Rural Tourism Development

Localism and Cultural Change

E. Wanda George, Heather Mair, Donald G. Reid

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781845413064
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Gastgewerbe, Reise- & Tourismusbranche

Rural tourism represents a merging of perhaps two of the most influential yet contradictory features of modern life. Not only are the forces of economic, social, cultural, environmental and political change working to redefine rural spaces the world over, but broad global transformations in consumption and transportation patterns are reshaping leisure behaviour and travel. For those concerned with both the nature of change in rural areas and tourism development, the dynamics and impacts of integrating these two dramatic shifts are not well known but yet are becoming increasingly provocative discourses for study. This book links changes at the local, rural community level to broader, more structural considerations of globalization and allows for a deeper, more theoretically sophisticated consideration of the various forces and features of rural tourism development. While Canadian in content, the cases and discussions presented in this book can be considered generally relevant to any rural region, continentally and globally, that has undertaken or is considering rural tourism development.

Chapter 1

Introduction to Rural Tourism Development

Introduction

Rural tourism represents a merging of perhaps two of the most influential yet contradictory features of modern life. Not only are the forces of economic, social, cultural, environmental and political change working to redefine rural spaces the world over, but broad global transformations in consumption and transportation patterns are reshaping leisure behavior and travel. For those concerned with both the nature of change in rural areas and tourism development, the dynamics and impacts of integrating these two dramatic shifts are not well known but are becoming increasingly provocative discourses for study.

While many students of tourism have assessed its qualities and developments, both positive and negative, at the local and global level (see for instance, Smith, 1989; Inskeep, 1991; Haywood, 1993; Hunter & Green, 1995; Hunter, 1997; Murphy, 1998; Mowford & Munt, 1998; Hall & Jenkins, 1998; Fuller & Reid, 1998; Var & Ap, 1998; Robinson, 1999; Yu & Chung, 2001; Barthel-Bouchier, 2001; McIntosh et al., 2002; Urry, 1990, 1995) and many students of rural change have done the same (see for instance, Mormont, 1987; Halfacree, 1993; Bryden, 1994; Shucksmith, 1991; Ray, 2001) the purpose of this book is to bring these two discourses together. We aim to link changes at the local, rural community level to broader, more structural considerations of globalization in order to allow for a deeper, more theoretically sophisticated consideration of the various forces and features of rural tourism development.

While several authors (Murphy, 1985; Gunn, 1985; Blank, 1989; Pearce et al., 1996; Reid et al., 2001) highlight the importance of community involvement in planning tourism and rural community development, our collective experience as instructors, practitioners, students and authors of tourism and rural community development, tells us that there has been both a lack of grounded research in this area as well as any larger overarching theoretical interpretations. Those concerned with community development, rural restructuring and economic growth, in addition to the implications of tourism, are in need of new and relevant resource materials to address the demands of currently changing times. With this book, we aspire to contribute to these investigations in a different way. While most works generally highlight tourism as the subject of development, often positioning the community as merely its vehicle, we reverse this stance and make the local community the subject, thereby situating tourism as just one in a collection of potential options for rural development and sustainability.

The Role of Social Theory: The Benefits of a Political Economy Approach

Perhaps one of the primary contributions of the book is our deliberate effort to cast each of the case studies within an overarching social theory framework. While authors such as Britton (1991) light the way for critical theoretical investigations of tourism developments by linking them to larger social, political and economic structural changes, a book of case studies can help lend some grounded understandings to what is often high level and seemingly unrelated theory. In the same way, many collections of case studies of tourism development, in both rural and urban areas, while providing unique insights about the particularities of tourism development, do not advance enough in what must be on-going efforts to build theoretical and conceptual tools to make sense of these developments at a broader level.

Political economy perspectives seek to highlight the inter-relationships between politics and economics. Simply put, in this view, the actions of the economy are not a predestined outcome of the workings of the market's ‘invisible hand’, but are the product of politics and power relationships and social struggle. Thus, a project that investigates tourism development from a political economy perspective throws into light (and question) the political underpinnings of its predominantly economic rationalizations. The economic imperative of tourism development, then, becomes problematized. Clement and Vosko (2003: xv) make the case for the Canadian political economy more generally:

We wish to critique economic essentialism in two ways: by arguing that the ”economic” itself is a social, political, cultural and ideological construct ... and by arguing that there is no ”essentialism”, or sameness in the economy, because time and space are ever-present variables for political economy.

Thus, the particular ways in which tourism is developed in rural areas cannot be simplified, as areas change over time and across space. A political economy approach creates room for such a nuanced understanding because it challenges underlying assumptions. Moreover, it also allows room to consider other theoretical explanations for why tourism developments are being created in rural areas. As rural communities struggle with the growing gap between resources and responsibilities (i.e. economic and political restructuring), tourism becomes increasingly popular and appealing as a mechanism for stimulating rural growth in troubled times. As the case studies in this text make clear, although the broader, more structural power relationships shaping the attractiveness of tourism in rural areas are similar, the ways in which these changes manifest themselves are unique to each place.

While the case studies collected here are all Canadian, much can be taken from the lessons learned in this book and extended internationally. There are few places where the effects of the neoliberal forces of economic and political restructuring are not being felt and the diversity of cases presented here can be used to capture and appreciate some of this diversity. That is not to say that every case in the world is like a Canadian case, but those selected here are diverse enough to offer useful fodder for building a conceptual framework to help explain and understand these developments in other places. The Canadian political economy, with its relatively poor and rich areas, its conundrum of rural development and its trajectory of political economic restructuring since the 1970s, contains a number of distinct cases, each teeming with opportunity for learning about the particularities and generalities of tourism development in rural areas anywhere.

Thus, cases used in this book were carefully chosen and can be grouped in the following way. First, two cases from the Eastern Atlantic region of Canada illustrate attempts at rural tourism development along Canada's periphery, and reveal the particular ways that tourism has been crafted as a mechanism to stimulate development in coastal, fishing-dominated and relatively less developed areas. Second, a case from Southern Ontario, Canada's heartland and economic core, shows how tourism can be used as part of a strategy addressing the downturn in long-standing manufacturing opportunities. Third, a case from the Western region of Canada exemplifies a novel approach that one rural Alberta community has undertaken towards developing its tourism potential. Put together, these cases demonstrate the different ways that tourism is positioned as a local response to political and economic shifts in a nation that is itself undergoing rapid change, both continentally and globally. Before outlining the structure of the book, it is first useful to highlight some of the more prominent themes underscoring our approach.

Dominant Themes Underpinning this Text

Four dominant themes underlie the development of contemporary tourism in rural areas and these permeate throughout this text. These themes include: (1) tourism in a globalizing world; (2) cultural change and processes of rural community commodification; (3) the importance of resistance and (4) the rural appeal. These four themes provide the underpinning for this book.

Tourism in a globalizing world

Thomas Friedman (2000) interprets globalization as an internationalizing system, a process that is working worldwide. Globalization is interpreted as both a system and a process – a system of interlinking and dynamic components where any change in one affects the whole system, and a process of global activity and interaction that takes place within the system.

The difference between earlier forms of globalization and today's system lies in the degree and intensity with which the world is being tied together into a single global marketplace and the number of people and countries that comprise this system (Friedman, 2000). While earlier eras of globalization were built around transportation and access to cheap resources, today it is constructed on technology – new innovations in science, medicine, mechanical devices, but most particularly, new information technologies. Modern globalization, according to Rees (2000), is a social construct, featuring particular characteristics: the international integration of economic entities, the rising prominence of trans-national corporations, the transportation of resources and manufactured goods all over the world and instantaneous opportunistic movement of finance capital across national boundaries.¹ As a dominant mechanism in globalizing the world, tourism needs to be understood as both a ‘cause and effect’ variable, affecting all life in modern society. The growth and invasion of tourism to newer regions, particularly lesser developed areas, carries with it major consequences and impacts, both positive and negative (Ayad, 1999; Jafari, 1996; Patin, 1999; Schackley, 1999; Robinson, 1999; Russo, 1999; UNESCO, 1996). Tourism, with its complex inward and outward functions and structure, is a socioculturally embedded phenomenon with diverse dimensions and untold influences of which economics is only one (Jafari, 1996). However, the economic forces of this mega-industry and the study of its potential have been instrumental in bringing tourism to the national and international forefront, as an attractive economic opportunity for many (Jafari, 1996).

The tourism phenomenon is an extraordinary occurrence, which developed historically from an activity of the privileged few to a mass cultural lifestyle and became accepted as a basic need of the modern world (Hudman & Hawkins, 1989). Mobility represents the crux of tourism activity. Parrinello (2001) argues that without the tourist's mobile experience, there would be no tourism. Tourism, as we know it today, can be considered globalization of mobility.

‘Tourism is about selling dreams’ (Schouten, 1996: 53) and related to an ‘eternal search for the meaning of life’. It is about experiencing beyond the ordinary (Schouten, 1996); it is as if there is a search for the ‘roots of our existence’. Ironically, as we see global expansion and increased mobility, these ‘dreams’ and ‘searches’ for experience and meaning are increasingly being sought by tourists in rural countryside where they can experience the perceived idyllic settings, but often, in doing so, cause disruption to local life and communities.

In their quest for experiencing beyond the ordinary, contemporary tourists are demanding new niche types of tourism, specific to their interests, needs and quirks. As a consequence of globalization, the tourism offerings that cannot be obtained in one country can be realized in another. Contemporary tourism products (experiences) have emerged that transcend notions of reality. In a globalizing world, we are seeing cultures encounter, confront, clash, challenge and mesh with each other. Tourism in a globalizing world means not only new demands but also new opportunities – new destinations to travel to, new cultures to explore, and new tourism products and experiences to consume, along with a whole new set of dynamics surrounding the phenomenon as it unfolds. As rural areas confront globalization, many are turning to tourism as one local response in hopes of sustaining their economies. This theme permeates throughout the cases presented here.

Cultural change and the processes of rural community commodification

Culture, and its many dimensions, is a deeply embedded aspect of tourism. Culture manifests in continually evolving societies; hence, cultural change is not a new and novel concept. It has indeed been the foundation to advanced civilizations throughout history. Currently, however, among a myriad of impacts resulting from globalization and advanced technologies, we can see an acceleration of cultural change in societies around the world. What might also be considered a new impact today is the intense commodification of culture for tourism that occurs through processes by which cultural dimensions and aspects, originally conceived as social constructs in community evolution and way of life, are transformed into commodities for exchange with consuming tourists. Paralleling the momentum of globalization, a concept discussed earlier, there appears to be increased interest in the rural domain and smaller local communities; this interest has generated a new and growing niche market of tourists who are attracted by the unique features of rural ways of life. From previous research, which will be illustrated later in this text, evidence suggests that when a local rural community's culture becomes its dominant tourism product, various dynamics are set in motion which not only initiate major changes to the community's structure and economy, but also to its cultural fabric – the essence of its being. In such instances, one can argue a metamorphosis of local culture takes place, that is, a community's culture loses its original context and evolves into something totally different through a process, metaphorically speaking, of ‘cannibalization’ or ‘consumption of self’. Another factor, which, arguably, can be attributed directly to globalization, tourism and cultural change, is gentrification, a concept that has historically been applied to urban slum areas, but which now appears to be manifesting in many rural communities. Such profound changes raise questions and concerns about the ability to achieve any notion of rural community sustainability.

The importance of resistance

It should be noted that our efforts to present the material in such a way as to shed light on the larger, structural political economic forces shaping tourism in each case, are not meant to crowd out the fact that in each case, this process has not been completely one-sided. Indeed, as the case presentations will make clear, each of these communities has struggled to make tourism its own. Each has had its own particular set of forces, and stakeholders, driving its tourism d...