Tourist's Experience of Place

Jaakko Suvantola

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138738379
• eBook ISBN: 9781351732291
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2002: This volume follows on from the tradition of humanistic geography to examine tourism from an experiential perspective - examining the experience of the tourists themsleves. By analyzing theories on tourism from anthropology, psychology and culural tourism, it aims to further the geographical debates on interactions which occur in tourism. The text offers a geographical approach which examines how the resulting experience of tourism can reveal something of our relationship with places in general, and also about ourselves.

1 Introduction

In the academic study of tourism, the experience of tourists themselves has often had a small role. Even when it has been the object of the study, the focus has customarily been on marketing. However, the importance of travel experience can go far beyond mere consumption. As a geographer, I am particularly interested in travel experience as a change of place. In travel we are forced to pay attention to a new place. The experience there can reveal something about our relationship with places, and also about ourselves. What does it mean in the life of a tourist to experience a place?

Geography's contribution to the study of tourism has traditionally involved mainly environmental, regional, spatial, and evolutionary considerations (Mitchell and Murphy, 1991). The environmental considerations include for example the impact of tourism in the natural environment (Butler, 2000; Baldwin, 2000), Development of the orientation is the emergence of the study of eco-tourism from the end of the 80s (Draper and Kariel, 1990; Farrell and Runyan, 1991; Cater, 1993; Fennell, 1999). The regional orientation has appeared mainly as interest in tourism as a means of economic development (Hall, 1992; Milne, 1992; McCarthy, 1994; Walpole and Goodwin, 2000). The spatial orientation deals with spatial gravity models (Mansfeld, 1990; Meyer-Arendt, 1990) and the spatial perception of tourists. The latter has much in common with cognitive mapping, which features especially prominently in studies on the borderline of geography and psychology (Pearce, 1988; Walmsley and Jenkins, 1992). Finally, the evolutionary orientation emphasises the meanings of processes by which tourism trends and developments change through time, thus dealing with history of tourism developments (Demars, 1990; Hoffmann, 1992), their socio-cultural impacts (Toops, 1992; Hobbs, 1992), and evolutionary models such as the resort life-cycle (Butler, 1980; Cooper and Jackson, 1989; Gordon and Goodall, 2000; Johnston, 2001). Most recently, additional themes have come into focus: travel as consumption/production (Ateljevic, 2000) and travel and gender (Hottola, 1999; Pritchard and Morgan, 2000). From the traditional orientations, the behaviourist quest for explaining the development of tourists' cognition of the destination comes closest to understanding of the tourist's experience. However, the experience involves much more than just spatial cognition. The later themes of consumption and gender are more relevant in the context of personal experience. These must be taken into account in any attempt to understand a personal experience of travel.

Many themes of humanistic geography are clearly relevant in this context. In humanistic geography most interest has been placed on studying the experiences that take place in our familiar home environment, but for some reason the tourism experience has been neglected, or presented only as an illustrative component (as in Tuan, 1974, 1977; Seamon, 1979, 1985; Buttimer, 1980; Godkin, 1980; Paasi, 1984; Karjalainen, 1986a and b). The best-known exception to this is Relph's (1976) study of 'Place and Placelessness' in which tourism is seen as one of the unauthentic attitudes in creating and experiencing places. Another smaller scale attempt to see tourism from the perspective of humanistic geography is Duncan's 'The Social Construction of Unreality; An Interactionist Approach to the Tourist's Cognition of Environment' (1978). Like Relph, Duncan sees tourism as an inauthentic way of seeing a new place. While Duncan's article had a humanistic tone, it had elements that anticipated poststructuralism.

Tourist's experience has been studied in other social sciences more than in geography. However, it is hard, and unfruitful, to subdivide the essentially multi-disciplinary tourism research into distinct disciplines; most of the themes overlap anyway. The focus of the study of the tourist's experience was initially on criticism of its perceived spuriousness (Boorstin, 1972 [orig. 1961]; Turner and Ash, 1975). Although this kind of critique persists, a quest for tourism with high moral (ecological, cultural, economic) standards has emerged (Krippendorf, 1987; D'Amore, 1993), as well as a view of tourism as a meaningful recreational experience, in which spuriousness or authenticity is largely irrelevant (Jokinen and Veijola, 1990; Urry, 1991). Also the symbolic structures, which characterise tourist experiences, have aroused interest (Barthes, 1972; MacCannell, 1976; Culler, 1981; Dann, 1996). Some of this semiotic interest concentrates specifically on the pictorial symbolism inherent in tourist experience (Barthes, 1977; Sontag, 1977; Uzzell, 1984; Urbain, 1989). In anthropology, the focus of study was at first on the effects of tourism in the host culture (Smith, 1977), but later there has been increasing interest in studying the tourist's point of view. Initially these studies derived from Turner's ideas of travel being structurally similar to a rite of passage (Turner, 1973, 1974, 1978; Turner and Turner, 1978; Gottlieb, 1982; Graburn, 1983; Murray, 1990). During the 1990s the emphasis has shifted from this analogy towards analysing tourism as one kind of a cultural discourse of the world (Bruner, 1991; Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1994; van den Berghe, 1994, Harkin, 1995). The discourse has been considered as part of the production and consumption of tourism destinations and attractions (Pretes 1995; Halewood and Hannam, 2001). An important similar post-structural perspective is the one of gender (Desmond, 1999; Johnston, 2001). Within psychology there are several important topics pursued. One is the analysis of tourists' motivations (Dann, 1977, 1981; Crompton, 1979; Pearce, 1988). Further central topics are destination evaluation and satisfaction (Echtner and Ritchie, 1991; Ross, 1993; Vittersø et.al., 2000) and the study of attitudes (Milman and Reichel and Pizam, 1990; Pizam and Jafari and Milman, 1991; Anastasopoulos, 1992).

The starting point for this study is that the dialogue between this kind of primarily qualitative tourism research and social and cultural geography has been 'virtually unexplored' (Squire, 1994, p. 3). It still is; the dialogue has never been explicated in much detail. I am particularly convinced about the relevance of many of the concepts of humanistic geography to the qualitative research of tourist experience. In the words of Squire (1994, p. 4):

Place experiences are integral to what tourism is about and such concerns have been central to sociological research on tourism. Surprisingly, they have received less attention from [humanistic] geographers, even though similar issues formed a large part of the humanistic agenda.

During the 1980s the humanistic agenda in geography has largely been replaced by post-structural interest in structures of power and meaning. The perspective of tourist's experience has been dealt within the framework of consumption and representation. In this work I shall retrieve some of the concepts used in humanistic geography and apply them in this more recent post-structural conceptual environment. From the present perspective, the problem with humanistic approach has been that it has paid too little attention to the structures within which personal meanings develop. In this work I intend to treat the topic of tourist's experience of place in such a way that the concern with structures of meaning precede the analysis of personal meanings. It is thus possible to complement the insights gained from one approach with the ones of the other. I use this approach in order to add the perspective of humanistic geography to the qualitative traditions in cross-disciplinary tourism research and integrate the two. The experience of place is pivotal in providing the basis for such integration. I also try to uncover processes, both structural and psychological, that make the experience of a tourist. This aim involves post-structural analysis of the discourse of tourism and phenomenological analysis of the tourist's experience within that discourse.

The analysis is based on my own experiences that I have complemented with interviews and analysis of travel brochures (which are thus part of my own experiences). Following humanistic traditions, personal experience is thus the experiential ground on which the ideas and understanding achieved is laid. Interviews of the others provide a plane on which my own personal experiences can be reflected. Thus it becomes possible to compare my experiences with the experiences of the others and chart the ground for generalisations. It is meaningless to separate between the ideas gained from my own experiences and the ones gained from the experiences of others. Using humanistic approach means that the research of others would provide little, if the researcher did not have personal understanding of the subject. The very subjectivity of the researcher is the prerequisite for a success of a humanistic study. In this study I am going to be shamelessly subjective, to the point that is bound to attract criticism. I firmly believe that understanding of the experience of one can add to understanding of the experience of another.

2 Humanistic Geography Revisited

Post-humanistic Geography?

It is somewhat old fashioned to go back to the concepts and methodologies of humanistic geography. There is thus a need to do the time warp through some more contemporary ideas. I find it useful to approach humanistic thinking through post-structuralism and its concern with discourse and representation.

Discourse and the Other

In geography the concept of discourse has been discussed especially in the context of landscape (Barnes and Duncan, 1992; Smith, 1992; Daniels, 1992; McGreevy, 1992; Daniels and Cosgrove, 1993b; Raivo, 1997). Landscapes are interpreted as texts, which have taken shape in a certain discursional environment. This means that a landscape represents something; it is a story. Using this point of departure, McGreevy (1992) writes about the landscape of Niagara as a metaphor for death. In a similar vein, Pocock (1992) analyses how the landscape in which the English author Catherine Cookson lived, is nowadays interpreted as an inspiration to her stories by a tourist operator. What a landscape, or a place, represents, involves thus the adoption of a certain discourse from which the particular representation arises. Naturally, the kind of discourse adopted depends on what is already known. Thus, for example, world elsewhere becomes interpreted through what is here (Relph, 1976, p. 53). From this the post-structural concept of the Other is just a few steps away.

The concept of Other has been used as a counter-category of Self, as in the work of Deleuze (1994 (orig. 1968), pp. 260-261). According to Deleuze, the Other is a structure of being that makes it possible for us to distinguish ourselves from the world outside (Ibid., pp. 281-282). The concept, however, has received a more concrete meaning in post-structural writings. Drawing from Foucault post-structuralists, post-colonialists and feminists alike have adopted the term to mean a social group and its culture that differs from one's own. Foucault provided a ground for conceptualising discourse and the power structures involved in the operation of the discourse (Said, 1979, p. 3; McDowell, 1995, p. 289). Post-structuralists and feminists consider the construction of the Other a demonstration of these processes. McDowell (Ibid.) mentions Said's critique of Orientalism, rewriting the history of colonial India, and feminist struggle against exclusion of women in representation of Western culture as examples of the use of Foucault's ideas in revealing the construction of the Other. The concept of the Other thus means a domain on which we project our socially formed ideas about peoples and cultures we aren't familiar with.

Single discourses are standpoints from which social groups perceive the world according to their intentions, Barnes and Duncan (1992, p. 8) write that because of the coexistence of different and often competing discourses, each discourse is defined largely by its relationship to other discourses. 'Our' discourse is contrasted to 'Their' discourse; familiar 'Us' is contrasted to the unfamiliar 'Other'. The discourse that is familiar to Us and characterises the values, intentions and ontological organisation of the group, is experienced as comprehensible, homely, and convenient. In contrast, another discourse of another group is regarded as the opposite because its internal logic is based on different social contexts, or simply because it matters so little to Us. This unfamiliarity, incomprehensibility and indifference gives raise to the typification of the Other by using terms and contexts which are familiar within one's own discourse. Both the discourse of the Other and the Other itself become labelled with these typifications. Daniels and Cosgrove (1993a, p. 6) write that 'the typification of the other as an abstraction, a collective social fact, is a denial of the complexity of other cultures'. The concept of the Other is most explicit in the context of cultures; the distinction between 'Us' and 'the Other' is tangible.

In a typified definition, the power to define the Other arises from the centrality of 'Our' discourse to the life of the in-group. Cultural practices and values which arise from particular ontological beliefs and which govern the daily environment are internalised so that they self evidently are regarded as the most natural way to look at the world. Ethnocentrism is one actualisation of this natural tendency to rate the Other discourse according to the yardstick of one's own. The obvious result is the confirmation of the superiority of one's own discourse. Since there is little comprehension of the Other, it has to be typified using concepts that are available in one's own discourse, which gives the illusion that it is possible to govern the Other from within this familiar framework. Duncan (1993, p. 39) writes:

...difference in the site of the Other is 'recuperated' by appropriating it into a categorical framework that is familiar and useful within the site from which the recuperation emanates. ... By analysing these [discursional] relations of power, we can more clearly see how interests play a constitutive role in vision and representation.

This power to define the Other favours strong groups. Not only do they define the Others; if powerful enough, they can also use the definitions to create circumstances in which those Others have to act. Examples of this are the creation of the Orient in Western art, literature and science (Said, 1978; Hourani, 1991; Vehkavaara, 1994), and the Western discourse of Africa (Mudimbe, 1988; Löytty, 1994). Militaristic and economic hegemony of the West has made it possible to extend the Western discourse of capitalism in all parts of the world. Therefore the Other of the 'Orient' or 'Africa' have not been asked what role they would like to play within this discourse. The discourse of the Other displays our intention towards it. In European discourse of 'Africa', Europe represents progress, civilization and power, Africa is backward, savage and in the need of supervision. Here the meanings created by the discourse both illustrate and are the power of Europe over Africa, Us over the Other.

Post-structuralists pay a lot of attention to the social construction of the Other. Following Said's critique of Orientalism (1978), there has been a great deal of discussion about the power of representation to convey (intended or unintended) messages about the Other and our relationship to it (e.g. Young, 1990; Hourani, 1991; Bruner, 1991; Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1994; Vehkavaara, 1994). Post-structuralists are eager to point out that science is not immune to the inevitability of representation. Duncan (1993, p. 40) introduces two widely used rhetoric ways to describe the Other, The first is the one of objectivity, much used in science. A scientist with enough theoretical knowledge and field experience, using accepted methods of observation, is deemed to be able to provide an objective and truthful presentation of the Other. The belief in objectivity is based on the accepted field-work methods used. The other rhetoric way to describe the Other is to place it into a different temporal location, most usually in the past. An example of this rhetoric is that while Europe represents today, Africa is still inhabited by peoples whose customs and traditions have remained unchanged through history.

The first of these tropes is closely associated with the scientific ideal of objectivity. According to post-structuralists, uncritical drive to achieve that ideal, trying to present something as it is, only leads to blind appreciation of one's own discourse; it is our discourse which is capable of describing the Other objectively. Thus our discourse is the one with power. This display of power is also strongly present in Duncan's second trope. Placing the Other in the past makes it possible to resort to the ideas of cultural evolution (as it was understood a hundred years ago), and interpret Our culture and discourse as superior, contrasted to the cultures and discourses of the Other, which are only remnants from the past. These tropes illustrate the connection between post-structural concern with the social construction of the Other, and concern with power. The former is the origin of the latter. All groups construct the Other and the discourse of it by using the concepts and categories of their own in-group. Whose construct will determine the discourse used in the relations between the groups, is then a matter of (economic and military) power. So far the 'West', and its concepts revolving around market economy, has possessed it.

The question of representation in geography has featured strongly in the study of landscape (Barnes and Duncan, 1992; Duncan and Ley, 1993; Karjalainen, 1993; Knuuttila and Paasi, 1995; Raivo, 1997). The social construction of the Other as such has been tackled mainly from the perspective of relations between ethnic groups (Anderson, 1991; Mitchell, 1993). The power of a majority group to create frameworks, within which the narrative of a minority group takes form, is largely the centre of attention. The study of tourism shares this perspective in the sense that the Western discourse of tourism, which entails the hegemony of capitalism, is analysed as the discourse that produces the representations of the Other places, Other cultures and Other peoples.

Post-structural tourism studies largely follow the footsteps of Barthes and his discussion of texts and myths and landscape as but one myth (Barthes, 1972; 1977). One trait of this Barthesian legacy is semiology applied to the pictorial material present in tourism (Sontag, 1977; Uzzell, 1984; Albers and James, 1988; Urbain, 1989). Of course, the idea of power in the representation of the Other is not limited in pictorial settings at all. The whole discourse of tourism is filled with myths that shape tourism and the impression of the Other it creates. The analysis of such discursional elements (Bruner, 1991; McGreevy, 1992; Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1994; van den Berghe, 1994; Harkin, 1995) is another important post-structural theme in tourism studies. The third trait is the one in which tourism is discussed as consumption. Tourists and destinations are integrated into tourist production process (Britton, 1991; Waitt and McGuirk, 1994; Richards, 1996; Meethan,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Humanistic Geography Revisited
• 3 Travel Research and Humanistic Geography
• 4 Qualitative Traditions in Travel Research
• 5 Charting Shared Experiences
• 6 Travel as Reach
• 7 Tourist Discourse and Tourist Space
• 8 Sightseeing
• 9 The Encounter With the Other Culture
• 10 Integrating the Experience of the Other and Home
• 11 Home, Reach and the Experience of the Other as the Experience of Place
• Bibliography
• Index