Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
literacies; a range of skills and knowledges are brought to (and gained from) tourism encoun-
ters (Hannam, 2006). Tourism is thus 'full of contradictory possibilities and potentials'
(Watson and Kopachevsky, 1994: 660).
Also, we need to ask what new connections can be made between critical tourism geo-
graphers and the worlds of tourism industry management and social activism. Analysis of the
moral gateways opened (or closed) by tourism encounters underpinned Waitt
et al.
's (2007:
261) recommendations to national park managers: about whether cross-cultural signage
worked, and whether restrictions on tourist movements intended to respect local indigenous
communities in fact had the opposite effect, making tourists feel guilty to be there, and thus
more estranged. In their case, pride, shame, guilt and surprise were emotional responses to
visiting Uluru, a famous site of Aboriginal heritage in Australia. Through these emotions
moral refl ection was either suppressed or pursued. Those tourists able to acknowledge shame
tended to explore indigenous culture with interest and respect, and thus productive moral
gateways were opened that assisted attempts to promote reconciliation.
What other possible practical lessons arise from micro-analysis of encounters? Can
confrontation and tactile intensity be harnessed to enable 'symbolic excavation' of diffi cult or
suppressed memor ies - or to deliberately invoke emotional responses, what Bal lant yne (2003)
calls 'hot interpretations' of social, environmental and moral issues? In America's Deep South
museums invite tourists to touch the material objects and landscapes of slavery - shackles and
chains - heightening the drama of encounter, and forcing museum visitors to 'participate in
the memory work of not forgetting or trivialising the enslaved and their experiences'
(Alderman and Campbell, 2008: 338). There are indubitably other similar opportunities for
museums and galleries to enlist tactility towards educational and curative goals.
Finally - and mindful of the perennial depiction of tourism geography as 'shallow' and
'frivolous' - something needs to be said about the possibility of reclaiming tourism as fun (see
also Anton Clavé,
Chapter 28 i
n this volume). Holiday escapism may well tempt ignorance
of unethical practices, but does that mean dismissing fun as a possible site of analysis? Surely
there is something in the unexpected surprises and comforts of strangers (White and White,
2008), in the transient and transgressive spaces of festivals, backpacker hostels and bars
(Wilson and Richards, 2008), that enables community and communality to be remade in
unlikely ways. Even that most stereotypically mundane form of mass tourism, family holi-
days, provides meaningful encounters, because having fun together cements human relation-
ships (Obrador Pons, 2004). Without tourism, the world would be dull - and more pointedly,
tourism's only alternative, immobility, is an invitation to xenophobia. For this reason tourism
encounters warrant further analysis and refl ection.
