... tourism often appears detached from the forces of structural power that characterize twenty-first century capitalism and globalization.

One of the most striking illustrations of this process in the context of tourism has been the displacement of coastal populations and land appropriations in Sri Lanka to make way for new ‘luxury’ resorts, which followed in the wake of the 2004 tsunami ...

However, it is clear that renewed waves of capital accumulation stimulated by neo-liberal globalization are reconfiguring tourism in ways that cultural analyses have failed to engage with, let alone explain or attempt to challenge…."

(Trump Muslim travel ban countries in red)

In the midst on utter devastation, the current frivolity over speech rights at sport events distracts from a central administration that can barely acknowledge the storm destruction of Caribbean territories. And yet tourism is one aspect of a political economy that will see its crises used to distract from nativist RW hegemony. Countries dependent on tourism that become destroyed resemble the current objectives of the Trump regime: to destroy cultures and economies in order to “creatively” build new markets.

Denise Oliver Velez’s story today serves as an important background for how consumer culture is one among many disciplinary practices driving development.

INTRODUCTION

The ‘Critical Turn’ in Tourism Studies: A Radical Critique

Raoul V. Bianchi

Pages 484-504 | Published online: 02 Nov 2009

Tourism Geographies

An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment

Volume 11, 2009 - Issue 4: WORLDMAKINGS OF TOURISM

Download citation http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616680903262653

www.tandfonline.com/...

I commend this excellent article from which I have quoted and which for those inclined, will find the references alone worth reviewing. (fair-use trolls should now simply stifle themselves).

Tourism studies, like its progenitor, Leisure Studies, is simply another subaltern discipline whose critical turns resemble those in other academic disciplines. The greater problem in Tourism Studies that it serves to study and legitimate a capitalist enterprise against which much critical analysis would suggest its elimination on a wide range of moral and ethical grounds. This is much like the heightened contradictions of “business schools” that beyond certain capitalist methodologies, at some moment and in most sub-disciplines, contain the theoretical / critical seeds of their withering away, if only they’d include them in their syllabi.

In many respects Tourism Studies appears to be increasingly divided between the unquestioning embrace of the market, on the one hand, and questions of discourse, culture, and representation on the other. This apparent rift also conceals a growing convergence around the significance of ‘culture’ and cultural analyses in tourism, brought about by greater engagement with post-structural theory and a concomitant retreat from political economy.

Accordingly, this paper evaluates the scope and potential for a revitalized radical critique of tourism that engages with issues of power, inequality and development processes in tourism whilst acknowledging the significance of cultural diversities.

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This can be generalized: “the scope and potential for a revitalized radical critique of (insert Discipline) that engages with issues of power, inequality and development processes in (insert Discipline) whilst acknowledging the significance of cultural diversities.”

The ‘critical’ turn is heralded as a ‘quiet revolution’ in tourism enquiry which seeks to ‘challenge the field's dominant discourses’ and inspire a series of critical ‘dialogues, conversations and entanglements’ into the nature of power, discourses and representations in tourism ...

In addition, it makes explicit the challenge to applied business-centred approaches which have for too long over-shadowed critical thinking in the tourism academy, at a particularly significant juncture, given the recent attacks on critical thinking in UK Business Schools...

Accordingly, this paper outlines a critique of the emergent ‘sub-discipline’ of critical Tourism Studies, as the basis from which to argue for the continued relevance of structural analyses of power and inequality in tourism, which draws predominantly on Marxist political economy and historical materialist methods of enquiry.

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To re-emphasize Britton's (1991) central thesis, tourism is a major avenue of capital accumulation throughout the world, driven by free market forms of enterprise, ranging from small, independent travel firms, to highly capitalized online booking agencies and transnational corporate mega-chains in the hotel, airline and tour operator industries…

Notwithstanding the preponderance of small-scale, indigenous/household enterprise and the like, tourism capital is situated at the nexus of diverse and overlapping industries (construction, finance, property, transport, hospitality, media and communications) which manifest some of the fastest growing areas of investment and growth throughout the world…

Accordingly, tourism has been described as a ‘hyper-globalising’ activity (Hjalager 2007...

In many respects it epitomizes the material processes and values that underpin ‘neoliberal market civilisation’ (Gill 1995), in which the ‘freedom of travel’ is conjoined with the ‘freedom of trade’ (O'Byrne 2001)

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‘we were too busy analyzing the pictures on the wall to notice that the wall itself had been sold’.

A New Paradigm of ‘Critical’ Enquiry in Tourism Studies?

Precisely around the time when the world began to witness the most aggressive restructuring of class power and privilege since perhaps the late nineteenth century – what might be referred to as the ‘neoliberal turn’ – (Harvey 2006), cultural analysts became increasingly preoccupied with popular culture and identity politics as arenas of empowered agency (see Frank 2001).

However, in her acclaimed critique of the interplay between globalization, branding and corporate power, Naomi Klein (2001 Klein, N.) highlights how this preoccupation led to the failure of postmodern leftists to challenge the restructuring of class power that is concealed behind the façade of empowered consumerism: ‘we were too busy analyzing the pictures on the wall to notice that the wall itself had been sold’.

The feminist academic Enloe (1990 Enloe, C. 1990. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]: 19–20) illustrates this contradiction as follows:

‘No matter how good the feminist tourist's intention, the relationship between the British woman on holiday and the working women of Portugal seems to fall short of international sisterhood’.

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There is little evidence to suggest that ‘critical’ tourism scholars share such a stance; however, the preoccupation with the discursive, symbolic and cultural realms of tourism has for the most part been undertaken at the expense of any sustained analysis of the structures and relations of power associated with globalization and neo-liberal capitalism.

In turn, the political orientation of the ‘critical turn’ appears largely confined to questions of culture, discourse and representation within the confines of a globalizing free market system, which remains largely external to critical scrutiny.

In addition, there is a tendency to emphasize the ‘transactional’ and ‘cultural’ basis of economic relations in tourism, which leaves one with little sense of the asymmetries of power and divisions of labour that have grown under conditions of neo-liberal capitalism and globalization, and how these are manifest in specific tourism locations...

In order to counter the alleged productivist bias of Tourism Studies, the ‘critical turn’ urges us to explore tourism as a predominantly cultural arena shaped by the mutually reinforcing relationship between circuits of tourism production and consumption (Ateljevic 2000)

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The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country (1985 [1888]: 83)

However, whether or not this amounts to such a level of complexity that it becomes impossible to identify and explain the essential workings of power in tourism, remains open to question.

Moreover it also reinforces one of the most enduring myths of neo-liberalism, that is, that it represents a more ‘disorganized’ and/or ‘complex’ phase of capitalist development, or free-for-all (Lash and Urry 1987), thus obscuring the fact that it is a process driven by the state as part of a move to restore shareholder value and the structural power of capital (Henwood 1999)

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The ‘Essentialist’ Sins of Structuralist Analyses?
... That is not to say that studies of consumption are unimportant, rather that it should be understood that ‘one person's consumption is another person's production’ (Perrons 1999)

Whilst Marx had specifically little to say about cultural expressions of power, there is a tendency amongst many ‘critical tourism’ scholars to either misinterpret and engage in a sweeping dismissal of the ‘modernist Marxist analysis of generalizing’ (Ateljevic 2000). However, little indication is given of which particular Marx or aspect of the Marxist canon is being referred to...

A common theme running through the ‘critical turn’ is the critique of the allegedly ‘essentialist’ nature of structuralist theories of tourism. For example, Aitchison (2001: 135) seeks to ‘contribute to the development of gender and cultural theory within tourism studies’ which transcends the ‘essentialist view of tourism relations’ whereby host societies are ‘Othered’ or otherwise regarded as ‘subaltern’ by the tourism industry and tourists.

Whilst this is a perfectly valid viewpoint in many respects, it both exaggerates the ‘essentialist’ and ‘reductionist’ crimes of certain structuralist and, in particular, Marxian modes of theorizing, and simultaneously disregards earlier critiques of the so-called ‘essentialist crimes’ of Tourism Studies...

For all the talk of a ‘critical turn’ in Tourism Studies and its claims with regard to the ability to provide more nuanced analyses of the ‘nexus of circuits operating within production–consumption dialects’ ... we are actually left with little or no understanding of the relationship between discourses and the diverse forms of capitalist development and territorial logics of state power of which tourism constitutes a key part.

In addition, according to Judd (2006) the emphasis on tourism predominantly as a system of consumption rather than production has eclipsed analyses of tourism's political economy.

... That is not to say that studies of consumption are unimportant, rather that it should be understood that ‘one person's consumption is another person's production’ (Perrons 1999)

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...This does not mean to suggest that states are powerless in the face of rampant neo-liberal globalization. Indeed, the error of ‘orthodox’ Marxism was to see the state as determined by the economic base. In fact, Marx himself recognized the crucial role of the state in the development of capitalism in England during the initial period of ‘primitive accumulation’ (Marx 1974 Marx, K. 1974. Capital, Vol. 1, London: Lawrence & Wishart. [1887] [Google Scholar] [1887]: part viii).

Indeed, the apparent separation between the economic and political spheres is an assumption which has its roots in liberal political theory and neo-classical economics rather than Marxist political economy. Whilst Marxist analyses have fallen short of a comprehensive and nuanced analysis of the distinctive configurations of states and their relationship to capital, there is nothing within a historical materialist analysis that precludes this (see Rupert and Smith 2002).
Neo-liberal globalization has not so much been accompanied by the withdrawal of the state from the market but rather, the power of the state has been reconfigured along the lines of a ‘market-based free enterprise system’ (Gill 1995) in order to optimize the conditions of capital accumulation: ‘the nation-state is now more dedicated than ever to creating a good business climate for investment, which means precisely controlling and repressing labour movements in all kinds of purposively new ways …’ (Harvey 2000).

In response to the economic crises and recessions of the 1970s, governments (particularly in the UK and USA) orchestrated a range of monetary, fiscal and trade reforms, which set in motion a reorganization of the balance of power between the state, capital and labour, and intensified the global forces of capital accumulation.

This process is defined by Harvey (2005: 145–52) as ‘accumulation by dispossession’ and echoes Marx's original concept of primitive accumulation (see Perelman, 2000 ]), though it is adapted in the current context of neo-liberal globalization. Harvey (2006: 43–50) isolates four principal mechanisms –

• privatization,
• financialization;
• the orchestration of crises and devaluations; and,
• state redistributions from labour to capital –

through which the neo-liberal state has engineered the release of numerous assets (including labour power) at very low (and in some instances ‘zero’) cost into the ‘privatized mainstream of capital accumulation’, in order that they be put into profitable use (Harvey 2005).

One of the most striking illustrations of this process in the context of tourism has been the displacement of coastal populations and land appropriations in Sri Lanka to make way for new ‘luxury’ resorts, which followed in the wake of the 2004 tsunami ...

However, it is clear that renewed waves of capital accumulation stimulated by neo-liberal globalization are reconfiguring tourism in ways that cultural analyses have failed to engage with, let alone explain or attempt to challenge….

www.tandfonline.com/...

This perhaps is all too much meta- but it is important to acknowledge how important is the conjoining of cultural/critical studies to political economic methodologies.

Conclusion

The ‘critical turn’ in Tourism Studies is seen as an innovative and substantive turning point in enquiry into tourism, which provides a focus for the critique of the dominant industry-focused, positivist analytical frameworks in tourism research, thus heralding a new way of thinking about as well as engaging with tourism. However, its post-structuralist theoretical underpinnings, coupled with a tendency to dismiss materialist structuralist theorizing as ‘essentialist’, undermines its professed emancipatory ideals (see Chambers 2007).

In turning away from the interrogation of the economic and political relations of power within the manifold settings of tourism, it has little to say about the material inequalities, working conditions, ecological degradation and patterns of social polarization that are manifest in twenty-first century tourism.

Thus, contrary to its stated aims, the ‘critical turn’ is in danger of leaving the study of the working of markets, capital and the state in tourism to the very industry-led institutions and analysts it professes to challenge.

This is not an argument against cultural analysis, nor does it imply that the exploration of tourist consumption, discourses and representations is unimportant. It merely suggests that the world of work and associated organization of production appears to be an increasingly marginal concern within ‘critical’ tourism scholarship at a time when it is arguably most needed...

Whilst acknowledging and indeed building on this new spirit of critical enquiry, a genuinely critical project must find ways of integrating the study of discourses with agency, as well as material forms of power if it is to constitute a radical departure from the status quo in Tourism Studies.

Marxist theory alone is insufficient, although not inadequate, for this. However, recent developments in international political economy have begun to explore the interface between Foucauldian, (neo)-Gramscian and Marxist approaches which may offer several routes out of the current impasse between the embrace of the market, on the one hand, and preoccupation with discourse and culture, on the other.

With this in mind, a critical radicalism should be simultaneously sensitive to the plural subjectivities and cultural diversities within contemporary societies and grounded in a structural analysis of the material forces of power and inequality within globalizing capitalism and liberalized modes of tourism development. Perhaps then, the ‘critical turn’ can make the transition from an ‘academy of hope’ to a project that is emancipatory in substance.

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