Political Economy of Tourism

A Critical Perspective

Jan Mosedale

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781138325500
• eBook ISBN: 9781136859519
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Gastgewerbe, Reise- & Tourismusbranche

Political economy, in its various guises and transfigurations, is a research philosophy that presents both social commentary and theoretical progress and is concerned with a number of different topics: politics, regulation and governance, production systems, social relations, inequality and development amongst many others. As a critical theory, political economy seeks to provide an understanding of societies – and of the structures and social relations that form them – in order to evoke social change toward more equitable conditions.

Despite the early influence of critical development studies and political economy on tourism research, political economy has received relatively little attention in tourism research. Political Economy and Tourism the first volume to bring together different theoretical perspectives and discourse in political economy related to tourism. Written by leading scholars, the text is organised into three sequential Parts, linked by the principle that 'the political' and 'the economic' are intimately connected. Part one presents different approaches to political economy, including Marxist political economy, regulation, comparative political economy, commodity chain research and alternative political economies; Part two links key themes of political economy, such as class, gender, labour, development and consumption, to tourism; and Part three examines the political economy at various geographical scales and focuses on the outcomes and processes of the political act of planning and managing tourism production.

This engaging volume provides insights and alternative critical perspectives on political economy theory to expand discussions of tourism development and policy in the future. Political Economy and Tourism is a valuable text for students, researchers and academics interested in Tourism and related disciplines.

1
Re-introducing tourism to political economy

Jan Mosedale

Political economy in its earlier stages – as undertaken by Smith (1981 [1776]) and Ricardo (1973 [1817]) – was concerned with the production and accumulation of wealth (what is generally considered to be the economy) and its distribution (the political dimension). Marx later focused in particular on the distribution (or rather lack thereof) of wealth across social classes. Although political economy was deemed to be a ‘unified social science’ at its inception, a number of methodological ruptures have since fragmented the erstwhile discipline. As the aim of this book is not to give a precise historical account of political economy, I will touch only briefly on developments from the 1960s onwards (see Milonakis and Fine 2009 for an in-depth overview of the evolution of political economy and its links to economic theory), before introducing some of the key approaches to political economy that are currently being drawn on in tourism scholarship.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, at a time when positivism was de rigeur, critics such as Harvey (1973) argued that spatial positivist science was not only unable to answer the questions and solve the pressing problems of the time, but also there was no room in the positivist approach to consider the necessary questions (Kitchin 2006). The civil rights movement in the United States influenced Harvey (1973) to think about capital and space in urban settings and uneven development at different spatial scales. Further, a general decline of the main manufacturing regions in Europe and the United States (notably the Midlands in the United Kingdom, the Ruhrgebiet in Germany and the Midwest in the United States) led to an increasing critical research on regional decline, labour issues and industrial restructuring. The underlying motivation for turning towards a critical political economy was a perceived failure of capitalism to address and solve these social problems.

Similarly, the stimulus for a more critical analysis of tourism was given in the 1970s, epitomized by the influential texts of Young (1973), Tourism: Blessing or Blight?, and de Kadt (1979), Tourism: Passport to Development? Both critically analyse the advantages and disadvantages of tourism by focusing on tourism from the perspective of development and dependency theory. A key theme for dependency theorists is the interdependence of development and underdevelopment. As such there is a clear distinction between dependency theory and modernization theory in that the former situates the periphery in a different historical context from the latter. There is no internal lack of capital or skills that determines lack of development (as stipulated by modernization theory); rather, underdevelopment is the result of external forces – the integration of the periphery into the global capitalist economy and the inherent unequal exchange relationships between the core and periphery within that system.

Dependency theorists argue that incorporating peripheral economies into the global capitalist economy results not only in influencing production to align with the demands of the centre, but also in siphoning the economic surplus to the dominant countries. As the dominant countries in the centre continue to develop based on that surplus, the countries in the periphery struggle with underdevelopment: ‘the international, national and local capitalist system generates economic development for the few and underdevelopment for the many’ (Frank 1969: 7–8). This system is reproduced as the small local ruling class benefits from exporting raw materials, while the economy is controlled by the dominant nations in the centre. Contemporary dependency theory uses the case of transnational corporations as an example for exerting under- or dependent development (Britton 1980, 1982a, b; Bianchi 2002; Telfer 2002; also see Meyer in Chapter 10 for a re-conceptualization of the semi-periphery).

Dependency theory therefore analyses the macro-relations of production, that is, the position of tourism destinations in ‘developing countries’ (the periphery) vis-à-vis the position of dominant tourist-generating countries in the core. This view allows for a differentiation of development (or lack thereof) between developing countries based on their relation with dominant countries and has contributed greatly to add a critical edge to tourism research: ‘Dependency theory opened our eyes and made us see the world from the perspective of the oppressed masses living in its “distant” corners. This is quite a contribution’ (Peet 1991: 54).

Political economy as a critical theory still remains important in providing an understanding of societies, but has received relatively little attention in tourism research. A notable exception is Britton (1982a, b, 1991) who realized the importance of political economy in order to uncover the capitalist structures that are driving not only tourism development but also inequalities engrained in the system of uneven development and to position tourism in context to the capitalist system of accumulation. In his seminal paper, Britton (1991) calls for a move from mainly descriptive studies in the tradition of regional geography and spatial analysis towards a re-theorization of tourism geography through the integration of critical theory and political economy. Influenced by the writings of David Harvey, Britton (1991) seeks an analysis of the structural conditions that tourism operates in, a basic characteristic of political economy. Britton’s appeal for a more critical geography of tourism and to position tourism firmly within the context of capitalist society has been followed and echoed by a number of tourism geographers, most notably Shaw and Williams (1994, 2002, 2004), Ioannides (1995, 2006), Ioannides and Debbage (1998), Dieke (2000) and Williams (2004). However, despite the early influence of critical development studies and political economy on tourism research, there is still a lack of publications bringing together different approaches to the political economy approach used in tourism, leading Williams (2004: 62) to claim that ‘fruitful theoretical developments in political economy have largely bypassed tourism’. The aim of this edited book is therefore to assemble theoretical debates and current issues in the political economy of tourism.

Political economy approaches

‘Political economy’ in current usage is a term that encompasses a wide variety of approaches to studying the relationship between what is called ‘the economy’ and its ‘non-economic’ (i.e. political, socio-cultural, psychological and geographical) context. Peet and Thrift (1989: 3) view economy as ‘social economy, or way of life, founded in production. In turn, social production is viewed not as a neutral act by neutral agents but as a political act’. Given the political nature, power is an underlying theme of political economy (albeit discussions of power are not often brought to the fore). Bianchi (2002: 265), for instance, emphasizes ‘the systemic sources of power which serve to reproduce and condition different modes of tourism development’. Concepts of power as applied to tourism reseach have been discussed in much more detail elsewhere (see Coles and Church 2007, as well as Macleod and Carrier 2010), so, rather than replicate previous efforts, I will focus instead on some select approaches to political economy that have been used in tourism research.

Although there are a number of approaches to political economy, four seem to be particularly popular in the social sciences: first, Marxian political economists (typified by the early work of David Harvey; see, for instance, Harvey 1973, 1975) who rely on a close interpretation of Marx’s writings and historical materialism; second, regulationists who are concerned with the regulatory framework (structure) of capitalism (Boyer 1990); third, comparative and international political economists who analyse the regulatory structures and the trade relationships between nation-states respectively; and, fourth – more recently – poststructural political economists or post-Marxists who are influenced by poststructural concepts and focus on alternatives to capitalism (Gibson-Graham 1996 and 2006). The differences between these strains seem so significant that Barnes (2000: 594) argues that ‘only a single common thread seems to connect the many uses of political economy within geography: the belief that the political and the economic are irrevocably linked’.

Marxian political economy and historical materialism

According to Marx, matter and its production (i.e. the formation or transformation of matter) are the basis of social existence and history. ‘Production’ includes all processes of transformation and associated relationships and an object therefore is the sum or the end result of a process (Swyngedouw 2003). In historical materialism, it is more important to understand objects as the sum of all involved relations and processes rather than as the innate characteristics of the object itself. By analysing the relational processes involved in the production of an object, it is possible to expose the structures of the economic system (in Marx’ case, economic exploitation of the working class and the domination of labour by capital). The tensions (e.g. between labour and capital) and intrinsic dynamic and competitive nature of capitalism (because of the need for constant growth) cause the capitalist system to suffer from instability and occasional crises of over-accumulation or over-production (such as the banking crisis of 2009/2010). Yet despite this instability, capitalism manages to regulate and reproduce itself. This resilience to systematic change and the mechanisms of capitalist reproduction are the key questions of concern to regulationist political economists.

Bianchi (2002: 265), in turn, applies a historic-geographical approach of political economy to analyse the structures governing tourism development. He posits that capital restructuring and economic globalization have resulted in a changing configuration within the tourism production system, thus requiring a detailed examination of relationships between all actors in the system in order to unveil the impacts of the ‘transnationalization’ of the tourism system.

Regulationism

Theories of regulation focus on the transformations in the social relations of capitalist production and the regulatory responses to these transformations. This particular school of thought on understanding economic problems and crises was developed in France in the 1970s by economists such as Aglietta (1979), Lipietz (1979) and Boyer (1978). Dunford (1990) argues that regulation theory comprises four key concepts: regimes of accumulation, industrial trajectories, modes of regulation and hegemonic structures.

As industries are interdependent (in terms of production, distribution, exchange and consumption) a regime of accumulation is the systematic organization of these interdependent processes in order to guarantee the reproduction of the economic system. The last concept of regulation theories is the industrial trajectories, changes in the production process that influence the organization of labour and production and hence the regime of accumulation. A prime example of this influence is the introduction of the semi-automatic assembly line by Ford, which resulted in the mechanization of transfer, rationalized the flow of work and increased divisions of labour (Dunford 1990).

Modes of regulation are therefore established in order to direct and stabilize the process of accumulation: ‘it is through these structural forms that multiple, decentralized individual and collective rationalities with their limited horizons result in regular overall processes of economic reproduction’ (Dunford 1990: 306). The modes of regulation are institutions or rules (such as structural and legal constraints, collective agreements and general rules of conduct within the economy and society) that ensure the unfolding and coordination of individual and collective behaviour, thus providing a stable and reproducible economic system. The mode of regulation that is applied in any one country depends on the chosen political, economic and institutional strategy. These hegemonic structures arguably extend the economic sphere to encompass civil society as a whole.

Comparative and international political economy

The hegemonic structures analysed by regulationists as one part of the regulatory structures to stabilize capitalism form the point of analysis for comparative political economy. Influenced by political science, comparative political economy is interested in the consequences that differences in ideologies and structural organization (e.g. different legal, political and social institutions) have on economies and civil society as a whole. Originally, most of the attention of the comparative approach was focused on the dual extremes of capitalism and socialism; yet with the capitalist/democratic shift of former centrally planned/socialist countries, some authors declared the triumph of capitalism (Ohmae 1990; Fukuyama 1992). They predicted that the demise of communism coupled with globalization would lead to a ‘borderless world’, the end of history (Ohmae 1990) and therefore the inevitable emergence of a single capitalist economy.

In contrast to these predictions of a global, homogeneous capitalism devoid of historical connections, comparative political economy has re-focused on understanding the diversity of political-economic systems of governance and regulation by analysing different systems of capitalism. The emphasis is not only on different interpretations of how to practice capitalism by the former centrally planned economies of the transition countries (see Feldmann 2006) but also on the varieties of capitalism within the ‘traditional’ market economies (Hall and Soskice 2001; Peck and Theodo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Re-introducing tourism to political economy
• PART I Approaches to political economy in tourism
• PART II Tourism and key themes in political economy
• PART III Tourism and spatial contexts of political economy
• Index