Politics of Tourism: Identity and Commercialisation of Culture and Heritage

Angkor Wat. Alain Secretan (ASITRAC), National Geographic Group

Written By: Suramya Srivastava

Tourism has been one of the hardest hit industriesdue to the global coronavirus pandemic, with an estimated loss of USD 2.4 trillion in 2020 alone. For many developing countries, tourism is a key sector that contributes significantly to their economic growth and development, providing revenue and employment alike. Due to the interlinked nature of all human activities and the different spheres within which they exist and interact - social (encompassing religion, culture, etc.), economic, and political - it is easy to see how tourism fits into the political sphere. It can be used as a political instrument by politicians and the state to gain specific benefits or influence opinions and behaviours, both at local and international levels. The East and Southeast Asian region is a rich case study for an understanding of the political nature of tourism. This blog will specifically delve into examining how developing nations within this region market their unique culture and heritage to draw in tourists. This links tourism to foreign policy, through which any kind of action (or inaction) from the government with regard to tourist activity can be analysed within the arena of policy-making.

When looking at a country’s culture and heritage, or its entertainment industry, tourism based on these aspects provides a means to develop soft power and influence. This is certainly the case in the three main Northeast Asian countries - Japan, South Korea, and China. Each of these three countries have used their entertainment industries and media to encourage tourism. Perhaps the most successful of the three is South Korea, with its hallyuwave (the term given to its substantial cultural capital and soft power associated with its entertainment industry), which drew in hundreds of thousands of visitors before the outbreak of Covid-19. However, Japan also has a long history of promoting tourism to showcase its uniqueness and cultural attractiveness. Additionally, the rewards from tourism—increased revenues and profits, boosting economic and political leverage—accrue not just for the receiving country, but also for the origin country, as seen with China, which has the largest growing outbound tourist market with an ever-increasing middle class eager to spend its money.

Outside of the entertainment industry, countries also commercialise and commodify their culture and heritage in order to attract tourists. This can be in tandem with promoting the entertainment industry or beyond it, extended to gaming and sporting events as well, all of which come under the umbrella of building a national image. Here, Linda Richterdraws on the example of the Olympics. Few of the Olympics games have ever broken even in economic terms, but their value lies in the demonstration of the host country’s strengths and achievements, building a national identity that the country can present at an international scale. The gaze of the tourist here is also important for the state’s presentation of itself and its cultural authority. This then forms a self-sustaining feedback loop of sorts, as the tourist’s gaze helps strengthen the national image, but it is also the tourism industry, working in collaboration with the state, that shapes and forms how the tourist’s gaze functions and what it perceives.

Accumulation of cultural capital and accompanying soft power can also be developed by focusing on existing cultural architectures and monuments.One example is Cambodia, which has used its own history, memorialised in museums and heritage sites, to draw in visitors. These heritage sites, like the Angkor Wat, have become national symbols. A particularly interesting aspect is that Cambodia’s commercialisation and memorialisation of its history occurred in the years immediately after the Khmer Rouge genocide, that occurred from 1970-75. The then Vietnamese-assisted Cambodian state, known as People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), was not recognised internationally as a legitimate and sovereign state. It thus turned to tourism to simultaneously establish its identity and draw in aid to help its development and recovery. The PRK granted visas for travel specifically to experts helping with reconstruction, journalists, aid workers, and representatives of sympathetic states and organisations, and during their trips, included a necessary visit to the Tuol Sleng Museum (infamously dubbed the ‘killing fields’) that documented the crimes committed by Pol Pot and his army. This was perhaps a carefully crafted strategy to gain sympathy, attention, and aid from the international community. Evidently, during the times of war, or post-war, as in Cambodia, tourism was more politically, than economically, driven.

On a larger scale, tourism’s effect needs to be understood within the context of the country, its governance, and the specific timeline within which certain tourism policies are employed. This is since many of the effects are due to the type of tourism employed, and the country’s governance environment. Therefore, for Cambodia and the PRK, the politics of its tourism needs to be analysed with acknowledgment of the specific kind of tourism it was promoting in accordance with its political goals. The PRK was specifically creating witnesses for Cambodia’s suffering, shifting the gaze and subjectivities of visitors from that of being tourists to that of being humanitarian actors. If further examined, this would also raise the question of how the PRK was taking a risk, walking on a tightrope recalling the “moral geographies of colonial philanthropy” by blurring the lines between tourism and humanitarian action.

Using culture, heritage, and history, and commodifying them to promote tourism can therefore also be a double-edged sword, as culture herein becomes a resource, which can be helpful during crises, but which may also itself become the source of conflicts. An example of this is Hong Kong and its pre- and post-1997 image construction. Before Hong Kong was handed over from its British colonisers to the People’s Republic of China, the role Hong Kong represented and performed was of the ‘exotic’ East mixed with Western colonial characteristics. However, post-handover, Hong Kong had to rework itself to maintain its appeal towards the West, while also showing itself as a site of Western cultural consumption for the increasing number of new tourists from the East. In this case, the ‘otherness’ of Hong Kong became its main attraction to visitors, and its ‘exotic’ appeal was taken advantage of by the tourism industry. Sum & Sorecount this with examples of tourist brochures, Hong Kong Tourist Association (HKTA), and tourist agencies co-opting cultural attractions. Hong Kong’s image was based on what would be politically advisable, as it was a partitioned state and had to play a balancing game between its portrayal in the eyes of the East and West.

In the international sphere, all countries partake in the use of tourism and its political outreach. Whether it is an explicit role that the state plays with regard to tourism, or more of an inactive official role, policy-making analysis shows that both are decisions consciously made by the state. Shaping citizens' views and constructing national identities and boundaries are done so in tandem with directing tourist activities. Even the commodification and commercialisation of culture, heritage, and entertainment done to attract tourists, while seemingly primarily led by economic goals, have underlying political goals. To ensure a smooth flowing global mobility regulation, political and economic goals must align, or at least find some common ground. Therefore, the aims and types of tourism differ, but the underlying linkage of politics to tourism is present regardless, whether it is with PRK and its tourism for aid and development, or China with its tourism for power and authority. With the pandemic still raging on in various countries, tourism is brought again into the loop of analysis with how decreases in tourism are negatively affecting dependent countries’ economies. Thus, future discussions would need to focus on what parts of their culture and heritage countries may begin using even more to market tourism as borders reopen, and how their foreign policies might work with vaccine diplomacy.

Author’s Bio

Suramya Srivastava has recently completed her Masters in International Development at the University of Warwick. She submitted her dissertation on “The Political Economy of Developmental Aid: A case study on the impact of Chinese aid and FDI in Cambodia.” Her areas of interest include international relations, sustainable development finance, and intersectional developmental issues, especially in the Asian region.

Mouzayian Khalil : 01 Dec 2021 14:28 |  Tags: Cambodia Cultural Heritage Tourism |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A Tale of Two Mediterraneans

Photo by Dimitris Panagiotaras on Unsplash

Written by Irene Garcia

This year has seen unprecedented amounts of migrants arriving at the Balearic Islands. So far in 2021, 91 boats with more than 1400 people have arrived on the shores of these islands. This year has also seen unprecedented numbers of Spanish tourists in the Balearics – in some islands it was up to double the numbers of 2019. Over the summer, I took part in the University of Warwick Undergraduate Research Support Scheme (URSS). Focusing specifically on Spain, I investigated the dominant representations of the Mediterranean in Spanish popular culture and how they exclude and dehumanise the experiences of migrants. I did this by looking at popular culture materials which portray images of the ‘hospitable Mediterranean’, as well as existing migrant testimonies describing their experience of arrival in Spain. Through a discourse analysis of these materials, I looked at how migrant testimonies can challenge dominant views of the Mediterranean, and how these struggles can shape the way the Mediterranean is represented.

Mediterráneamente

The mainstream representation of the Mediterranean is evident in the advertising campaign by the beer company, Estrella Damm, which released yearly advertising campaigns in the summer under the slogan “Mediterráneamente”. This translates as “in a Mediterranean way”, submitting so-called Mediterranean values alongside images of a picture-perfect summer and a catchy song. These adverts have become an important part of Spanish television culture – the 2021 advert accumulated 14 million views in the two months after it was released, an incredibly high figure for a television advertisement.

The key theme of the beer advertisement is the ‘Mediterranean way of life’, based on values such as hospitality, respect and altruism. This appears throughout the plot of the video advertisement, which follows a woman at the beach who appears to have fallen for a famous actor standing on the other side of the beach. In the end, the main character does not walk up to the famous actor, and instead approaches a volunteer who is cleaning the ocean just behind him. The volunteer is described as generous, willing to act and change the status quo, and a good person. Arguably, these are the kind of Mediterranean values that the advert is trying to transmit, values which correlate with the findings of the Anna Lindh survey on intercultural trends in the Mediterranean region, in which Spanish respondents answered that hospitality, the ‘Mediterranean way of life and food’, and the ‘common cultural heritage’ best describe the region.

As the beach-goers gossip about the possible relationship between the woman and the famous actor, they remark that she is out of his league. In this context, one of the characters says that “certain borders cannot be crossed”, meaning that they see no future for the pair. However, another character says that he is about to be witness to a “love without barriers”. Using words like “border” is not accidental and has to be considered within a climate in which migration has been highly politicised by certain political parties and groups in Spain. Interestingly, in the advert, these connotations happily coexist with the picture-perfect beach in the background. Highly charged concepts are, in this way, instrumentalised and used as props to further the advertisement’s plot.

Migrant perspectives on the Mediterranean

I also examined a series of migrant testimonies collated by the Spanish Commission of Help for Refugees (CEAR), a Spanish NGO dedicated to defending the rights of refugees, stateless people, and migrants who need international protection or are at risk of social exclusion. In their 2018 campaign “The Other Sound of the Sea”, the organisation interviewed 6 migrants who survived their trip across the Mediterranean fleeing poverty or war. The migrants were asked about their experiences of the crossing and the sounds that they associate with the sea. CEAR then placed these audio recordings in seashells and left them in various Spanish beaches to showcase migrant experiences.

In contrast to the Estrella advert, these testimonies evidence a distorted sense of hospitality. Migrants describe how they are expected to be grateful for having the opportunity to build a life in Spain yet are not given the space to voice their traumatic experiences or denounce the state’s abuse towards them. In one of the interviews, for example, Ibrahim explains that there is a lot of abuse in the detention centres upon arrival. He uses impersonal verbs and does not specify who is the abuser. For example, he states that “there is abuse in these centres” and that “not everyone treats people well”. Moreover, he ends these remarks by emphasising that “not all of them are bad, but there are some that don’t speak well to you”. It is impossible to know why he shifts towards a softer tone and a use of impersonal verbs here, but it might have something to do with the context in which the interview took place, that is, he is being interviewed by a Spanish organisation on Spanish soil. It is possible that he does not want to be overly critical and seen as attacking their host, that is, the Spanish state. A man called Kurami also speaks of his experiences at the detention centres, which held 1500 people at the time despite only having space for 400. He explains how some people spend six months in these centres, and that he had to stay there for 54 days. He finishes by simply saying “we are lucky”.

These testimonies are reminiscent of a warped relationship between a host and guest. Migrants are under pressure to show gratitude for having the opportunity to make a life in the country yet are not given the space nor the power to voice traumatic experiences or to hold the state accountable for the way that they have been treated. The experiences of migrants contradict the kind of image that the Estrella Damm advertisement is trying to portray. Migrants may speak of Spain as a secure place, in comparison with their home countries, but not necessarily as a hospitable place. The values of generosity, kindness, hospitality or altruism do not appear in migrant testimonies describing deathly journeys across the Mediterranean, only to be abused and treated with disdain upon their arrival on European shores. Listening to migrant voices and centring their experiences is key in highlighting what is ignored by dominant narratives. The narratives of those who are excluded directly challenges established assumptions; the imagery portrayed in the Estrella Damm advertisement turns sour when contrasted with the lived experiences of migrants.

Author Bio

Irene Garcia is an undergraduate student, studying History and Politics at the University of Warwick. Her areas of interest include migration, the history of Latin America and the contemporary history of Spain. She is currently preparing her dissertation on the experiences of Spanish migrants in Mexico in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

Mouzayian Khalil : 28 Oct 2021 00:39 |  Tags: Mediterranean Values Migration Popular Culture Refugees Stateless People |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Degrees of separation: examining space and place in international jurisdiction trials

(Credit: Alex Jeffrey)

Written by Alex Jeffrey & Briony Jones[1]

The concept of international jurisdiction purportedly erases the role of space in deciding which acts are appropriate for legal action. But in the operation of judicial processes the role of space plays a crucial role in the possibility and success of trials. Work over recent years has focused on the challenge of giving or gathering testimony across international boundaries, reflected on the role of different legal cultures in creating barriers to the completion of trials, and debate over the location of trials for both logistical and/or symbolic reasons. This blog reflects on an expert discussion held on the 3^rd of May. Bringing together academics and practitioners[2] we focused on two key areas: evidence and expertise; and court location and legitimacy. For the first area we were interested in discussing how issues of proximity and distance, materiality and embodiment shape the possibilities of gathering testimony or accumulating evidence, as well as how particular kinds of knowledge become legally legible and useful. For the second area we were interested in discussing the implications of trial location and what the consequences are of distance between the alleged crime and the site of legal redress.

The two concepts of proximity and distance were central to the discussions. The idea of proximity is often attached to questions of intimacy, of embodiment, of place. Distance is often understood through ideas of separation, of being dispassionate, of being technical or instrumental in ways in which legal processes unfold. The questions of proximity and distance feed into a whole array of further issues of the very unequal landscapes of power that international legal processes unfold within. So, when we think about proximity and distance we quickly arrive at questions of the relationship between legal processes and peacebuilding; of what kind of justice is being pursued – restorative, retributive, distributive justice; of technical issues surrounding the organisation of legal processes; of how the issues of proximity and distance play out within the unfolding of trials, for example, or the organisation of court spaces; and of which kinds of knowledge are drawn upon in how the legal processes are organised and unfold.

Our discussions quickly identified a tension between international jurisdiction and continued presence or pressure of bounded territory and their applicable laws. We first heard from Sara Kendall and Jennifer Burrell who offered insights from the National Sciences Foundation (United States) funded project ‘Evidentiary Dilemmas and Emergent Publics: How Contestations Over New Geospatial Technologies are Shaping International Justice’. International jurisdiction such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Court, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone have used satellite imagery before, but the status of Geo-Spatial evidence gathered by other actors such as civil society organisation and the family members of disappeared persons raises new questions about evidence and expertise. For international bodies such as the International Criminal Court, evidence has traditionally been the preserve of experts, governed by strict standards of admissibility. However, work by civil society and families of victims gathering Geo-Spatial data, for example on the location of graves, raises questions about the different constituencies in accountability projects: in whose name, by whom, and for whom is justice carried out? What constitutes evidence and how should it be sourced? Such developments and the questions they prompted have led to changes in the legal landscape. There has been an increase in technical training for using such technology, the development of apps by civil society organisations to establish chains of custody in crowdsourced evidence, and the establishment of a Scientific Advisory Board at the International Criminal Court. There has also been a challenge to previous ideas of the ‘expert’ as families of the disappeared develop knowledge of Geo-Spatial technologies that go beyond the knowledge of prosecutors.

We then heard from Holly Porter who reflected on the epistemological implications of space and place with reference to the trial and conviction of Ugandan Dominik Ongwen at the International Criminal Court. In particular she recounted her experience of watching on television the confirmation of charges hearing, whilst sitting in a hotel in Gulu, Northern Uganda, where many of the atrocities Ongwen was convicted of had been committed. During this hearing there was an extension of the crimes to include sexual crimes, and both the prosecution and defence spoke directly to this. When they did so, there was an illuminating contrast between the Latin references of the prosecution, who referred to the rape of women in Roman mythology, and the cultural references of the defence attorney, who referred to the customary ceremonies and performances of marriage. As Holly Porter argued, it was clear that international jurisdiction was bringing together multiple loci of enunciation in one moment. The events were live streamed, and experienced, enunciated, and apprehended, in multiple places at the same time, with different audiences in mind. The technology of livestreaming made this possible, for justice to ‘speak’ from and to different places. This confluence of the local, national, and global was at the heart of this instance of international jurisdiction.

In the following presentation Megan Hirst from Doughty Street Chambers offered a practitioner’s view of the relationship between the physical proximity of the court and victims, and the legitimacy of the court. She spoke with reference to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, created by a 2001 law to try serious crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-1979, and the International Criminal Court investigations into Bangladesh-Myanmar. Working on the assumption that there is a connection between legitimacy and victim-centredness[3] Megan reflected on the intimidating physical set-up of international court rooms, of the limited cultural and linguistic local knowledge of international lawyers, and of the need for a court to be accessible to victims in the case of delayed or lengthy justice processes. Community engagement, inclusion of civil parties, opportunities to attend hearings, and opportunities to interact with other victims and lawyers were all cited as ways to approach effective court outreach. Importantly, we need to know more about what individuals’ value about participating in court activities and what individuals who have not participated feel they have missed. This will vary hugely, and as Megan pointed out it is not necessarily only the experience of going to court and testifying which is relevant but the associated interactions which may have value for victims.

In all of the presentations and discussions during the workshop it was clear that proximity per seis not a good thing for victims. Conditions of accessibility to justice processes, of modes of participation, and constructions of expertise all shape the degrees of separation between court and victim and how they are experienced. Moreover, we can think of proximity in multiple ways. There is the proximity of knowing – of how much information is shared, accessible and moving between victims and lawyers. There is the proximity of place – of the physical location of the court and how it might operate outreach activities. And there is the proximity of empathy – how much individuals in the international justice process can understand and empathise with the situations and experiences of victims. The degrees of separation between victims and international justice processes are real and relevant but we need to know much more about how the complexities of distance and varied proximities shape the experience of victims as well as the perceived legitimacy of a given court or justice process.

Author Bios

Alex Jeffrey is a Reader in Human Geography at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College. Alex’s research has focused on the politics of international intervention in post-conflict societies with a particular focus on the role of legal practices and institutions. Alex is author of two single-authored monographs: The Improvised State(Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) and The Edge of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Dr Briony Jones is a Reader in International Development in the Politics and International Studies Department of the University of Warwick. She is also Co-Director of the Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development. Briony’s research takes place at the intersection between development, peacebuilding and transitional justice with a strong focus on citizenship, the politics of intervention, and the politics of knowledge.

Mouzayian Khalil : 29 Sep 2021 10:16 |  Tags: International Criminal Court International Jurisdiction International Law Justice Peacebuilding |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem