Resplendent Sites, Discordant Voices by Malcolm Crick

Author:Malcolm Crick [Crick, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783718655649
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 1994-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

TOURISTIC IMAGES

Many languages and cultures in Third World countries have no indigenous concept which can be adequately translated as ‘tourist’. Naturally terms for ‘traveller’, ‘pilgrim’, and so on, are widely found, but the connotations of the term ‘tourist’ rarely overlap adequately with such notions. Hence in many destination countries, a European term (depending on colonial background) is used rather than a local term. This itself raises a question about cultural meaning, for if there is no indigenous conception of the sort of activity called ‘tourism’, people will need to create rules for interaction with a new type of social being, and will also need to construct representations about their behaviour and motivations. All cultures have rules relating to ‘guests’, ‘strangers’, and the like, but again, international tourists may be put into a category on their own, so that the moral rules relating to these others may not apply. On the other hand, tourists need to be fitted into local social classifications by some means, either by assimilation to some pre-existing category, for instance other types of Europeans known from the colonial past, or by creating a new social field (Evans-Pritchard 1989; Sweet 1985:10, 22–3, 86).

It has been said of Sri Lanka that “the presence of rich whites during the colonial era is immediately evoked by the tourists (Goonatilake 1978:16) and that the colonial period has left a “deep-rooted dislike and distrust for the white man among the people … Tourism is introduced into this atmosphere of unfriendly and hostile feelings” (Samarasuriya 1982:82). Such views strike me as somewhat exaggerated, although it must be conceded that such attitudes, where they exist, would likely not have been communicated in a forthright manner to a foreign researcher such as myself. Ali told me that most people held no such antagonistic feelings, that hostility towards European tourists based upon such historical ties would be confined to only a few aristocratic and snobbish Kandyans. This too, I think, is somewhat misleading given the sizeable class of politicians, intellectuals, economic nationalists (Roberts 1979:61) and traditionalists in Sri Lanka for whom denunciation of things western is de rigueur. I personally saw no evidence that historical factors interfered with how, for instance, Dutch or Portuguese tourists were viewed, although there are precious few of the latter in Sri Lanka. British tourists, it is true, are frequently depicted in a manner somewhat different to other European tourists such as the French and Germans (Ahmed 1989:355). They are viewed as being proud, remote and reserved, just as the British during the colonial period were depicted, but it might well be that this is how a considerable number of British tourists do in fact behave, rather than being a historical trace. One historical factor does seem to exist about American and Australian tourists, though, namely that the fondness with which many Ceylonese remember American and Australian troops during the Second World War (a memory of friendliness and generosity, in stark contrast to the remoteness of the British) seems to spill over into a widespread liking for tourists from those two countries.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.