Tourism: A Vehicle for Development? - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 29

vehicle. As has been suggested here, the notion that economic growth is
synonymous with development has been largely discredited - development
is not simply about enrichment in a material sense, but about the enrichment
of people's lives in terms of freedom, choice, self-betterment and well-being.
Tourism undoubtedly creates wealth but, as subsequent chapters question,
does it contribute to this broader concept of development ?
Interestingly, some would suggest that neither tourism, nor indeed any
other economic activity, can be an effective catalyst of development. More
specifically, it is argued that 'development' is no longer a viable global process
or objective, that we have reached the 'end of development' (Hewitt, 2000).
Therefore, this introduction to the role of tourism in development would not
be complete without, finally, a consideration of the future of the concept of
development as a whole.
The End of Development?
Since the early 1990s, a number of commentators have increasingly ques-
tioned the very concept of development, concluding that the age of interna-
tional development as a realistic global process had come to an end. As Sachs
argues, after 40 years of development as the primary objective and aspiration
of the less developed world, now 'the idea of development stands like a ruin
in the intellectual landscape . . . It is time to dismantle this mental structure'
(Sachs, 1992: 1). Along with other members of the so-called 'post-development
school', Sachs argues that the notion of development is fundamentally
flawed, inherently unjust and has never worked and, therefore, should either
be simply abandoned or replaced with a less mechanistic, prescriptive
approach (Rahnema, 1997).
A number of factors influence post-development thinking. Generally,
global development is considered by some to have been achieved at a high
cost to some developing countries; poorer, peripheral nations have been par-
ticularly susceptible to globalisation and neoliberalism (Sidaway, 2007).
More specifically, the 1980s and 1990s are widely considered to have been
'lost decades' of development. That is, in many less developed countries the
development process either stagnated or went into reverse, with socio-
economic conditions worsening for the majority of people in those countries.
A variety of interrelated problems and factors, including high debt repay-
ments, a decline in real non-oil commodity prices, a decline in foreign invest-
ment and aid and greater trade protectionism within the industrialised
world, contributed to this situation whilst, more generally, the neoliberal
economic development policies of the 1980s also came to be widely criticised
(Hewitt, 2000). At the same time, the industrialised countries themselves
were experiencing severe economic recession, further retarding economic
growth in less developed countries.