Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
subvert and disrupt (colonising) tourist representations of 'other' places and peoples, and
thereby create multiple performance possibilities in tourism in places. This research extends
an 'ethics' of postcolonialism in order to look at the potentials in postcolonial thinking that
allow for a re-reading of tourism encounters (see Gibson,
Chapter 6
of this volume).
This re-reading requires a foregrounding of 'orientalisms' (Saïd, 1978)
and
'occidental-
isms' (Venn, 1993, 2000) in order to rethink the relationship between 'tourist' and 'toured'.
This involves an approach to culture which does not look to the past as a site of that cultural
presentation but rather sees culture as always in process and as always becoming (Ashcroft,
2001). With such an approach in mind, tourism studies has engaged with postcolonial theo-
ries such as 'hybridity' and 'mimicry' (Bhabha, 1994) to consider what Hollinshead (2004)
argues to be the potential of tourism to act as a platform for presenting 'counter narratives'
and therefore to act as 'a vital medium of being and becoming' (2004: 38). Yet the tourism
and postcolonialism relationship is complex and, as Tucker and Akama (2009: 515) argue, 'It
is often quite diffi cult, therefore, for tourism commentators to know when cultural identities
which appear to mimic and play according to colonial representations should be read as
empowering forms of “cultural hybridity” and when they should be read as passive submis-
sion to the tourist colonial narrative.'
This complexity is explored by tourism studies in multiple contexts and further illustrates
the need within postcolonial studies, and by association tourism, to reject the use of simplistic
binaries of colonised and coloniser. For example, Yan and Santos (2009) discuss the notion of
hybridity within tourism to consider a more complex understanding of representations of self
and Other. Within the context of China they explore how 'exoticised' images are used selec-
tively in tourism representations in order to construct a particular national narrative. Yan and
Santos' study approaches tourism and postcolonialism in a way that does not focus on the
'tourist' per se but rather on how tourism is deployed, and in many ways subverted, for postco-
lonial politics within a particular place. Tourism in this sense becomes a form of representation
through which such politics can be played out, and through which colonial or Western episte-
mologies and ontologies might be contested and subverted. Therefore, while the predomi-
nance of Western discourses within tourism representations can be viewed as inherently
colonial in nature, it may be that colonial discourses or narratives are being utilised not as an
element of disempowerment but rather for the purpose of an entirely other
post
colonial politic.
Advancing postcolonial futures in tourism
The future of tourism studies is one which must recognise the increased movement of people
and the complex identities which evolve from such movement (see Gale,
Chapter 4
and
Duncan,
Chapter 14 o
f this volume as well as Mavriˇ and Urry, 2009 on tourism studies and
the New Mobilities Paradigm). This movement has complicated how ideas of 'nation, citizen
and social life' are considered (Mitchell, 2003: 84). Hence, the movement of people between
places, such as that of the so-called 'Other' from the periphery to the centre (as both a migrant
and as a tourist), calls into question many of the assumptions of postcolonial studies thus far,
notably ideas about where the actual
site
of postcolonial attention should be. This increased
mobility between places and the associated confusion of insider/outsider, of who belongs and
who does not, indicate a potential point of engagement for the future of postcolonial thinking
within tourism geographies. Research in tourism and postcolonialism can thus be suggested
as advancing in two main directions. Firstly, an important growth area of research is the
analysis and consideration of the implications of growing non-Western tourist demand. The
second area of key concern suggested here is the role of tourism in helping further thinking
