DESERT FANTASIES - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 146

an King of Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. The question is, who is teaching
these Emiratis their own culture and style?
The reality is discouraging. One of the biggest losers in this push toward tourism has
been local culture, beginning with the Arabic language. The youth of the Emirates have
been described as “linguistically rootless,” with mediocre English and bare literacy in Ar-
abic. An early study in 2003 by the Abu Dhabi Policy Agency found that one-fourth of
males and one-fifth of females were actually illiterate in Arabic, with the figures far worse
among the young. Blame was assigned to all the public English of the tourism world and
the foreign workers, beginning with the Asian maids who are raising the children. As the
language disappears, basic Arab cultural forms and habits disappear as well.
Tourism is hollowing out the culture. For all of its outward insistence on its Arab moor-
ings, the twin cities of the UAE are losing their moorings as they become global cities for
tourists. Anthropologists have been predicting such a fate for tourist destinations for cen-
turies. From the first field studies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, anthropologists
warned that tourism was turning local culture into a commodity to entertain foreigners
and that, ultimately, as foreigners demanded standard hotels, standard meals and standard
comforts (including the speaking of English), that local culture would lose its authenticity
and then disappear.
“The first question we ask is what effect tourism has on the culture and identity of host
communities,” said Professor Carol Greenhouse, chair of Princeton University's Depart-
ment of Anthropology. “Is the culture bolstered and enhanced or is it perverted and de-
formed?”
She told me during an interview on campus that while tourism is now considered an
essential right of the middle and leisure classes, that doesn't remove the responsibility of
understanding what they are doing to the countries they visit. “Tourism is creating a mono-
culture of shopping malls, hotels, karaoke bars and restaurants—a cultural fusion that is
erasing native culture.”
As if to prove her point, while we were attending the Green Tourism conference,
Abu Dhabi was host to the Formula One races, held near the new Ferrari World red
dome “wonderland.” Besides its otherworldly racing track that skirts yacht basins so the
wealthy needn't budge from their ships, Yas Island has concert arenas and the world's fast-
est roller coaster. Hotels were packed. Foreign celebrities—King Juan Carlos of Spain and
Sir Richard Branson—attended and Abu Dhabi was declared “firmly on the map” of hip
places for the world's jet set.
That is the bargain that the UAE has made. In return for becoming one of the most de-
sired tourism destinations in the world, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are now global cities with
little left of their desert heritage, their environment or their hold on the future should all
those foreigners leave.