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of observation . . . where their “unique human qualities and agency are not represented”'.
Consequently, whilst a discursive approach to marketing communications reveals how cultural
knowledge is produced for tourism markets, it also illuminates how they are implicated in rela-
tions of power between various constituents of the tour product. This suggests that marketing
communications can be 'read' in ways that privilege certain tourism constituents (e.g. tourist)
whilst marginalising, subverting or excluding others (e.g. workers or local communities), thus
opening up tourism discourse to critical research agendas with a focus on
power
.
Tourism communications as a discourse of power
Notwithstanding the various conceptions in socio-political theory, it is necessary here to provide
a summary outline of the notion of
power
and what this means for understanding marketing
communications in tourism. In more 'structuralist' views, power has been thought of as a dialectic
system of domination (e.g. Karl Marx), in which the choices and actions of one group are
invariably limited by another dominant group within a hegemonic system. Here the system (e.g.
capital) subjects the individual to alienating forms of incarceration, fi xing them into positions of
disempowerment that they cannot readily shake off (e.g. proletariat). In this view, power is seen
as an omnipresent structural feature of social systems such as tourism markets, rendering
marketing communications
a social mechanism that refl ects an entrenched touristic system of
control and domination. Other 'post-structuralist' views do not take power as a given,
structural
axis of 'the system' but as a
process
or 'negotiated order' of (dis)empowerment. In particular, the
process of creating social identities, practices and relations for tourist interpretations is seen to
allocate privileges, resources and freedoms to some agents that are denied to others (Thurot and
Thurot 1983). Crucially, in this view, marketing communications is seen as a discursive process
that transforms relations of power in the process of constructing tourism knowledge. In
the remainder of this chapter, we will consider the role of marketing communications in the
allocation of social identities, relations and practices through tourism discourse that has both
enabling and 'limiting effects' for tourism constituents.
Norton (1996) shows how marketing communications represent an ideal version of Africa for
the tourist - as exotic and primitive - but in quite restricted ways that distort and confi ne how
tourists might otherwise interpret their relationships with cultural and natural entities:
Although the accounts of East Africa developed by tourists are rich in aesthetic detail
compared with the archetypes promoted in tourism marketing, they are partial accounts
which are unable to draw on discourses which are hidden from them, such as the history of
civilisation and slavery in East Africa, economic and political differences between ethnic
groups, and historical and contemporary struggles against the expropriation of park land.
(Norton 1996: 369)
Thus, by augmenting knowledge of tourism, the discourse of marketing communications precipi-
tates 'masking effects'. By creating an ideal representation of a holiday and the identities and
relations operating in it, other (perhaps more candid if less appealing) versions are hidden, restricted
or altogether expunged from it. However, whilst marketing communications
precipitates relations
of power, it is not necessary to conclude that these are fi xed, absolute or immovable. Power is not
(as in the Marxian view) unidirectional or totalizing. Under a broad discursive view, it is organized
in ways that negotiate, but not dictate, relative power for agents to exercise certain choices. Tourists,
locals and other constituents may contest, reject, negotiate and even transform the discourse of
marketing communications (rather than enact it mechanistically!). In this sense it is better to speak
