Many regions around the world were developed as tourist resorts at the end of the 1960’s (Lanfant 1995a: 2). Tourism is already considered a driving force in the world economy, and by the year 2000 it is destined to be a leading world industry (Ibid: 4). International tourism has grown uninterrupted since the 1960’s (Lanfant 1995b:27), and it is no longer possible to ascribe this to an irresistible propensity to travel (Ibid: 28).
It is important to understand leisure in the context of the kind of society we live in. Leisure is a sphere of life supposed to be free and uncommitted (Smith et al 1973: 1). The meaning we ascribe to leisure is rooted in our experiences; it can be freedom from the necessity of work or the pressures of everyday life; it can be an escape or adventure. In this way leisure is freedom from external constraints. If, on the contrary, you feel that life is a whole without distinct borders between obligations and enjoyment, where leisure is a quality that improves your way of living, then your leisure time is experienced as freedom from self-imposed constraints (Ibid: 4-5).
This essay will only consider the meaning of holiday and tourism
for the tourist. This is a very one-sided presentation of tourism since
it undoubtedly has an impact on the holiday resorts and the people living
there (see Allcock et al 1995), but the topic here is the psycho-social
1 meaning holiday 2 and tourism
3 have for the tourist. This essay will therefore
indicate the function or meaning holidays have for the holidaymakers according
to different theories. These maintain that people through their holidays
want to restore their health or identity, escape from the everyday, gain
some status or experience "real life." Later it will be shown how Urry
and his concept " the tourist gaze" discards most of these theories.
Whether holidays were invented in order to exploit the workers will not be discussed here, but most people probably feel that they work better after returning from a successful holiday because they have been able to save up some energy and motivation. Their tired bodies have got the rest and recreation they needed, and they can go on working for a while longer without wearing themselves completely out. It is probably hard to prove whether this rejuvenating effect really exists or if it just is the result of socially conceived meanings. From a functionalist point of view the playful, non-serious behavior allowed in much tourism revitalizes the tourist for his return back to work (Urry 1990b: 11) and the holiday is thought to be necessary to both physical and mental health (Ibid: 4-5).
STATUS
Up till the nineteenth century travel was a marker of status available
only to the elite. With the expansions of railways around 1850, travel
became more of a masstravel. Status distinctions were now drawn between
different classes of travelers. From the beginning of the twentieth century
the status distinctions have been drawn between different modes of transportation
and different places of visit (Urry 1990a: 24).
The consumption of tourist services is social (Urry 1990a: 25), and some holiday destinations are consumed because they convey taste or superior status (Ibid: 30; Urry 1990b: 23). This was typically the case with package tours to the Mediterranean for Norwegians at the end of the 1970’s. If you had not spent your holiday somewhere around the Mediterranean, you had not really had a holiday. As the holiday prices decreased such travels were made available for almost everybody, and its function as a status marker decreased accordingly. Now you must travel somewhere exotic with few tourists to gain any status. This is in accordance with what Urry (1990b: 50) says about a switch to independent travel since package holidays are no longer viewed as smart or fashionable.
ESCAPE
It is not unusual to hear people say "I really need a break now. This
job is so boring, I can’t wait till I go on holiday." It is a profound
matter of modern life to feel that travel and holiday is needed (Urry 1990b:
5). Burkart and Medlik (1981: 57) claim that the prime motivation for tourism
is to escape, to be somewhere else where you can avoid the stress and routine
of everyday life. This can be a result of wanderlust; you want to exchange
the known for the unknown and experience different places, cultures and
people, or it can be due to sunlust; you want to go away to seek better
amenities for a purpose you cannot fulfill at home (Ibid: 58).
This escape motivation is to some extent in accordance with Ryan’s compensation hypothesis; leisure and holidays work as amends for deficient, boring or repetitive work so that the employer can fulfill his or hers fantasy. In order for this hypothesis to be right, though, workers with interesting jobs should seek peace and monotony in their holidays, but this is usually not the case (Ryan 1991: 20). There is more between the dimension boring - interesting than Ryan seems to believe, and what is boring for one might be interesting for another. In this manner people can compensate what ever they miss in their job during their holiday. Someone with a boring repetitive technical job might be very interested in gardening and spend his whole holiday looking at different gardens. The holiday might seem boring and repetitive for someone on the outside, but the holidaymaker gets compensation for what he does not have time to do during the year. This may lead us to Ryan’s spill-over hypothesis; there is a complementary relationship between work and leisure. People with interesting jobs need interesting things to happen in their holiday, while people with boring jobs are satisfied with a passive/package holiday (Ibid: 21). Ryan goes on to say that the post-industrial society is filled with more service work where people work face to face with customers rather than only dealing with machines. In this way people are getting more self-fulfillment out of their jobs. The escape motivations are therefore undermined and people require extension of their mind from their holiday (Ibid: 22).
IDENTITY
Identity 4 and identity problems are fashionable
topics (Klapp 1969: 3). When a society no longer gives reliable reference
points due to symbol disturbance, the society fails to give adequate identity,
and people have to search for new symbols (Ibid: viii).
Some analysts claim that tourists through their displacements are looking for what they feel their own society has lost - nature, purity, wisdom or freedom. The search for identity rekindles the uncorrupted nearly perfect society (Lanfant 1995b: 35). When they go away they encounter, in guise of an ideal identity, the idealized identity which they have in their heads (Ibid: 36).
According to Simmel modern division of labor causes personalities to disappear behind their functions because the jobs only need one aspect of the personality (Lawrence 1976: 164). The new identities in the twentieth century are more likely to be sought in leisure due to decline in employment and alienation from work (Klapp 1969: x). Loss of prestige in the work role and maybe even loss of the possibility to work at all, lead people to search for identity in recreation (Ibid: 184).
This is in accordance with Ryan’s neutralist hypothesis; work is no longer central in people’s lives and there is thus no relation between work and leisure or holiday. The individual has a larger impact on how to spend his/hers time off, and the choice reflects the individual’s needs and inherent psychological drives (Ryan 1991: 23). The growth in the leisure and holiday industry probably proves this, but even though some workers might be more alienated, we also see that some jobs demand more personal involvement from the worker than before. The identity problems experienced by the unemployed also suggest that work still has a central part in people’s lives and identities. People normally introduce themselves with name and occupation, and that is the basic part of their identity. Besides, it is not particularly likely that you will hear people say that they need a holiday to develop their identities.
AUTHENTICITY
One of the outstanding characteristics of modern society, according
to MacCannell, is the search for authenticity (Shenhav-Keller 1995: 143).
Tourists who want more from their holiday than relaxation, can seek authenticity
(Cohen and Taylor 1992: 132) by visiting places where they can rediscover
in themselves identities which they cannot find in their everyday life
places. We can therefor ask if tourism leads to a real life where the tourist
for a short while can meet his or hers "true" self (Lanfant 1995a: 9).
According to MacCannell all tourists embody a quest for authenticity and they are particularly interested in the real life of others (Urry 1990b: 8). These real lives can only be experienced backstage. To avoid an intrusion into people’s private lives and to make a profit of the tourist’s interests, tourist spaces are organized around staged authenticity (Ibid: 9).
Boorstin believes that Western tourists are not able to experience the reality directly but are dependent upon pseudo-events. The mass tourist travels in guided and constructed routs leaving the locals and their authentic environment alone (Urry 1990b: 7). Turner and Ash claim that since the tourists only stay for a short while, the culture has to be superficially presented to them. Their senses or experiences of the real world are thus just as narrow as they were before the holiday. But according to Cohen, tourists will always experience some aspects of the real life until the mass tourist resorts develop a complete tourist infrastructure (Ibid: 8).
Bruner (1995: 226-230) shows that the perception of tourists as alienated
beings who lead such inauthentic lives that they have to go away to seek
authenticity does not apply to his experience with well-educated travelers.
They preferred the group tour since it took the hassle out of traveling;
tourism was part of their life-style. Busy workers living in the cities
may feel alienated from real life, but it is not likely that they expect
a holiday trip with an authentic old train will give them their real life
back. It is just that "back to nature" and "the real life as they lived
it in the good old days" are fashionable topics which are easy to promote.
It is essential to examine the cultural and social patterns in the tourist’s experience to see what is actually reversed. One crucial feature of tourism is therefore, according to Urry, the clear distinction between the familiar and the faraway. It is thus wrong to claim that the search for authenticity is the basis for the organization of tourism (Urry 1990b: 11). The concept of the post-tourist 7 suggests that tourism is a game and that there are no authentic tourist experiences (Ibid: 83).
Since, according to Urry, the postmodern 8 culture is now occupying a more central position in the organization of our society and it has an immediate impact on people (Urry 1990b: 82), it undermines the distinctions between the different cultural forms and make postmodernist societies anti-hierarchical (Ibid: 85) and anti-elitist (Ibid: 130). This would presumably have an impact on the holiday’s function as a status marker since people in postmodern societies refuse to be treated as part of an undifferentiated mass (Ibid: 87). Urry recognizes this and distinguishes between different tourist resorts 9 rather than different tourist groups 10. These distinctive resorts say something about the tourists going there, but they do not attempt to fit every individual into a fixed group.
The tourist gaze might have been different from other forms of tourism earlier, but Urry claims we now live in a post-modernist mass communications society where it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between tourism and other socio-cultural processes (Crick 1995: 206) since the media offers an endless availability of gazes. Therefor a lot more is viewed as ordinary, and less as extraordinary. The post-tourist does not have to leave home to see many of the typical objects of the tourist gaze (Urry 1990b: 100-101). This narrows the gap between holiday and everyday even more (Crick 1995: 218) and naturally reduces the distinctiveness and authenticity of the gaze, but the post-tourist is delighted because of the multitude of choices (Urry 1990b: 100).
"Commerce and culture are indissolubly intertwined in the postmodern" (Urry 1990b: 85) The extensive media offer means that everybody easily can escape the everyday for a short while only by watching television or reading an advertisement. Such daydreaming is important for consumption of both consumer goods and holidays. This fantasy escape is not an individual isolated process, but socially organized through the media (Urry 1990b: 83). This means that the tourist gaze is socially constructed through socially organized production and consumption (Urry 1990b: 95). Since most people have the ability to take such short "holidays" the whole time, they might demand less from their real holiday as long as there is a difference.
Urry (1990b: 13) points out that it is crucial to be aware of that the
contemporary tourist activities are constructed in our imagination through
advertising, media and competition between social groups. We cannot create
a tourist theory once and for all since the society always changes. Former
theories have failed to consider the changing capitalism and consumerism.
While the mass consumption society was characterized by producer dominance,
little differentiation and limited choice, the post-Fordist societies are
consumption dominated with greater differentiation of purchasing patterns
by different market segments due to a reaction of consumers against being
part of a mass (Urry 1990b: 14).
Urry has shown, even though this is not his main concern, that holidays, no matter what form they take, might have a positive impact on the holidaymaker's health. The holiday’s function as a status marker has changed since the postmodern society is anti-elitist with no differentiation between "high" and "low" culture, but the society still differentiates between independent and collective travel. The holiday’s escape function is completely different since most people can escape through massmedia. Urry does not discard the escape function per se. With the multitude of impressions postmodern people encounter every day, they might have to escape the escape society for a while. This may be one explanation for why tourists seek signs of authenticity even if they know it is not really real. Even though Urry rejects that the search for authenticity is the basis for the organization of tourism, this does not eliminate the possibility of its existence.
The most important aspect with Urry’s concept "the tourist gaze" is
that he contrasts people’s everydays and holidays acknowledging that there
are individual differences between people, which means that they should
not be treated as a homogenous group. By considering the situation before
the holiday in contrast to what is accomplished through the holiday, Urry
actually is trying to grasp the social and sociological processes that
form the individual’s need for and use of his holiday. Even though people
see and experience the same holiday, they may have completely different
reasons for going there, depending on their situation before the holiday,
and therefore achieve different gratification.
2) A holiday is an extended period of recreation, away from home, traveling (The concise Oxford dictionary 1990: 562).
3) Tourism is "organized touring, accommodation and entertainment of tourists as industry" where tourist means a "person who makes a tour; who travels for pleasure" (The reader’s digest great encyclopedic dictionary 1971: 933).
4) Identity is the meaning attached to a person by himself or others (Klapp 1969: viii). A person’s identity is described by all the things he would reliably say about himself. It is not connected with possessions, but possessions or lack of so may signify identity (Ibid: 5). The identity is based more on satisfaction to self and others than on the person’s actual qualities (Ibid: 6).
5) Even though Urry claims that there are historical and sociological variations in the gaze, there are some definable aspects in tourism: It is a leisure activity which presupposes its opposition in organized and regulated work. People go to and stay in various destinations which are outside and unconnected with the normal place of residence and work. A substantial proportion of the population must engage in such activities, and they choose the places to gaze upon, which have features of townscape and landscape different from everyday experience, from an anticipation of intense pleasure. The tourist is a sign collector in places of gaze constructed through signs (Urry 1990b: 2-3).
6) The distinctive tourist gaze consists of a place minimally different from the everyday life place. "Tourism results from a basic binary division between the ordinary/everyday and the extraordinary" (Urry 1990b: 11). In order to make a particular experience function as a tourist experience there must be something extraordinary to gaze upon (Ibid: 128). What the tourist wants from his holiday is an inversion of the everyday (Urry 1990b: 11). The division between the ordinary and the extraordinary can be achieved through the seeing of a unique object (Big Ben); a particular sign (the typical English pub); an unfamiliar appearance of something former thought of as familiar (everyday life museums); ordinary appearances of social life performed by people in unfamiliar places (everyday life tasks in India); performance of familiar activities in an unusual visual context (a scuba diving Santa Claus) or a particular sign indicating that another object is special (a sign in front of a night pot in an art museum saying that this is the work of a famous artist) (Urry 1990b: 12).
7) A new species of tourists; the post-tourist who is self-conscious and cool (Urry 1990b:101), who exhibits role distance and is aware of the inauthenticity but still enjoys playing the tourist role (Crick 1995: 218).
8) Modernism is a process of differentiation between cultural spheres where each sphere develop its own mode of valuation, while postmodernism involves de-differentiation where each sphere implodes into the other (Urry 1990b: 84). Postmodernism refers to a system of signs which is specific in both time and space (Ibid: 83).
9) Romantic - collective tourist gaze.
Historical - modern tourist gaze.
Authentic - inauthentic tourist gaze (Urry 1990b:104).
10) Crick (1995: 205-206) shows that we can identify several tourist
types whose behavior and motivation vary considerably. He refers to Smith’s
schema with ethnic, cultural, environmental and recreational tourists,
and Cohen’s recreational, diversionary, experiental, experimental and existential
tourists.
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