collection of papers edited by
Picard and Wood (1997).
Places are therefore not congruent with
a specific geographical location, but are
“constructed out of a particular constella-tion
of social relations, meeting and weav-ing
together at a particular locus” (Massey
1991: 28). However, as Bauman (1998) and
Stephenson (1997) remind us, the contours
of global mobility are highly stratified. The
liberating forces of globalisation for some
(diplomats, business executives, and aca-demics
who are not persecuted by their
domestic political regimes) are mirrored in
the increasing constraints of space for the
migrant worker, refugee and different non-
White communities. Moreover the contours
of global mobility are accentuated by the
transnationalisation of capital, which has
seen power become increasingly discon-nected
from obligations (Bauman 1998: 9).
Broadly in accordance with this view, Cas-tells
(1996) offers a succinct definition of
place as a space of lived experiences, in
contrast to the “space of flows” which con-stitutes
a seamless web of inter-connected
spaces (international airports, hotels. ex-ecutive
lounges) and telecommunications
networks:
A place is a locale whose form, function and
meaning are self-contained within the
boundaries of physical contiguity. (Castells
1996: 423)
However, the conception of place as a
refuge from the de-stabilising and hege-monic
forces of global capital, is in danger
of reducing it to an “oppositional category”
and which, moreover, misinterprets its
contradictory and hybrid characteristics
(Oakes 1998: 62). Indeed, Castells (1996)
is in danger of doing just that, and more-over
provides little analysis of the inter-connections
between the different “spaces”
and indeed how the agency of geographi-cally
distant actors may be directly impli-cated
in the transformation of place. This
is not to discard entirely the influence of
geography on the constitution of relatively
place-bound communities, but rather that
we must recognise that individual localit-ites
are increasingly inter-connected at
different geographical scales via “multiple
external connections” (Wolf 1982: 387), not
least due to the increasingly transnational
organisation of the relations of production
(Massey 1995: 66).
Thus, geographically dispersed social
groups are bound together in asymmetrical
relations of power via a series of different
informational, cultural, economic and po-litical
flows and networks, defined by
Massey as “power geometries” (1993).
Where tourism development in a particular
locality is concerned, the different actors
involved will be endowed with unequal
capacities to exploit the economic opportu-nities
which present themselves, depending
upon their ability to conceive, appropriate,
regulate and control the means of tourist
production.
Given that tourism embraces a number
of heterogeneous process often character-ised
by a combination of different modes of
production (cf. van der Werff 1980), a proc-essual
and non-bounded analysis of place is
central to the examination of the material
forces of economic change and political
agency which underpin these social align-ments,
can provide a more nuanced insight
into the relationship between tourism,
power and socio-spatial transformations.
In this respect it is important to consider
some of the specific aspects of tourism as a
commodity form, in particular the manner
in which it appropriates people, places and
pasts in the process of creating value.
Tourism Development and the Rela-tions
of Consumption
Harvey’s assertion that industrializa-tion,
which once produced urban forms, is
now being produced by them (cited in Soja
1989:76), is a process also reflected in the
logic of touristification which appropriates
urban, as well as natural and cultural
forms, as objects of consumption sui
generis. The production and consumption
of tourism experiences appropriates space
and transforms landscapes, cultures and
economies in a manner which can be dis-tinguished
from agrarian, industrial and
other modes of capitalist development.
First of all, tourism does not derive its end
‘product’ through the extraction of raw
materials from the earth in order to then be
processed or manufactured (ie. land as the
‘subject’ of labour), or invest labour and
capital in order to cultivate produce on the
land (land as ‘object’ of labour).
Raoul Bianchi 19
Rather, the most characteristic feature
of tourism is that it extends production into
areas with no “intrinsic production poten-tial”
(Husbands 1981: 50); its raw materi-als
thus embody distinctive and hybrid
combinations of socio-cultural, natural and
physical features (which more often than
not bear the imprint of human interven-tion),
and processes of societal develop-ment
in the receiving society itself. His-torical
landscapes, natural and cultural
monuments and people themselves become
incorporated into the “tourist gaze” (Urry
1990), although the presence of capitalist
commodity relations varies considerably
within particular touristic landscapes.
Second, the consumption of the specific
features of different touristic sites requires
the movement of the tourist/consumer to
the ‘product’ itself thereby converting space
into the object of consumption rather than
merely production (see Husbands 1981:
45). The landscape is altered for touristic
purposes only in so far as the provision of
built infrastructure for accommodation and
ancillary facilities are required in order to
facilitate the consumption of visual attrac-tions
or participation in recreational ac-tivities
(eg. coastal tourism). The physical
alteration or restructuring of space for the
purpose of commoditizing touristic places
tends to occur only in the case of contrived
attractions (eg. theme parks) which have
little or no organic relationship to the land-scape
in which they are situated (cf. Cohen
1994). In this respect tourism is not as
physically constrained by geographic and
environmental features of the landscape,
beyond of course the importance of the cli-mate,
as for example agriculture would be.
For this reason tourism is often found in
more remote and inaccessible areas of out-standing
natural beauty and/or cultural
exoticism (as defined by the Eurocentric
mindset). Although non-European cultures
have also been fascinated by the ‘exotic’ (eg.
‘pre-modern’ cultures who inhabit the mar-gins
of Asian capitalism) or representations
of a mythologised past, as for example
demonstrated by the proliferation of folk
museums in many parts of Asia (cf. Oakes
1998), the economic power of the Pacific
Rim, for example, has not been accompa-nied
by global cultural hegemony on the
unprecedented scale achieved by the domi-nant
Western powers (Said 1993).
Third, a significant component of tour-ism
constitutes the social interaction of
visitors and locals, and as such is depend-ent
upon the hospitality of ‘hosts’, and its
commercialisation, in order to create an
enjoyable experience. Thus the training
and expertise required by tourism varies
according to specific socio-cultural contexts
and degree of similarity of destination ar-eas
with the cultural characteristics of the
tourists themselves (Burns 1993). Extend-ing
this logic further it becomes apparent
that there is a further dimension to tourism
production than with other forms of eco-nomic
activity. Adapting Wright’s (1993)
distinction between ‘exploitative economic
oppression’ (where exploiters need the
exploited, principally for their labour-power)
and ‘non-exploitative economic op-pression’
(where exploiters do not require
the labour or efforts of the exploited for
their material well-being, but rather for
their land) it becomes clear that tourism
may give rise to a third category of ex-ploitative
relations, exploitative symbolic
oppression. The self-exploitation of one’s
own culture (‘being-themselves-for others’)
predominates where few economic alterna-tives
prevail, as evidenced by the incorpo-ration
of Maasai warriors into an “economy
of performance” for tourists in East Africa,
de-politicizing the participants in the proc-ess
(cf. Bruner 1995).
As in any predominantly capitalistic
system of production, exploitative economic
relations are prevalent (but not necessarily
predominant) throughout the tourism pro-ductive
system in the institutions of service
provision (cf. Britton 1991). However what
is significant and unique is the degree to
which the material well-being of tourism
often thrives upon the exploitation of liv-ing
human communities and cultures for
their image (MacCannell 1976, 1992).
Where national ancestries and ethnic iden-tities
are on view for tourist consumption,
the local inhabitants may provide an im-portant
component of the destination’s im-age,
as do for example the Sami peoples in
northern Finland (Saarinen 1998). In this
regard some tourists are interested in liv-ing
communities not only for their recrea-tional
value, but as signs of themselves,
thereby transforming people, places and
20 Place and power in tourism development
cultures into objects sui generis (Culler
1981: 127). Inhabitants may not even play
a part in the provision of tourism services
but may be coopted into the tourist gaze
and “condemned to struggle endlessly to be
just like its image, pure surface” (MacCan-nell
1992: 287).
Residents and workers of tourist desti-nation
areas are located at the interface
between production and consumption and
are therefore simultaneously producers or
providers of services, as well as being
woven into the consumerist fantasies and
expectations of tourists (Britton 1991: 458).
Uniquely, tourism serves to implode the
rigid distinction between work and play by
situating elements of the tourism workforce
within a performative setting that embod-ies
the cultural ambience of the tourism
place-product that is consumed (Crang
1997). Yet the continuously shifting nature
of cultural production within tourism also
challenges the ability of the state and capi-tal
to localise and reify those who happen
to be caught in the tourist gaze. This is
demonstrated by the creative engagement
of villagers in the province of Guizhou in
China, with the discourses of tourism pro-moted
by the state (in alliance with capi-tal),
in order to project alternative local
identities through tourism (Oakes 1998).
Although even Oakes (1997: 67) is forced to
admit that the opportunities for fair eco-nomic
compensation from tourism and par-ticipation
in wider decision-making proc-esses
are more limited.
Yet the work of Selwyn (1996) and oth-ers
(Lanfant et al. 1995, Picard and Wood
1997; Oakes 1998) demonstrate that the
tapestry of resistance to the capitalist
commodifiaction of culture in the context of
tourism is far more complex than Britton
(1991) and others suggests. For example,
Oakes (1998: 10) argues, local villagers in
the province of Guizhou (China), partici-pate
in “elaborate rituals of consumption”
for tourists, as a means of confronting and
negotiating the modernizing impulses of
tourism which are ‘imposed’ by the state
within the context of expanding commodity
capitalist relations. Tourism thus ex-presses
the manifold contradictions which
are manifest in the processes of globaliza-tion
which have intensified the inter-connections
between different parts of the
globe, creating a context within which dif-ferent
versions of, or rather, paths to mod-ernity
or negotiated.
The fact that the commodification of cul-tures
precipitated by tourism may be a
disempowering experience in some circum-stances
should not overlook instances
where marginal cultures have appropriated
tourism as a political instrument in the
constitution of their identity, as for exam-ple
demonstrated by the Ainu in Japan (cf.
Friedman 1990). Nevertheless, we should
also be wary of slipping into the cultural
relativism which celebrates difference at
the expense of the analysis of the systemic
inequalities which are reproduced in the
context of tourism. There is thus perhaps
an even stronger case than before, to de-velop
a rigorous theoretical understanding
of the systemic sources of economic, politi-cal
and ideological power which continue to
exclude and marginalise many people from
the still unrealised potential of tourism as
a force for development.
The Relations of Tourism Production
Few would disagree with the assertion
that the examination of the factors which
condition the emergence of tourism in a
given locality needs to remain close to the
empirical data yet be sensitive to wider
structures of power (Selwyn 1996: 29). At
times however it appears that postmodern-ist
critiques of development thinking have
contributed to a great deal of theoretical
pessimism and a retreat into methodologi-cal
individualism and middle-way descrip-tive-
heuristic notions such as social capital
and civil society (Schuurman 2000).
Rather than reject any possibility of expla-nation
which encompasses an holistic view
of tourism, we must therefore pay greater
attention to the role and position of the
“specificities” [of] “localized formations”
within “totalizing theorizations” (Makdisi
et al. 1996: 10-11). One way forward per-haps,
is to consider what Urry (1995: 69-
73), paraphrasing Massey (1995), refers to
as the contingent relations of capitalist
production, that is, the manner in which
the necessary or broader forces of capital-ist
development are manifest in locally and
culturally distinct patterns of touristifica-tion.
Raoul Bianchi 21
Unsurprisingly, it has been commonly
asserted that tourism development should
be examined in relation to capitalist devel-opment
as a whole, and not as a series of
isolated transactions within the context of
a specific community (Britton 1991; Hall
1994). However, some attempt needs to be
made in order to link together our under-standing
of the larger-scale processes of
tourism investment and development, with
the different strategies of adaptation and
response to tourism in a particular locality,
whilst recognising the influence of struc-tural
and institutional constraints which
set the conditions for the possible scope of
social interaction dut do not determine its
specific nature or for that matter, the out-come
(cf Kiely 1995). Although contempo-rary
forms of global tourism development
are underscored by the dynamic of capital
accumulation which drives the global econ-omy
in its broadest sense, it is important to
reocognise that, “the fundamental relations
of capitalism developed historically under
very different conditions” across different
social formations (Massey 1995: 16).
Hence, it must be recognised that tourism
is geographically differentiated according to
the local distinctiveness of capitalist devel-opment,
and that furthermore a capitalism-centred
view of the world may ignore dif-ferent
configurations of tourism production
which exist at different scales of analysis
(Milne 1998: 41).
Processes of tourism development are
thus challenged and appropriated at differ-ent
levels of society by overlapping net-works
of social action, in which individuals
and groups are guided by a variety of stra-tegic
orientations. Nevertheless, although
actors may be able to exercise a degree of
autonomy with regard to their responses to
development processes, social agency oc-curs
within structural circumstances which
are not of their own making (Marx 1977:
173). It is conditioned by the unequal rela-tionship
to different modes of surplus ap-propriation
and political domination within
any given social formation, which cannot be
reduced to the economic structure alone (cf.
Mouzelis 1995: 16). In this regard it is
possible to adopt a less reductionist inter-pretation
of power relations:
the capacity of social agents, agencies and
institutions to maintain and transform
their environment, social or physical. It is
about the resources that underpin this ca-pacity
and about the forces that shape and
influence its exercise (Held 1994: 311).
To describe the social and economic
changes associated with tourism develop-ment
in terms of a linear progression
through a sequence of development stages
(Butler 1980), ignores the multiplicity of
linkages and relations of interdependence
which bind a particular locality to wider
levels of society and productive activity,
and which help shape local patterns of de-velopment
(Massey 1993: 145). A more
nuanced approach to analysis is needed in
order to transcend the oppositional distinc-tion
between the local and the global in
order to challenge the often top down de-terminations
inherent within many analy-ses
of tourism development (cf. Britton
1991). An examination of the distinctive
processes of local adaptation and response
to tourism, therefore needs to be under-stood
in the context of a locality’s historical
connections to wider socio-economic con-texts:
A society, even a village, has its own struc-ture
and history, and this must be as much
part of the analysis as its relations with the
larger context within which it operates.
(Ortner 1984: 143)
The distinction between studies of a
macro-structural nature and those, usually,
anthopological investigations of micro-level
responses to tourism raises an interesting
conceptual issue regarding the relationship
between tourism, place and power. This is
particularly relevant with regard to the
calls for empowering local communities as
a means of realising the sustainable devel-opment
of tourism development (cf. Hall
and Richards 2000). There is still a ten-dency
to fall back on residual definitions of
‘community’ in which the notions of scale
and power are conflated, thus giving rise
to a misleading distinction between macro-structures,
equated with large-scale insti-tutions
(e.g. transnational corporations,
international financial/political agencies)
and micro-interactions, for example, rou-tine
encounters between tourists and resi-dents.
If, however, societies are conceptualised
as “hierarchized social wholes” in which
institutional structures and interactions
22 Place and power in tourism development
can occur at different scales of analysis (see
Mouzelis 1995: 24-27), a clearer picture
can emerge regarding the relationships and
struggles between different groups of col-lective
actors to articulate and promote
particular versions of tourism development
at different levels. Thus, for example, face-to-
face interactions can occur at macro-institutional
levels (e.g. a meeting of fi-nance/
tourism ministers in the EU etc..),
which have equally significant implications
for the outcome of tourism development in
a specific locality as do the wider ownership
structures of transnational tourism enter-prises
(cf. Britton 1991).
A clear example of micro-interactions at
a macro-level is demonstrated by the suc-cessful
attempt by the president of the
World Travel and Tourism Council, a pow-erful
lobbying organisation for corporate
tourism interests, to scrap proposals for an
airline transportation tax at a 1997 meet-ing
in the United Nations (Honey 1999: 33).
Moreover, institutional structures or rules
may emerge at a micro-level, as evidenced
by the role of the Anafiot’s Migrant Asso-ciation
in the promotion of tourism devel-opment
on the Greek island of Anafi
(Kenna 1993: 88-89), and in Michaud’s
(1997) discussion of the importance of local
cultural norms in the regulation of entre-preneurial
agency amongst different gen-erations
of Hmong hill tribes in Thailand.
The spatial distribution of tourism de-velopment
and the social organisation of its
production in a particular locality are thus
the result of multiple determinations and
flows of people, capital and cultures, which
have historically transformed the nature
and intensity of a locality’s linkages to the
wider political economy. There is a need
therefore to move away from the often over-generalized
nature of the political economy
of tourism which often places tourism des-tinations
at the mercy of transnational
capital, as well as construct analyses which
are sensitive to the specific features of lo-cal/
regional/national of capitalist forma-tions,
in relation to the nature of the touris-tic
modes of development which take root
in particular areas. Until very recently, a
neglected yet useful way of bridging the
gap between macro and micro theorising in
tourism, is through the examination of the
social nature of tourism entrepreneurship.
Social Configurations of Tourism En-trepreneurship
Until recently, the investigation of the
social composition and dynamics of the
local entrepreneurial classes in the tourism
development processes of specific localities,
has received scant attention in the litera-ture
(Shaw and Williams 1998). Earlier
diffusionist studies of tourism development
alluded to the role of local entrepreneurs
during the initial stages of tourism devel-opment
(Noronha 1979; Butler 1980), or
else viewed as comprador elites complict in
the metropolitan exploitation of third world
tourism destinations (Britton 1982). Yet de
Kadt (1979: 47-49) drew attention to the
fact that tourism may precipitate the
emergence of a new entreprenerial middle-class,
while over a decade before Nuñez
(1963) noted that tourism paved the way
for the “culturally marginal” members of
poorer destination areas to exploit the
commercial opportunities created by tour-ism.
More recently, a number of anthropo-logical
studies have examined the ethnic,
social and gender dimensions of entrepre-neurioal
startification in various different
geograghical contexts (Din 1991; van den
Berghe 1992; Michaud 1991, 1997; Galaní-
Moutáfi 1993; Scott 1997).
A number of studies of tourism entre-preneurship
and local economic develop-ment
have also framed their analyses us-ing
the well known formal-informal sector
model (Wahnschafft 1982; Kermath and
Thomas). Most tend to agree that informal
sector, or simply, small-scale enterprises
(Rodenburg 1980) are better able to estab-lish
stronger linkages with local suppliers
than larger (often foreign-owned) bureau-cratic
enterprises, and thus enable indige-nous
entrepreneurs to benefit more from
tourism (Echtner 1995; Brohman 1996).
However, in some cases, the informal-formal
sector model may inhibit a more
nuanced understanding of the manifold
socioeconomic relationships which encom-pass
both sectors (Dahles 1997). Further-more,
the linear conception of tourism en-trepreneurship,
as depicted in the work of
Oppermann (1993), who argues that the
tourism informal sector performs a ‘discov-ery
function’, may be correct to suggest
that the initial flourishing of tourism en-
Raoul Bianchi 23
terprise is ‘organic’ (Cohen 1979), but ne-glects
to consider the substantive nature of
power relations which gives rise to uneven
ethnic, social and gender configurations of
entrepreneurship. Moreover, the dynamics
of local entrepreneurship are not consid-ered
in relation to the hierarchical nature
of social relations, and the ability of par-ticular
groups of entrepreneurs to concieve
of and effect change at different socio-geographic
scales of interaction.
Britton (1987) has also argued that scale
and ownership are meaningless terms in
the absence of a theoretical framework of
analysis. Thus he argues that, ownership
is more than a juridical category but rather
it should be considered as “an economic
relation to the means of organization of an
enterprise and the distribution-appropriation
of surplus generated by the
enterprise” (1987: 183). Tourism enter-prises
which are similar in size and type,
may vary significantly according to local
cultural norms, the organization of work
and what Massey refers to as their, “orien-tation
to production and investment oppor-tunities”
(1995: 27). This therefore has
important implications for our understand-ing
of how patterns of entrepreneurship are
linked to the distribution of power in a spe-cific
locality. Moreover there are significant
degrees of differentiation within what are
nominally referred to as ‘family’ or informal
sector enterprises, a factor ignored by many
studies of local level tourism development.
In this respect the weakness of dualist
analyses of the formal and informal sector
lies in the fact that it categorises family-run
firms entirely within the informal sec-tor.
Family enterprises may range from
single bars or restaurants to larger-scale
units of production characterised by a
greater degree of linkages to distinct types
of capital (equity, credit, public subsidies
etc.), and sources of accumulation (eg.
property speculation).
The shortcomings of Marxist analyses of
the articulation between different modes of
production, have also been highlighted
(Long and Richardson 1978). Although
these approaches offer a richer explanation
of the complex relationships between dif-ferent
forms of production in the context of
dependent capitalism, the Marxist perspec-tive
fails to adequately examine the degree
of internal differentiation within non-capitalist
modes of production, and the
degree to which these processes serve to
reproduce household economies (Long and
Richardson 1978: 186-189). Indeed both
approaches tend to obscure the internal
variations within non-capitalist or non-formal
sectors of the economy, and more
significantly fail to conceptualise the na-ture
of the inter-relationships which cut
across these dualist categories. A particu-lar
household cannot be considered as a
uniform socio-economic entity, and indeed
there may be a variety of strategies of sub-sistence
and accumulation which intersect
within any one particular household, thus
tying its occupants into a diverse web of
social relations at different levels of activity
(Bianchi 1999). Goffee and Scase (1983)
have attempted to develop a conceptual
framework for the examination of the en-trepreneurial
middle-classes in the service
sector, which transcends the shortcomings
of both dualist and/or reductionist Marxist
analyses. In their examination of the en-trepreneurial
middle-class in the service
sector in Britain they differentiate four
sub-categories of entrepreneurs according
to the relative mix of capital and labour
employed in a range of enterprises: self-employed;
small entrepreneurs; owner-controllers;
owner-directors. Indeed, their
argument demonstrates that the entrepre-neurial
middle-class is situated in a series
of “contradictory class locations” (cf. Wright
1993), in so far as they exercise varying
degrees of control over the accumulation
process and the work force, which has sig-nificant
implications for their social mobil-ity.
An investigation of the dynamics of tour-ism
development must therefore consider
the nature and scope of entrepreneurial
agency at different levels of social interac-tion
within the context of the local economy
(micro/meso/macro). Thus the asymmetri-cal
relations of power which condition en-trepreneurial
agency is not only linked to
the ability to mobilise economic and politi-cal
resources, but also to the social nature
of entrepreneurship which mediates the
normative expectations and interests which
prevail in a given geographical and histori-cal
context:
If production is a social process, then the
24 Place and power in tourism development
social nature of capital is of fundamental
importance when it comes to characterising
a particular company. Descriptions based
on apparently objective (because quantita-tive
or formal) measures may completely
miss all the important differences. (Massey
1995: 27)
Deeper conceptual and theoretical in-sight
into the range of local responses to
tourism needs to be conceptualised in rela-tion
to wider historical forces of social
change, as well as the internal differentia-tion
within non-capitalist sectors of the
local tourist economy. Important factors to
consider therefore include: the social com-position
of the entrepreneurial classes, the
organisation and structure of enterprises,
labour relations, the nature and scope of
linkages to wider domains (mediated by
political allegiances, investment patterns,
cultural-educational capital), the degree of
integration/concentration of tourism capital
and perhaps most important of all, the
social nature of entrepreneurial agency
which inter-pellates those class fractions
nominally at the same point in the overall
social relations of production.
Social Relations and Tourism Spaces
Tourism development often gives rise to
geographical distribution of production
which reflects and reproduces a lack of
alternative economic strategies. For exam-ple,
whilst the lack of an industrial base
and raw materials led to many island
economies embracing tourism as a tool of
development (Wilkinson 1989), the very
process of transferring land, labour and
capital into the service sector has further
consolidated the dependence of these re-gions
on tourism, thus making it even more
difficult to diversify into other higher
value-added areas of economic develop-ment.
Although comparative advantage in
terms of cheap and productive labour is not
as significant for the location of touristic
enterprises in a particular locality as it is
for manufacturing industries (Rodríguez
and Portales 1994), it would be simplistic
to assume that the emergence of tourism is
reliant merely on the specificity of a loca-tion’s
unique environmental and cultural
features. This approach reduces geography
to a passive space over which touristic ac-tivities
are distributed according to each
region’s locational attractiveness, in which
regions specialize in their“supply-side com-parative
advantage in tourism” (Bond and
Ladman 1980: 232).
A similar physical determinism is dem-onstrated
in Opperman’s (1993) model of
‘tourist space’ in developing countries,
which elaborates on the spatial diffusion of
formal and informal sector activities in a
social and political vacuum.
Such models merely describe the conse-quences
of the social, economic and political
processes which actively construct different
tourism spaces, at the expense of examin-ing
the societal structures in which they
are rooted. They therefore neglect to con-sider
the distinctive adaptive capacities
and conceptions of space of the different
interest groups incorporated into the devel-opmental
impulses precipitated by tourism.
Hence, the manner in which the owners of
a local or family-run tourist enterprise in a
particular locality relate to landscape or
built environment within a tourism desti-nation,
may contrast with more powerful
cliques of investors who are more inte-grated
into wider structures of power and
capital, and whose interests lie almost ex-clusively
in the exploitation of the commer-cial
touristic potential of the locality. Such
contrasts are highlighted by Peck and Le-pie
(1989: 214), who describe how commer-cial
and social conceptions of beachfront
land became the subject of conflict between
vacation home owners and resident island-ers
in a North Carolina coastal town.
Faced with competition over scarce re-sources,
different groups within particular
localities may unite in opposition to power-ful
interests, which may include locals as
well. Thus it is also important to examine
the factors which structure and condition
intra-community competition over re-sources
in relation to the hierchical nature
of social relations so that the analysis does
not retreat into a residual ‘localism’. Pow-erful
local actors and entrepreneurial coali-tions
may be able to exercise influence over
planning and investment decisions at meso
or even macro levels, which will have con-crete
implications for the appropriation of
community resources (cf. Molotch 1976:
311-312).
Raoul Bianchi 25
Residents or investors who are dispro-portionately
endowed with land-based as-sets
that begin to accrue monetary value
within the symbolic economy o tourism,
may lobby local government more aggres-sively
for mobile state capital as well as
social overhead capital (e.g. access roads,
pavements etc.) which will enable them to
exploit this capital more effectively. This
was evidenced in the town of Rethemnos in
Crete, where proposals for the promotion of
architectural heritage in the Old Town,
precipitated moves by the absentee land-lord
class to capitalise on the commercial
potential of its symbolic-cultural assets
(Herzfeld 1991, cited in Oakes 1998: 74-77).
However their commercial interests may
not only conflict (or compete) with the
commercial interests of other local entre-preneurs
whose economic and political
capital is less significant at these levels,
but it may also lead to decisions which
transform the spatial patterns of develop-ment
thereby affecting long-standing socio-cultural
practices related to the civic use of
space. This may occur via the sale of
beachfront property to private developers
thus restricting community access (Peck
and Lepie 1989), or the conversion of his-torically
symbolic buildings or gathering
places into commercial use (Cockburn and
Orbasli 1997), by governments or coalitions
of private interests, who often attempt to
exploit historic resources in a different
manner (Odermatt 1996).
The geographical diffusion of tourism
thus bears the imprint of complex and hi-erarchical
relations of production and con-sumption.
Thus it is also relevant to con-sider
manner in which social and economic
processes both reflect and reproduce the
geographical configurations of touristic
space and the varied modalities of human
agency within it. Space, as Lefebvre (1976)
reminds us, “has been shaped and moulded
from historical and natural elements, but
this has been a political process. It also
bears the imprint of different social prac-tices
and distinctive conceptions of time,
particularly where the temporal tourist
economy comes into contact with the the
everyday lived spaces of the local resident
communities. It is a product literally filled
with ideologies” (cited in Soja 1989: 80).
This does not merely refer to the fact that it
is an arena in which political conflict takes
place, but rather that space mediates the
different forms of social interaction which
occurs within it (Massey 1995: 50-51).
Hence, the spatial configuration of tourism
destination areas should be viewed in the
context of the uneven geographical distri-bution
of the relations of production and
the struggle to control or gain access to
land, territory and resources (cf. Lanfant
1995: 6). The link between configurations of
space and social interaction becomes ap-parent
in the contrasting traditions of ur-banism
in northern and southern Europe,
in which civic life flourished in the densely-built
urban cores of Mediterranean cities in
contrast to the more segregated
(post)industrial cities of northern Europe
(cf. Leontidou 1998). Moreover, the strong
linkages between tourism and land specu-lation
in southern Europe reflects and re-produces
the distinctive features of the
uneven development of capitalism (and
social structures) under which regional
bourgeoisies accumulated wealth without
production (Sapelli 1995: 67).
In his analysis of the emergence of the
Saariselkä tourism in region in Finnish
Lapland, Saarinen (1998) illustrates the
manner in which tourism landscapes reflect
the spatialization of historically-constructed
representations through which
hegemonic discourses define the identity of
a tourism destination. In this case he dem-onstrates
how the historical agency of the
Finnish state, external capital and patterns
of consumption have institutionalized a
specific discourse of region which has mar-ginalized
local Sami culture in the process
of converting the landscape into an aes-theticized
‘wilderness’. It is therefore im-portant
to conceptualise the transforma-tion
of place into destinations in accordance
with the manner in which different social
social groups and classes (e.g. neighbour-hood
coalitions, social classes, ethnic
groups, political alliances, different fac-tions
of capitalist investors), ascribe value
and meaning to the landscape in the con-text
of development. Thus, the construc-tion
of heritage has a socio-spatial as well
as an ideological dimension, as demon-strated
by the ideological battles embedded
within the reconstruction of tourist sites
and the borders of the ‘nation’ itself, in the
26 Place and power in tourism development
Balkans (Allcock 1995).
The declaration and promotion of World
Heritage Sites is a particular case in point,
whereby local attachment to historical
places, monuments and landscapes may
come into conflict with the policy goals of
national and international conservationist
institutions as well as the consumerist ac-tivities
of tourists (e.g. Evans 1999).
There are also parallels between proc-esses
of gentrification, urban renewal and
tourism, which may not only emerge from a
similar combination of socio-economic
forces, but are often closely linked proc-esses
in the context of urban regeneration
projects and attempts to ‘re-image’ cities for
tourism (Beauregard 1986). The develop-ment
and promotion of new inner city ur-ban
leisure and tourism spaces became
seen as one of the principal mechanisms of
socioeconomic regeneration in run-down
inner-city areas in large Western cities.
However, these processes must also be un-derstood
in the context of the globalisation
of capital and the neo-liberal restructuring
of the state, which arguably, has led to
intensified territorial competition between
cities, regions and states for investment
capital (Britton 1991; Hall 1994: 155-167).
Not only have hotels, marinas and other
leisure-related properties become distinct
segments of the property market, but the
increasing significance of symbolic and
cultural capital in relation to the valoriza-tion
of space, has converted ‘places’ into
commodity forms in their own right (Brit-ton
1991; Zukin 1995). However, the state
also plays an important role in determining
the precise nature and scope of private in-tervention
in tourism (Wood 1984: 363).
The urban reconfiguration of Singapore’s
historic China Town district reflects the
disproportionate ability of a powerful cen-tralised
state, in alliance with capital, to
regulate and define an ethnic and cultural
landscape for tourism, in which local citi-zens
are relatively disempowered (Leong
1997). Less powerful entrepreneurs, work-ers
and residents who disproportionately
consume the use values of space in which
tourism exerts its presence, are thus less
able to appropriate space in their own in-terests,
and are only able to react to
changes in the dominant mode of produc-tion
and adapt their strategies of economic
survival accordingly (Harvey 1982).
The spatial configurations of tourism
thus embody the intense competition over
both the meanings and values of space
which are conditioned by the prevailing
modes of accumulation and structures of
power. In order to develop a better under-standing
of the (re)configuration of space in
tourism, it is necessary to consider the dia-lectical
relationship between the hierarchi-cally
organised social actors and their dif-ferential
conceptions of space witihin the
context of tourism and development proc-esses.
Prospects for a Sociology of Tourism
Development
This brief review has sought to elucidate
upon the some of the emergent fields of
tourism development research and to sug-gest
a conceptual framework for a more
nuanced analysis of the different levels of
agency which condition the dynamics of
tourism development within specific his-torical
and geographical contexts. It is
argued that the ability of the different in-terest
groups and collective actors to con-trol
and influence the outcomes of tourism
development nneds to be examined in rela-tion
to their location within the hierachical
structure of social relations through which
they articulate with wider social systems.
Drawing on Mouzelis’s (1995) conceptuali-zation
of hierarchized social wholes, it is
argued that tourism development processes
can be viewed in the context of the mani-fold
linkages which connect different actors
to different types of capital, forms of gov-ernance
and strategic orientations at dif-ferent
institutional levels.
One such application is in the growing
field of research dealing with the social
configurations of tourism entrepreneurship,
which considers the differential capacities
of distinct groups of entrepreneurs to mobi-lise
cultural, economic and political capital
in the pursuit of their interests.
Moreover, it has been shown that spe-cific
that tourism destination areas can be
conceptualised as spaces of production and
consumption, in which different interest
groups contest the appropriation and use of
space, in accordance with arange of dis-tinctive
values and interests. Tourism
Raoul Bianchi 27
spaces, therefore, reflect the contest over
the meaning and ‘appropriate’ use to which
particular places should be devoted, giving
rise to distinctive structures of production
and patterns of consumption in different
localities. These are institutionalized at
the different levels in accordance with the
uneven spatial diffusion of capital and stra-tegic
orientations of state agency, which
seek to define the ‘authenticity’ of particu-lar
touristic locales. Yet these are not im-mutable
structures imposed from above but
are contested and shaped by social actors
situated in a complex hierarchy of articula-tions
which shape peoples’ capacity to in-tervene
in their environments. Notwith-standing
the considerable expansion in the
scope of market relations on a global scale,
tourism is embedded within diverse capi-talist
formations and shaped by a variety of
state agency, ranging from the market-oriented
state of the Anglo-American vari-ety
to the more interventionist approach of
several continental European governments
and East Asia.
Thus, the sociology of tourism develop-ment
needs to once again situate itself at
the heart of current debates regarding the
nature of power, processes of globalisation
and the configuration of communities and
new economic spaces in tourism. There
have been many important insights gained
from the many contributions to the analysis
of tourism development, and they should
not be discarded lightly. However, the
primacy of neo-liberal ideological relations
in the current world order and a tendency
towards a sense of pessimism with regard
to the possibilities for change, challenge us
to think about tourism in ways that tran-scend
the existing order of things, but
which are also sensitive to context and his-tory.
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