www.elsevier.

com/locate/atoures

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 738761, 2001 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0160-7383/01/$20.00

PII: S0160-7383(00)00075-X

THE HOST SHOULD GET LOST

Paradigms in the Tourism Theory
Julio Aramberri Drexel University, USA
Abstract: Among various substantive contributions to the general, theoretical study of tourism, three of themthe hostguest paradigm, tourism as nonordinary behavior, and the theory of the lifecycle of attractionsare commonly seen as the most fertile. This paper reviews the hostguest paradigm. It argues that this framework, initially developed by anthropologists and applied later by Marxian scholars and postmodern critics, does not meet the challenges of explaining mass tourism, nor does it fully address the complex interactions between modern societies and pre-modern communities. The paper contends that this paradigm should be discarded and new conceptual venues explored. Keywords: commodities, society and community, tradition. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Resume: Lhote devrait sen aller: le role du paradygme dans la theorie du tourisme. Parmi les approches theoriques au tourisme, il y en a trois: le paradyme accueilvisiteur, le tourisme comme comportement non ordinaire et la theorie du cycle de vie des attractions, qui sont considerees comme les plus fertiles. Cet article examine le paradygme accueilvisiteur. On soutient que ce cadre theorique, qui a ete developpe par des anthropologues et applique plus tard par des savants marxistes et des critiques postmodernes, ne repond ni au de dexpliquer le tourisme de masse, ni aux problemes des interactions complexes entre les ` societes modernes et les communautes pre-modernes. Larticle propose que ce paradygme soit laisse en ecart et que de nouvelles formules soient explorees. Mots-cles: merchandise, societe et communaute, tradition. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION According to a Kwakiutl folktale, the tribe elders were worried that, year after year, the potlatch rituals were missing some of their former glitter. They gathered in council and discussed different courses of action. After some thoughtful deliberations, their conclusion was clear and unanimous. If we want better banquets, we need more food. Next year, more animals were roasted, but the embers of the ritual were not rekindled. The following year, there were more and richer ingredients in the fruit salads, but the texture remained as chewy as before. Two years later more berries were offered to no avail. After that,

Julio Aramberri is Head of the Department of Hospitality Management and Professor of Tourism at Drexel University (Philadelphia PA 19014, USA. Email <jraramberri@ hotmail.com>). Until 1985 he was Associate Professor of Sociology in Spain. After that, he held different jobs in the Spanish national tourism administration and became its Director General (19871990). His research interests include mass society and culture and marketing. 738

JULIO ARAMBERRI

739

they tried the biggest food extravaganza ever. Where there had usually been four times more food than they could possibly consume, this time they would gorge themselves witless doubling again the quantities of every course. Then, the young cook dared to speak. It is not the amount of food that will bring the spark back into our parties. In fact, it is not more food that we need, but new recipes. The proof of the cake is not in the eating, but in the cooking. Sooner done than said, he offered himself as the new kitchen master for the incoming ceremony. There is no need to tell what a great success the banquet was, for he had a lot of new recipes. The news about the party was heard many leagues away. The elders were smiling again and one wished to say that they all lived happily ever after, but this would not be completely true. For the young cook, quick to build on his well deserved fortunes, accepted the offer of a venture capitalist, moved to Taos, New Mexico, and now runs a Northwestern nouvelle outt that is knocking the socks off Chez Panisse, Le Bec Fin, K-Pauls Louisiana Kitchen, and Massas. But this part of the tale is another story. This bogus Kwakiutl myth illustrates some of the quandaries that haunt present discussions of the broad subject of whether there is or could be a theory or discipline of tourism (Tribe 1997), a general eld tantamount to what is called a science (McIntosh and Goeldner 1995) or a tourology (Leiper 1981). Up to now this discussion has been muted or left to the acknowledged savants, but this is bound to change in the future for a good reason. Tourism studies, whatever their nature may be, are becoming progressively accepted in academia. One can see this transformation in action. Tourism chairs and other staff positions are being created in quick succession, new departments are teeming, new elds of specialization developed, and almost every other month a new journal spread its wings. But no academic branch will be completely legitimized on the bare basis of increasing numbers of teachers, journals, articles, and international meetings. If one cannot build some theoretical thread, or more accurately threads, below the maelstrom of case studies and econometric approaches that usually count more Greek letters than the Anabasis, the profession will get no respect. Up to now the savants have mostly favored three main strategies to cope with the situation, all centered on methodological tinkering. The proposals range from something like spicing the nominative/ genitive, through brew your own to lets split the difference. In the rst move, one is encouraged to build as many tourism and or of tourism as possible, allowing the users to ll in the blanks with whatever contraption they may think of: psychology, anthropology, economics, metalinguistics, sociology, eurythmics, and many more. Annals of Tourism Research alone has published 16 special issues along the years (even one on tourism and centrally-planned economies). In the brew-your-own position all the rage is about multi- or pluridisciplinariety, and one is encouraged to blend one part structuralism, three parts semiotics, and a twist of political science, stirred not shaken (Echtner and Jamal 1997; Tribe 1997). The lets split the difference approach goes one step further to nd a kernel

740

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

of truth in most theoretical positions; then it goads them to bloom in virtuous cross pollination (Dann and Cohen 1996), irrespective of the fact that their creators might have felt that they were mutually exclusive. On the other hand, it would be untrue to suggest that at some substantive or general level the study of tourism is a wasteland. As a matter of fact, there are a few theoretical contributions that endeavor to go beyond the realm of methodology and provide a framework to explain its nature and its evolution. Three main tunes can be counted. They are the hostguest theme (Smith 1989); the tourism as nonordinary behavior melody (Graburn 1989; Jafari 1984, 1987; Smith 1992); and the more evolutionary song of the lifecycle of tourism attractions (Butler 1980; Oppermann 1995). Another leitmotivauthenticity in tourismalso comes to mind. Boorstin (1964) rst, and Cohen (1979a, 1979b, 1988) later, turned it into a subject for theoretical discussion, and it has found a new lease of life in the writings of some postmodern sociologists (Brown 1996; Harkin 1995; Hughes 1995). The notion of authenticity, however, is a perennial source of misconceptions, to be cast aside. Dictionaries (MerriamWebster, for example) have it that authentic is both the quality of something that is genuine, not false or imitation, and of something that conforms to an original so as to reproduce its essential features, or is made or done in the same way as an original. On this basis, both an original and its (good) imitations are authentic. In modern philosophical parlance, authenticity is only used in the rst sense, as the opposite of non-genuine or alienated. Even though it harks back to Hegel, in more recent times it was Heidegger who developed the antithesis in a thorough way. In tourism it has been used to make a difference between that form which endeavors to discover the genuine, and other commercialized or alienated versions of it. However, the distinction is far from self-explanatory. What some people experience as authentic is often considered as alienated by others; one individuals true experience is anothers kitsch, and vice versa. In most cases, there is no generally accepted way to tell the authentic from a fake. To clear this hurdle, authenticity is further repackaged in a normative way. As most gatekeepers of authenticity are academics, what they nd genuine, engaging, worthwhile, and so on, unsurprisingly coincides with the usually midbrow or mesocratic values that pervade their cultural space. In the end, authentic is what academics and other social scientists dene as such, and the question of why should an ecotour in the Amazon be a more genuine experience than a visit to Disneyworld begs a nal answer: because some scholars say so. This normative fallacy seems a good reason to divest the notion of authenticity of its theoretical ambitions. To put it in Heideggerian jargon, this concept is a Holzweg or, as Sam Spade would have it, a cold trail. The other three contributions have been more helpful in thematizing the study of tourism. However, it is difcult to avoid the feeling that they often create as many problems as they are meant to solve.

JULIO ARAMBERRI

741

The scope of this paper is a modest oneto express some sense of discomfort. As, at the same time, it would require much space to develop the argument for all three theoretical ensembles, it will conne itself to formulate a critique of the main conceptual framework used in many case studies and ethnographic descriptions of tourism, the hostguest founding myth. This proposal by many anthropologists, to whom in all fairness the discipline owes some of the rst theoretical reections on the trade (Nash and Smith 1991), is nevertheless a myth. It may seem a bit odd that a paper arising from the contention that there will be a growing demand for general approaches to tourism should start with a call to arms against the few existing substantive theories. Let the author excuse himself by recalling that in Hindu theology Lord Shivas cosmic dance is, at the same time, one of destruction and rebuilding (OFlaherty 1975:173174). Those familiar with Hegels Phanomenologie des Geistes will also remember that the ascending march of the Spirit proceeds through different stages of negativity (1970: 3537; 93107). In this vein, the paper argues that the host guest model does not help to explain the nature of modern mass tourism; obscures the complex interactions between local cultures and their environments, and favors a static and exclusionary vision of cultures. REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS Film buffs may remember Our Hospitality, an excellent movie shot by Buster Keaton in 1923. In the lm, based on the real life bloodbath of the Hatelds and the McCoys in 19th century rural Kentucky, young McKay is coming back from the North where his mother sent him when he was a kid in order to spare his life. Now he is returning to the town of his ancestors, entirely unaware that his sweethearts male relatives are his sworn enemies, ready to kill him as soon as opportunity arises. This does not come easy, for fate decides that young McKay will be a guest of the Caneld family for a while. Here the paradigm imposes itself, as young McKay cannot be killed while he is a guest. Such is the covenant of olden times. Apparently there was a time, well before packaged tours, good guidance and police agencies came into being, when traveling was a major hazard. This is why people chose to go about in groups, as they did in Chaucers book (1977). In this way, pilgrims could not only knock over the exhaustion of a long journey with merry tales, they would also ensure a modicum of personal safety in the company of others. Even though Chaucers times were already the 14th century, when a network of inns had been developed, some hospitality services were exchanged for money, and relays provided fresh horses for the next stage, safety in the highways was not paramount. Before that, travelers had to entrust themselves as guests to the protection of their different hosts along their way (Bloch 1939:7377). The implicit compact of the host and his guest had three main features. The rst one was protection extended by the host to the guest on the grounds of their common humanity. The mere fact of showing

742

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

up at somebodys manor implied the provision of safety for the time the guest chose to stay or the host allowed him to remain. Wagnerians will remember the rst act of Die Walkure where the covenant is clearly spelled. Siegmund arrives in the middle of a foggy night at Hundings courtyard where he nds a cozy reception and is nely wined and dined (a sweet drink of creamy rich mead) by Sieglinde, Hundings wife. When Hunding comes back some time later, Siegmund and Sieglinde have struck a long, intimate conversation (My husband is a real Schweinhund, Im a loser), some wooing (My name is Wehwalt, but my friends call me Sigi), some irting (Wouldnt it be cool if I called you Friedmund), and a declaration of love at rst sight. Upon his arrival, Hunding does not like this dallying a little bit (Wagner 1983). Even worse, he realizes that the stranger is none other than the alleged criminal he and his retinue of shady characters have been chasing in vain for hours. But he cannot kill the wretch pointblank. By the mere fact of treading the sacred soil of his home, Siegmund is his guest and cannot be harmed. Then, Hunding decides to read him the riot act and announces that Siegmund must leave his abode at dawn and that once he is out of bounds, but only then, it will be chacun pour soi et Dieu pour tous. They will no longer be bonded by the sacred covenant of host and guest. The second element demanded reciprocity. The guest shall return his hosts present protection whenever their roles are reversed, and in their future travels the host, his family members, or his associates nd themselves in the same predicament as the guest at present. As Chaucers summoner puts it in The Friars Tale, And where do you live at home, dear brother? I might come calling there some other day (1977:296). The key to the relation is not any cash link, but a mutual pact between equals, a bond that will work both ways. You owe me, brother is how they put it in some neighborhoods. Finally, the covenant prescribed a batch of duties for both sides. The host had to tend not only to his guests protection, but to his material well being as well. On the other hand, the guest became a temporary member of the family. In Rome, guests, like anything else in the household, were in manu (in the hands) of the host or paterfamilias (Miquel 1992:6671). They had to abide by the manorial rules, respect the property of the host, be helpful, endure without complaints whatever they were given or asked to do. Should the guest break any of these rules, sanctions might be meted out, and, according to the seriousness of the offense, he might even be cast away, considered an enemy, and treated accordingly. Even Wotan, the father of the gods, would not save his beloved son Siegmund after he eloped with Sieglinde. In compliance with the sacred covenant, he even collaborated with Hunding to kill him (Wagner 1983). From such examples, many anthropologists see this old arrangement at work during their eldwork, and think this premodern covenant is the paradigm of tourist exchanges. This is where confusion starts, for in modern mass tourism, the hostguest model does not work.

JULIO ARAMBERRI

743

Ubiquitous Commodities To start with a simple fact, there would be no modern tourism system if there were no buyers of tour packages. It does not mean that there would be none without the existence of these deals, but that modern tourism starts with the purchase of a batch or package of different services such as transportation, accommodation, catering, entertainment, and so on. Whether they are bought from the nal provider, or from a middleperson or wholesaler is unimportant at this juncture. The issue is that modern tourism kicks in with the purchase of some commodities and with money exchanges. Here is where usually chaos erupts, for the terms commodity, as well as commodication and commoditization processes are highly sensitive. In a narrow sense commodities are primary goods that are raw or only rened in part. They are traded for processing or for incorporation into nal goods. Examples of these in this sense are crude oil, cotton, rubber, grains, metals and other minerals (Britannica Online 1999). There is a broader sense, where commodities are dened as interchangeable, mass-produced articles of commerce (Merriam Webster Online 1999). Commoditization or commodication is the process by which something becomes a commodity. For some scholarly traditions though, there is more to commodities than meets the eye. They are shorthand for social conict. At least two schools of thought have turned commodities into a central concept of their theoretical approaches: Marxism, and postmodern cultural criticism or deconstructionist theory. Both use the notion in their onslaught on modern, capitalist societies that turn on market relations. For Marx, a commodity is a good or service produced to be exchanged for money (1972:6284) in the same way as dictionaries would have it. But the production of commodities is the starting point to the accumulation of capital, and capitalist society is reproduced by the production of commodities. In the market, human labor is assigned a price in the same way as any other commodity or merchandise. Its value is that of the components used to produce it, or the amount of goods and services that a standard worker needs to reproduce himself and his family, that is, to show up for work the next day over a number of years. In monetary terms this is called a workers wages or salary (Marx 1972:557590). Under general conditions, labor has a wonderful characteristic: on any given day, a worker is able to produce the equivalent of the goods and services he/she needs to reproduce self and family, and still some surplus (Marx 1972:243). Under market conditions, however, the owners of the means of production appropriate this surplus without further compensation to the worker. This is the source of Mehrwert (surplus value) (Marx 1972:521541; 1974:375376). In this way, commodities explain the riddle that allows the capitalist class to become rich without toil, and the capitalist system to grow in ever increasing cycles of accumulation (Marx 1972:640649). Whenever a commodity is bought, one is contributing to the expropriation of some surplus by the capitalist. The higher the commodication of

744

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

social life (that is, the higher the number of social relations that are turned into commodities), the more widespread the system. On the other hand, since most humans are wage earners (whether productive or unproductive is outside this discussion), when they consume commodities the ties that ensure their own subjection are deepened. That is what Marx called commodity fetishism (1972:8588). The daily ration of commodities blunts the collective capacity to understand that the social order of capitalism is based on the expropriation of the majority by a minority through private ownership of the means of production. Marx wrote the perfect epic thriller of modern history. There was a crime, many victims, a bunch of culprits, and eventual retribution in revolution and socialism. The picture offered by some postmodern critics of (Western) culture is both fuzzier and less grandiose. Postmoderns also start with the centrality of commodities and commodity production in modern social life. But where most Marxians see a mainly economic relation (commodities are the product of salaried, alienated, reied social work under capitalism), postmodernism sees the logic of symbols. Commodities are repositories of symbols. In the same way as Marxs commodities both reproduced and hid exploitation, they as symbols impose the logic of modernity in the seemingly innocent act of consumption. Commodities, like myths, change history into nature, as Barthes had it (1957:215). Postmoderns explain what creates global (dis)order in many ways, but none of them in economics. Perhaps the best-known theory is the gospel according to St. Michel, Foucault that is (1972, 1990, 1995). Every commodity is a symbol of power, for all social relations, even those that one might think completely innocent, are socially constructed through power struggles (Lacan 1966, 1971). However, not all those who ght to accumulate power are equally successful. Modern society and its symbols legitimize the triumph of just some contenders. Although there are different theological schools, it is supposed that the symbols enshrine the power of Western, well to do, heterosexual, capitalist, white males. The more that is consumed, the stronger this unequal society grows. All those who do not t the moldwomen, gays, ethnic minorities, the poor, and nonmodern societies, in brief, the Otherare everywhere in chains. Once the Rosetta Stone of modernism has been successfully decoded, there remains a strange feeling. A majority of humans accept those social constructions as the natural order of things. No matter how blatantly oppressive these constructs are, societies do not rebel. Why do they repeat time and again those unforgettable words that the Catalan university of Cervera offered to Ferdinand VII, the new absolute monarch of Spain, at the beginning of the 19th century: away from us that baneful habit of thinking? That is what deconstructionism is all about. Cultural critics will lay bare the power structures hidden under ordinary social relations, and stress the role that modern culture and technology play in this tragedy of errors. The usual suspects are the all too naked powers that be, plus the hidden persuaders: advertising (Baudrillard 1996; Fine and Leopold 1993; Urbain 1989); the media (Fallows 1996); TV (Postman

JULIO ARAMBERRI

745

1986, 1993); capitalism (Lash and Urry 1988; Urry 1995); consumerism (Mintz 1998; Ritzer 1996; Wood 1998); tourism (Cohen 1995; Crick 1996); repressive tolerance (Marcuse 1992) and the rest, either each one of them at a time, or all together (Watson and Kopachevsky 1996). Then, to dismantle the symbols of the old domination, there comes the reconstruction of alternative identities, let one hundred liberated narratives blossom. Unlike primitive socialists, though, cultural critics know all too well that the promise of a new, fairer set of social regulations may be another trap, a diachronic illusion. There can no longer be great wars and revolutions to destroy the old order altogether, just some scattered guerrilla operations. Instead of being an epic erupting, the works of postmodern critics sound like a collective elegy. This is the source of that strange feeling of helplessness postmoderns usually project. No matter how sweeping or impassioned their critiques, they seem unable to make even a dent in the coat of mail of modern capitalist culture. Cultural critics, so active in recent academic Kulturkampfe, in special ized journals and books, do not offer a template to change every day life and have been remarkably unable to advance their own positions outside some academic precincts. No matter how much they fuss about commoditization, people in the (un?)real world keep on traveling and buying their tour packages in the same way as they buy their groceries, clothing, or CDs. In the ordinary world, tourism is a social phenomenon that, like most in modern societies, is based on the production and consumption of commodities, services in this case (Smith 1994), that are exchanged via market relations. The hostguest paradigm cannot be used to account for most types of what is called tourist behavior. Excluded from the visual eld are all the interactions that do not take place between members of preindustrial communities and denizens of developed societies. These are nevertheless the overwhelming bulk of tourism, both domestic and international. The idea that a shared covenant of nonmonetary reciprocities could apply to these is preposterous. Whenever modern tourists check in at a hotel in Manhattan, Mallorca, or Vanuatu, or buy a ticket from an air carrier, they are not welcomed by complying hosts that will protect and pamper them in exchange for the expectation of a similar treatment in the future. Well, sir, wed rather have a imprint of your credit card. Just in case, you know. The anthropologists gaze (borrowing the concept from Urry 1990) does not record this in the radar screen. As the hostguest relation is, to some extent, what they document in their ethnographic studies, they project it on the much vaster phenomenon of modern, mass tourism. Some of the exchanges between local communities that they witness in their eldwork follow (followed?) the old covenant. But even where they may still be alive, they are only the tips of the titanic iceberg of the modern tourism system. It is difcult to quantify the number of trips to destinations where tourists will meet with communities of hunters and gatherers or others that are at the rst stages of the Neolithic revolution, but any educated guesstimate would limit them to just a fraction of the total 613 million international arrivals counted

746

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

in 1997 (WTO 1998:3). The massive attention accorded in academic circles to the small number of exchanges that happen on the outer rim of the industry inverts the situation of the (un?)real world. There is an additional fact that these gazes tend to overlook. In most cases, even the close encounters on the fringe cannot shun the cash link (Karch and Dann 1996). The hosts, no matter their individual generosity, are as eager as the clerks at the Plaza to get their dough. More than once, guests ready to experience the real backstage, the community recesses where authenticity is said to have its abode (MacCannell 1999), have only found there some wireless digital phone, linked to a printer that emits a record-of-charge of their credit cards (Authors personal experience in the quaint Garifuna shing village of Hopkins, Belize). Nothing to be ashamed of, the hosts are just taking care of business in the same way as any enterprising business owner would. The point, however, is that the nonmaterial reciprocity of the old covenant is gone and that no amount of mourning will bring it back to life. If the covenant is gone, so are also the fuzzy codes of mutual rights and duties that spelled its details. Now the main tie that binds the contracting parties is the deliverance of servicescommodities on the part of the hosts, and payment in cash for the tab they have been running on behalf of the guests. In fact, the hosts are no longer hosts, just providers of services, while the guests are no longer guests, just customers. Can one live with these hard facts of life and still go to heaven? Afrmative would be the reprobates reply, but to others this is unconscionable. As the model withers away, they turn it into a normative template. The hostguest relationship, no longer in operation, becomes the idealized pattern that tourists and the industry should follow. A case among many is a recent study of destination images in British brochures by Dann (1996). He classies his materials in what he calls a four quadrant model of tourist Paradise. He also reveals that in what he terms Paradise Controlled, that is, the only part of the quadrant where natives are shown side by side with tourists, they are portrayed as servants, as entertainers, or as vendors. It appears that this is exactly what they are expected to be or, more accurately, this is exactly the role they are supposed to be playing in this particular context. There are many other dimensions and roles to their personalities or social beings, but the fact is that promotional brochures are produced to illustratively inform potential clients on the services that they can expect at different price levels. If the industry is trying to sell a hotel stay in Chicago or Los Angeles, or a tour to a non-Western destination, it is normal that it will show the facilities, plus waiters, housekeepers, bartenders and so on who will be serving their prospective clients. If they happen to be natives of Paradise, then they will be iconized in the same functions as natives from NYC, Poughkeepsie, or Peoria at the Plaza. Why no lashes are batted at the latter, while so many brows raise at the former is difcult to understand, unless there is a non enunciated, moral propositionthat natives of

JULIO ARAMBERRI

747

Paradise should not be servants, entertainers, or vendorswhich may be quite praiseworthy. The problem, however, is the dissonance between the means and the end. Changing the way they are portrayed in brochures will not change the hard facts. Danns proposal sounds like the legal theory of objective responsibility, a late-feudal concept akin to responsibility without mens rea, whereby the carpenter could be prosecuted for having made the bed that others would use to commit adultery. In Danns case, it seems that the depictions of the natives of Paradise are responsible for their predicament. But if they were portrayed by promotional literature as biochemists, systems analysts, nanciers, top models, or Wharton MBAs, coeteris paribus, the majority of natives would still be servants, entertainers, or vendors. For it is not promotional brochures that are only or mainly responsible for their plight, but the prevailing socioeconomic conditions in their own societies. Unfortunately changing family structures, ownership models, general use of child labor, or widespread illiteracy is a bit more complicated than remodeling the next edition of TUI, Thomson Holidays, or AAdvantage Vacations brochures. It is unfair that most employment opportunities open to the natives of Paradise are in that capacity, but no amount of outrage per se will change their situation. Even more, in identifying the wrong culprits, this approach makes it still more difcult for the natives to improve their fortunes. Romancing the Host The hostguest paradigm, as discussed, becomes a theoretical void. On one side, it is factually inaccurate while, on the other, it entertains the illusion that just denouncing a dislike of what is done will make it disappear. This will not further general knowledge, nor help the nativesor the consumersmuch. Perhaps, it would be better if the host would, please, get lost. An additional reason why the hostguest model creates more problems than it solves is the implicit notion that host societies are in fact communities, made of one piece and about to be destroyed or irretrievably damaged by outside forces, namely the guests. The idea of community has a long history in philosophy and a more modern incarnation in the sociological theories of Tonnies (1988), who thought that all human groups fall between two main ideal types, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (community and society). To some extent, they exemplify the difference between traditional and industrial ways of life. Communities are smaller in size, natural in origin, and based on personal ties among their members. In contrast, societies are large, socially engineered, and made of impersonal links. Gemeinschaften seem to be the anthropologists stock in trade. The groups wherein they live, study, and do their eldwork are, to some extent, economically self reliant, tightly knit by organic solidarity, and driven by tradition. But this might not be the case. Most present day host communities do not conform to Tonnies ideal type. Above all, they are not self-reliant. It is becoming plainly impossible to nd communities that live completely outside the global network of economic,

748

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

political, and technological forces. Many of them have been opened through the operation of external intervention, like the natives of Paradise portrayed in Terrence Malicks 1998 lm The thin red line, silent witnesses and unwilling victims of a conict that happens to be at their backyard. More often, especially in recent times, the opposite is true. Host communities decide to put themselves on the market, now and then at the prodding of higher national authorities (Crystal 1989) or international agencies. It is easy to understand their urge. Guests are a source of cash, which is usually desirable because it makes material life easier. In subsistence economies such as those of most host communities, life is hard. In an economics sense, their productivity, mainly because of scarce capital and primitive technologies, is quite low (Lebergott 1993:63). Few natives of Paradise can say with the poet Et in Arcadia ego. Among hunters and gatherers, catching prey is difcult and random, and the fruits of the forests are subject to sudden bouts of scarcity. Low-tech agricultural communities have limited returns on their collective work. The green revolution may have distracted experts from the fact; but, for centuries, droughts and famines have been deadlier than the plague (Diamond 1997:195214). The natives, or their national authorities, or international agencies, or all of them, turn to other possibilities. They may transform themselves and their villages into attractions and vie for the prizes bestowed by international tourism on successful destinations. Entering this industry is seen as an efcient way to increase the quality of life, as many of the goods the hosts had to produce alone can now be bought from the outside world at a lesser price or with less toil, in exchange for the money they receive from their guests. The old division of labor so celebrated by Adam Smith rides again. The rewards may indeed be attractive. For example, in the case of the Balearic Islands. Together, the islands have been receiving growing numbers of domestic and international tourists since the 60s. Starting from a mere 400,000 in 1960, arrivals peaked at 10.1 million in 1998. In the same year, gross regional product reached $16.6 billion (the average exchange rate was 150 pesetas to $1) and the yearly per capita regional income reached $18,600, well above the EU median income. As such, tourism is mainly responsible for these effects. While it was negligible in the gross regional product 50 years ago (2% in 1950), it contributed 59% in 1998. In the meantime, the Balearic Islands have undergone a complete overhaul of their social structure. In 1950 and 1960 they still were a predominantly agrarian society (40% of their gross regional product came from the primary sector), but in 1998 they had all the trimmings of a modern one, where services account for nearly 80% (Bardolet 2000). Perhaps the most telling indicator has to do with the economic position of the islands in the ensemble of the Spanish economy. In 1950, among the 52 provinces of Spain, the Balearic Islands came number 16 in income. In 1980 they were number four, and in 1998 they reached the top place (Funcas 1999; Bardolet 2000:101122). This is a more impressive feat if one bears in mind that in this period Spain

JULIO ARAMBERRI

749

as a whole has been through a quick economic expansion. Outcomes like these whet the appetites of others, and increase the desirability of tourism development in other regions and communities. But who reaps the prots of the new industry? The argument is usually developed under the impacts of tourism label, and lines are nowadays well drawn in this controversy. To some scholars, the Faustian decision of engaging in tourism is, at the same time, a leap into bondage. For some, international tourism is indistinguishable from imperialism (Nash 1996). To others, even those well steeped in economics, the deal may not be so sweet as its advocates think (Young 1973; de Kadt 1979). To start with, there are the leakages and the overdone expectations. Some amount of the money made from tourism pays for imports that guests consume and the natives do not produce, mainly luxury goods. Leakage customarily goes up to some 50% of receipts. At the end of the day, the wages of sin are meager, investments may not be protable, ination rockets (Tribe 1995:181196), and job opportunities do not improve dramatically. The natives become servants, entertainers, and vendors. Furthermore, the best jobs created by tourism usually go to foreigners or outsiders, while top investment opportunities will be reserved to either foreign companies and/or local notables. At the same time, the environment deteriorates, traditions are on the wane, and local culture is about to wither away (McLaren 1998). This has all the appearances of Catch-22. Rational advocacy analysts, on the other hand, explain that, for one, there is more cash around than there used to be. Leakages occur, but it is only in La La Land that they are not a fact of life. Under normal circumstances, though, even in developed societies, there are constraints and trade offs. The United States, the worlds biggest economy, takes a staggering decit in its trade balance. Second, there are more perceived job opportunities around (Haralambopoulos and Pizam 1996). Some reckon that they are undesirable; however, they are often considered to be better than previously available jobs. Being a vendor or a beachboy (Karch and Dann 1996) usually does not offer a bright future, but it may seem a big promotion from the prospect of tilling the land from sunrise to sunset, diving ones lungs out to catch some pearls, looking for cow dung to re the hearth, or shing the rough seas in makeshift canoes (Lebergott 1993:6168). Third, while not many locals get fancy jobs in the industry (Lickorish and Jenkins 1997:210213), this is not a closed end. For, if they nd qualied natives of Paradise, big or mid-sized companies will not refrain from hiring them to executive positions. Some economic and cultural reasons account for this. Natives are usually paid less than expatriates, they are in good terms with the locals, and they offer a homey touch in the premises, something their clients love. Fourth, even though big investments such as luxury hotels tend to be out of bounds for local entrepreneurs, there are many other activities, often created by the increase of tourism ows, that natives may try their luck at, for the entry costs are still affordable (Tribe 1995:227239). Last, there are many problems with the natural environment, but more and more

750

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

tourists are showing some environmental consciousness (Hunter 1997), the talk of sustainable tourism has even reached some international tour operators who may be ready to actually make it work, and the international market is throwing a toll on to those destinations that do not clean their own backyard. The conclusion seems clear. There are no free lunches. One does not open the door to strangers without costs. Choosing among the different possibilities for economic development is a political issue. Postmoderns may happily agree with that, but perhaps with a different meaning. The contention here is that the decision to open themselves to tourism should be left to the majority of the local community, or to some other elected body. While some of their members may want to remain closed to tourists, others are in favor of letting them in. Usually, natives of Paradise are less prone to romancing themselves than many external observers, and look at their available possibilities in more than just black and white. They do their own costbenet analyses, as shown by experience in cases as different as those of Central Florida (Milman and Pizam 1988), and Nadi, in Fidji (King, Pizam and Milman 1993). Tourism impacts can be many, and both scholars and members of local communities are usually of more than one mind about them. Tourism can create opportunities that natives such as those of the Balearic Islands may or may not well turn to their own advantage. At any rate, the decision to open themselves to tourism is their sole responsibility. Still, unfortunately for the proponents of ideal Gemeinschaften, it is never easy to come to terms with reality, for communities do not speak with one single voice and are ridden with many conicts of interest. Decisions are not easy; they usually come with a price tag. This is why the guest will always be a pest. However, whether it is in modern, complex societies, or in culturally isolated ones, the only reasonable solution to these conicts lies not in decrying any changes in the way communities live, but in articulating majority views by democratic procedures. There is no reason why some postmodern anthropologists should be the interpretersusually self-appointedof the general will or the sole voice of what in a stretch of their imagination they call voiceless peoples. Clio, the Vindicative Muse When local communities or national authorities search for ways to increase their well being by encouraging the development of the tourism industry, conicts may and do arise. This runs counter the expectation that communities beat in unison. However, some reckon that communities live happily under traditional norms that are not to be altered under any circumstances, for the slightest exibility on this side would dele their sacred identity. This is, as the literature suggests, what tourism usually does. One often-quoted sound bite in the anthropology of tourism is Greenwoods (1989) climactic outburst at what he thought another example of turning an old tradition into a commodity. Postmodern

JULIO ARAMBERRI

751

cultural critics take it as the cue for their favorite epic that now starts as follows: Sing, O Goddess, the anger of Greenwood, a Cornell scholar, who visited countless ills upon the heathen Hondarribitarras for planning to hold two performances of their Alarde on the same day, thus setting a shameful example of selling their culture by the pound. For those not in the know Hondarritibitarras are the denizens of Fuenterraba or Hondarribia, according to the Basque spelling that is more in favor today. Hondarribia is a town located in Northern Spain, in the Basque Country (Pas Vasco), also known in Basque as Eus kalherria, and the Alarde is a traditional celebration held on September 8, Virgin Marys Day (Andra Mari Eguna in Basque). Alardes, of which there are a few in the Basque country, are usually mighty solemn civil occasions. They all follow a similar pattern, starting with some civic and religious rituals, followed by a military parade through the streets of the town, Hondarribia in this case, that winds up at some nearby destination (a shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Hondarribia), a picnic in the elds around it, and nally a new parade, clumsier and clearly more disheveled than the one in the morning, to the starting point, where the troops are dismissed and group celebrations go into the late hours with a lot of eating, drinking, and singing. The origins of the Hondarribian Alarde are a matter for dispute. Greenwoods hypothesis, which seems quite reasonable, has it that the Alarde hails from the siege undergone by the town in 1638 in a war between the kings of France and Spain. However, the theory that the Alarde at Hondarribia might re-enact it, or its counterpart at Irun com memorate the 1522 battle of San Marcial with similar contenders, is highly contentious in present times. Others maintain that it originated at a different juncturethe late-medieval tradition of the Review of Arms and People. The people from Guipuzcoa, it is reported, were exempted from military service to the king of Castile, but they had to prove their readiness for combat by passing an annual review. This is how Alardes were spawned. These apparently banal differences have some imposing consequences. If the rst holds, the Alardes at Hondarribia and Irun cel ebrate occasions when the Basque citizens of Southern Euskalherria came on the side of the Spanish kings against the French armies, thus separating themselves from their kin in the Northern area, also known as Iparralde (the present French Basque Country), that remained loyal to France. Basque nationalists, some of whom have governed the autonomous region of Euskadi (that is, the present Spanish Basque country) for the last 20 years, know that this runs counter to their favorite tunethat for ages Euskalherria as a whole has been a subject nation, ready to get rid of Spanish and French domination at the slightest opportunity. In their view, tracing the origins of the Alardes to the Review of Arms and People is more politically correct. Such initial puzzle in accounting for the exact origin of the Alardes should give pause to any expectation of widely accepted interpretations when it comes to traditions and cultures. In his well-known article, Greenwood denounced the decision of the

752

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

Hondarribian local council to hold a second performance of the Alarde in the afternoon of September 8 to accommodate the growing inow of outside revelers and tourists. Here is when he interjected his now famous sound bite: in so doing, Hondarribians were selling their culture by the pound. In Greenwoods narrative, selling ones own culture by the pound is an unconscionable act. It is not easy, however, to understand the reasons for his outburst. Modern societies often sell their cultural productions by the ton, with few recriminations. Every time one buys an edition of Shakespeares works at a bookstore or at Amazon.com, a work of art at a gallery, a ticket to a European lm or an American ick, or purchase a kaiku (those almost-Basque mens jackets) at Hondarribias main square, culture is being sold by the ounce or by the pound. When authors retail their rights to publish a book, most expect that it will become a best seller or will at least sell well. When professors, even postmodern critics of modern cultural industries, are up for tenure they do literally sell their culture by the pound: the more publications, that is, the more pounds of printed matter, the better. Were it true that performing the Alarde twice in the same day amounted to selling their culture by the pound, why should Hondarribians be prevented from doing so? Some argue that all societies have a realm of goods and services that cannot be sold. Today most societies reject the purchasing of human beings. The selling of sexual services is illegal in many modern societies. Buying a bride is out of the question in the West. Auctioning public ofces is not the way politicians are selected. Some addictive substances cannot be sold legally. Contracts on somebodys life cannot be enforced in court. Every society has a realm of what the Romans called res extra commercium, that lies beyond the pale of the legally or ethically acceptable. Why would Alardes be one of them? Why should Hondarribians refrain from selling this part of their culture, even though they are known to sell unmolested some other pieces of it, for instance, kaikus, or the works of Sabino Arana, the founder of the Basque Nationalist Party, or those of Bernardo Atxaga, the acclaimed contemporary writer? Greenwood offers a three-pronged argument. One, the Hondarribian Alarde is the re-enactment of a feat of organic solidarity, where, under siege, all villagers, men and women of all ages, rich and poor, stuck together. This very solidarity is rebuilt every year in their Alarde. Two, it is a ritual performed for the exclusive sake of the local participants. It rekindles the ame of their sacred history, which is by its very nature inaccessible to outsiders. People with no enduring relation to the community are thus not especially welcome, for they cannot thoroughly understand its meaning. Three, according to Greenwood, the Hondarribian case points to a more general conclusion. The Alarde links these community members with the rest of the Giputxis (as Guipuzcoan Basques are sometimes called) through the concept of their collective nobility. He notes that the latter were considered to have clean blood by the sole fact of their birthplace. At least, unlike other Spaniards, including Bizkaian or Araban Basques, they were not asked to prove their limpieza de sangre, that is, the fact that they had

JULIO ARAMBERRI

753

no Arab or Jewish ancestry. To Greenwood this is proof that the Basques, Giputxi Basques at least, were undivided by class differences, and that a cobbler, a sherman, or a count were all equally noble. Communitarians, with Tonnies and Durkheim as mastheads, rhap sodize about organic solidarity, which is the opposite of the mechanical type. In their parlance, organic means either something natural, faceto-face, or related by kinship, while mechanical is technically made, distant, and articial. If concepts were only conventions, one might accept these distinctions at face value. However, with suspect consistency, communitarians, many of them anthropologists, go one step further in stealth. Organic solidarity is usually painted with the vivid colors of family, close-knit neighborhoods, and social proximity, as in no-class-distance, while its mechanic counterpart produces anonymity/anomy, city-life, and class divisions. In this sense, organic solidarity is not only the logical opposite of mechanical solidarity. It is also something superior, better preserved at all costs. Organic solidarity climaxes in some occasions, when social differences are ignored and the community, as a mystic body, fuses in great feats or re-enacts them. Different schools nd different examples of this fusion process. However, whether religious festivities (Christmas, Passover, pilgrimages to Mecca, processions) or gentile occasions (carnivals, concerts, parades, civil holidays), whether party meetings (Lenni Riefenstahl and her documentaries of nazi Germany come to mind) or social revolutions (the Thirteen Colonies 1776, Paris 1789, Petrograd 1917, or their respective celebrations), the conceptual structure remains the samecommunities nd their truest and highest expression when welded into a homogeneous whole. Other, more agnostic, strands of thought see things in a different way. Not fusion, ssion rather, is the stuff of everyday life. Rituals, commemorations, and displays of unity, usually come once in a while, not every other day. If they did, productive cycles and the amenities that come with them would be impossible. In ordinary life, people do not use their time welding into homogeneous units, whatever these may be, but go about their own business or, to put it in the words of classical economists, pursue their own interests, or their own happiness, in usually diverging, often conicting ways. Rather than being an endless succession of holy days, everyday social life looks more like a cockpit, where men and women, rich and poor, young and old, both cooperate and confront each other, where mainstream and minority cultures interact both by clashing and getting together. If at all, rituals, festivals, and other sorts of fusions are the welcome exception to the strictures of ordinary life. The functionalist persuasion even sees them as necessary breaks to smooth the continuity of the latter. By no means are they the golden rod that measures and explains most human lives, rather the other way around. To understand the equivocal symbolic unity of social life only in terms of some isolated collective occurrences does not portray all its complexity. Moreover, where facts such as the division of labor, the economic aspects of social life, the persistence of opposition subcultures in the simplest human groups are overlooked and where theories focus only on some privileged moments of

754

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

social intercourse, on some blessed instances of organic solidarity, the outcome is usually an idealized, romantic vision of the world. The evasive notion of sacred history does not fare much better. Sacred history is the very reason why Hondarribians would deserve censure if they dared to sell their culture by the pound, but Greenwood does not take much pain to explain what it is. Its existence is predicated without further ado, while in passing he remarks that tourists should be excluded from participation in the Alardes because only locals can access the mystery. The initiatic function of the adjective sacred becomes suddenly clear. It excuses further explanations, and helps keep skeptics at bay. No doubting Thomas dare voice distrust when one talks about something as unfathomable as sacrality. In this way, impertinent questions are avoided. All should refrain from probing how Greenwood, an outsider no doubt, became the privileged interpreter of this sacred history. Nor should one search for the cognitive gizmo that allows Hondarribians, and nobody else, to take possession of their treasured legacy. Is it transmitted via genetic inheritance or by cultural fusion? In the rst case, children and grandchildren of Hondarribians would acquire it even when they reside elsewhere; in the latter, migrants to Hondarribia might expect to pierce the veil of mystery some day. But, then, what would prevent tourists, some of them quick studies no doubt, from breaking the riddle? Greenwood seems to admonish, leave the sacred manes unmolested lest they come back in anger. The concept of sacred history is its own explanation. It is thinkable, therefore it exists and commands. What does it command? Here is where the notion of collective nobility plays a role. At a given moment in Greenwoods discussion of the Hondarribian Alarde, the camera switches from this particular location to a panoramic take, and focus on Basqueness, at least Guipuzcoan Basqueness. The communal immediacy celebrated at Hondarribia every year illuminates a deeper layerthe absence of social differences among all (Guipuzcoan) Basques, their collective nobility. However, this notion is quite disquieting. If Basque (at least Guipuzcoan) collective nobility ever existed at all, this imagined community had no other base than radical exclusion. Their limpieza de sangre, or absence of the slightest contamination by Arab or Jewish blood, keeps them apart from other, not-so-noble human beings. It is suggested that their nobility is highly equalitarian, but in fact it is limited to a few at the expense of the rest. In the same paranoid way as the people of Yoknapatawpha afrmed their allegedly superior kind of equality by loathing miscegenation and boasting that they were free of a single drop of black blood, Greenwoods nobles can only become such by denying their communality with other human beings. Yesterday they were Arabs or Jews; they are tourists today. Were it in fact true that the (Guipuzcoan) Basques can trace their nobility to this tradition, one should get rid of it pronto. This is not an innocent tradition; rather, it sounds like racism by stealth. Other than this conceptual chain of organic-solidarity/sacredhistory/collective-nobility/exclusion, Greenwood does not offer much by way of hard facts to support his notions. Those fuzzy concepts can be neither tested nor falsied. This criticism may seem old-fashioned

JULIO ARAMBERRI

755

Popperian nostalgia, but over time this standard of proof has fared much better than the rations of Nacht und Nebel one is fed by other intellectual currents. It is true that, with age, in an epilogue to his discussion, Greenwood mellowed his former outburst (1989:181185). He also acknowledged that, in fact, the idea of a double performance never materialized. But his change of heart does not run deep enough, for it leaves intact his theoretical props. This is why so many of his followers can keep on uttering his sound bite as a mantra. Was a second performance of the Alarde such a bad idea? Of course it was, but not for the reasons Greenwood stated. Selling culture by the pound it may not have been. There are two yearly editions of the Sienna Palio and the bulls are run in Pamplonas Sanfermines seven days in a row, but it has notyetbeen suggested that the Siennese doubled or the Pamplonicas increased by a factor of seven the commoditization of their traditions. If anything, a second performance of the Alarde in the same day was but a hopeless bureaucratic lunacy, an ill-conceived scheme of one of those mayors appointed at the time Greenwood was writing his rst version in all Spanish towns. Who but one of those blockhead unelected ofcials might expect that the troops would be ready to replay their spotless morning parade in the afternoon, after some hours of wining and dining in Basque style at the neighboring elds, and/or some bouts of dalliance at siesta time for many a trooper? Clio is a vindictive muse, and she likes to come back with a vengeance to those who treat her lightly. This is why she set the irundarra trap. Some three miles from Hondarribia, east of the Txingudi, where the Bidassoa River meets the Bay of Biscay, lies the city of Irun (Irundarras is what the people of Irun are called). Irun celebrates its own Alarde on June 2930 to commemorate the battle of San Marcial (1522) against the French armies. This Alarde follows the well-known pattern. Nineteen companies of troops, together with a company of engineers, under the command of a general and his staff, parade through the streets of the town in full regalia and exacting military order. Each one of these companies represents one of Iruns wards. They are made up of 500 men each and are escorted by one young woman who goes by the name of cantinera, allegedly in charge of bringing water to the wounded, and of taking care of them. These young women are selected every year among the most beautiful in each of the towns wards. Such was the tradition until 1996. Like many other countries, Spain has recently seen the growth of a strong feminist movement. In Irun, some womens groups started to complain that the traditional arrangement of the Alarde was discriminating against them, and demanded that the nearly male-only companies be integrated. A divided local council, this time composed of elected ofcials, dismissed their claim, and the case wound up at the Basque High Court that ruled in favor of integration. The 1997 Alarde should have been the rst gender-blind parade in the history of the town. But the defenders of tradition, supported by a vast majority of the population and most political parties, did not accept the ruling, and decided to stage their own unofcial parade with the known age-

756

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

old arrangement. On the other hand, only one integrated company, made up of around 200 hundred women and 125 men, showed at the ofcial meeting point, whereupon the mayor decided to cancel the march (Marin 1997). Now, the riddle is: who was selling Iruns culture by the pound the mayor when he broke with tradition and called off the ofcial parade; the Basque Court of Appeals in integrating it, or the womens groups that challenged a discriminatory practice? How to make sense of the organic solidarity of those collective noblemen that decided to have an alternative paradetraditional they called itthough in so doing they excluded half of the community from the right to actively participate in the Alarde? This is an amusing intermezzo for those who think that traditions do not originate in timeless, sacred regions, but in history, and that many ancestries reckoned to be paragons of authenticity, to wit the kilts and tartans of the Scottish clans (Trevor Roper 1995), or William Wallace (Buruma 1998), the darling of so many Scottish brave hearts today, amount to little more than plain fabrications. If most traditions are thus born in sin, there is not much to be gained by vindicating tooth and nail their stolid claims to eternity. Only hopeless romantics can maintain that cultural changes are always wrong, or that opening ones own traditions and communities to strangers, even tourists, amounts to betraying them. The issueshould traditions change? seems to be mundane rather than theological, and the arguments should not debate sacred history, but costs and benets to the community, deals to be struck among its conicting parties, and interests to be balanced, including those of the tourists that legitimately want to participate in traditional rituals. In the end, the community with all its internal diversity and contending parties is solely entitled to nd a solution that will satisfy the wishes of the majority. Democracy is the name of the game, and neither fuzzy forebodings of gloom and doom, nor resounding denunciations of alleged sellouts can substitute for it. CONCLUSION Act I of Shivajis dance concludes according to the Hegelian script. This article contends that one of the main substantive paradigms in the still sketchy theoretical study of tourismthat of hosts and guests should be discarded. The host is toast and the guest may be next. The paradigm sprang out of the need to accommodate tourism within the cadre of anthropological research, and bears its indelible DNA marks. The hostguest structure was thus devised to understand the relations between tourists from industrialized countries, usually upmarket members, and fragile communities with old traditions. Its usefulness at this particular level is open to discussion. One can sustain with good cause that the model does not apply as soon as host communities go beyond dealing with drifters, as per Cohens typology (1972, 1973). Denitely, it does not help to explain domestic tourism, nor the international ows to mature destinations, that is, the overwhelming majority of tourist exchanges.

JULIO ARAMBERRI

757

In fact, even in small communities, the utilitarian customersmiddlepersonsproviders link has replaced the convoluted covenant that ruled the hostguest relation in former historical times. This trend is seen as inconvenient, conceptually unjustiable or ethically unadvisable by two main schools of thought, Marxism and postmodern cultural criticism. They claim that the commoditizing process that goes with it reinforces the subjection of traditional communities to external forces and the logic of capitalist domination, whether directly political or mainly symbolic. This paper suggests that, no matter how well intentioned, these positions are misleading. Therefore, the host should get lost and the guest will always be a pest. Here is where the young Kwakiutl cook comes to mind again: new recipes are needed. The cookbook, however, is not yet completed. On the other hand, some might consider academically incorrect that the curtain be lowered without devising a program for future research and discussion. Two venues, slogans rather, may be proposed. One could formulate the rst as Why dont you get real, Prof. Tourisier? It might read as another chapter in Alvin Gouldners old proposal of a sociology of sociology (1971:2527; 1975:128170). Why is it that so many colleagues are bent on turning their backs on the (un?)real world? Why are the ercest critics of tourism to be found in that part of Academia that provides mostly teaching jobs? Could it be because modern society offers less and less space and fewer rewards to the lecturing profession? Might this process be the source of a growing alienation in some parts of the intelligentsia? How long can these academic segments remain in denial of the external world without making credible the claim that they are in fact irrelevant? At another level, are not the theoretical tools used to express this strange feeling somewhat dubious? Can the elitist theories of culture associated with the Frankfurters, those haughty denizens of the highbrow School, and with the hermeneutics of the LacanFoucaultDerrida ancestry help to understand the complexities of modern society and of modern tourism? Is their adamant rejection of mass society and mass culture a good marker to the future? Second, as revolutionaries of yore used to say, Back to the Masses. Only these are different masses nowadays; they are the consumers of mass culture and tourist products (Tremblay 1998). The theoretical study of tourism cannot advance by ignoring that millions of humans see mass consumption as part of their pursuit of happiness. Perhaps it is high time to get rid of the all-too-easy alienation theories that Marxian and postmodern scholars propose whenever the (un?)real world fails to abide by their normative expectations. Perhaps one should enquire why deep in the recesses of many radical critiques lurks the inability to advance any meaningful proposals for real change. The promise of Marxism lies buried, possibly forever, under the ruins of the Berlin Wall and in the countless islands of the Gulag archipelago. Postmoderns, on their side, tend to blur the difference between the symbols of power and power itself, much as commercial advertising is supposed to do. Thus, they pay their unconscious tribute to the fetishism of the mall they have done so much to lay bare. Once they blurt out some herme semio-babble against the usual symbols of

758

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

domination, they consider that their task is already over. If symbols change, postmoderns gure they have changed the world. The story, however, seems more complicated. More disturbing, this revolution on the surface is frequently combined with a call to historical preservation of everything nonmodern. Culture should not be sold by the pound; traditions must remain faithful to their sacred history (even when they are openly divisive and exclusionary?). Over and over, their attempts to ignore the key forces of the present mass societies appear as a call to cultural immobility and intellectual helplessness. These are not the best tools to brush up ones theoretical discussions about tourism. REFERENCES
Bardolet, E. 2000 Turismo y Economia. In Welcome: A Country of Tourism In Balearic Islands, pp. 101128. Palma de Mallorca: Fundacion la Caixa. Barthes, R. 1957 Mythologies. Paris: Seuil. Baudrillard, J. 1996 The System of Objects. New York: Verso. Bloch, M. 1939 La Societe Feodale. Paris: Albin Michel. Boorstin, D. 1964 The Image. New York: Harper & Row. Brown, D. 1996 Genuine Fakes. In The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth Making in Tourism, T. Selwyn, ed., pp. 3347. New York: Wiley. Britannica Online 1999 Commodity Trade. http://www.eb.com: 195/bol/topic?artci=106322 and seq-nbr-I and page=p and isctn=2 Buruma, L. 1998 Anglomania. New York: Random House. Butler, R. W. 1980 The Concept of a Tourism Area Cycle of Evolution. Canadian Geographer 24:512. Chaucer, G. 1977 The Canterbury Tales. Translated into Modern English by N. Coghill. London: Penguin. Cohen, C. B. 1995 Marketing Paradise, Making Nation. Annals of Tourism Research 22:404421. Cohen, E. 1972 Toward a Sociology of International Tourism. Social Research 39:164 182. 1973 Nomads from Afuence: Notes on the Phenomenon of Drifter-Tourism. International Joumal of Comparative Sociology 14:89103. 1979 A Phenomenology of Touristic Experiences. Sociology 13:179201. 1979 Rethinking the Sociology of Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 6:1835. 1988 Authenticity and Commoditization. Annals of Tourism Research 15:371386. Crick, M. 1996 Representations of International Tourism in the Social Sciences: Sun, Sex, Sights, Savings and Servility. In The Sociology of Tourism, Y. Apostolopoulos, S. Leivadi and A. Yiannakis, eds., pp. 1550. New York: Routledge. Crystal, E. 1989 Tourism in Toraja (Sulawesi, Indonesia). In Hosts and Guests. The Anthropology of Tourism, V. Smith, ed., pp. 139168. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

JULIO ARAMBERRI

759

Dann, G. H. S. 1996 The People of Tourist Brochures. In The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth Making in Tourism, T. Selwyn, ed., pp. 6181. New York: Wiley. Dann, G. H. S., and E. Cohen 1996 Sociology and Tourism. In The Sociology of Tourism, Y. Apostolopoulos, S. Leivadi and A. Yiannakis, eds., pp. 301314. New York: Routledge. de Kadt, E. 1979 Tourism: Passport to Development? New York: Oxford University Press. Diamond, J. 1997 Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton. Echtner, C. M., and T. B. Jamal 1997 The Disciplinary Dilemma of Tourism Studies. Annals of Tourism Research 24:868883. Fallows, J. 1996 Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy. New York: Pantheon. Fine, B., and E. Leopold 1993 The World of Consumption. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. 1972 The Archeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock. 1990 The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books. 1995 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Funcas (Fundacio de las Cajas de Ahorros) n 1999 Informe. Madrid: Funcas:. Gouldner, A. 1971 The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. London: Heinmann. 1975 For Sociology. London: Penguin. Graburn, N. 1989 Tourism: The Sacred Journey. In Hosts and Guests. The Anthropology of Tourism, V. Smith, ed., 2nd ed., pp. 2136. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Greenwood, D. 1989 Culture by the Pound: An Anthropological Perspective on Tourism as Cultural Commoditization. In Hosts and Guests. The Anthropology of Tourism, V. Smith, ed., 2nd ed., pp. 171185. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Haralambopoulos, N., and A. Pizam 1996 Perceived Impacts of Tourism: The Case of Samos. Annals of Tourism Research 23:503526. Harkin, M. 1995 Modernist Anthropology and Tourism of the Authentic. Annals of Tourism Research 22:650670. Hegel, G. W. F. 1970 Phaenomenologie des Geistes. Werke in zwanzig Banden, nr. 3. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hughes, G. 1995 Authenticity in Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 22:781803. Hunter, C. 1997 Sustainable Tourism as an Adaptive Paradigm. Annals of Tourism Research 24:850867. Jafari, J. 1984 Unbounded Ethnicity. The Tourist Network and its Satellites. The Tourist Review 39(3):421. 1987 Tourism Models: The Sociocultural Aspects. Tourism Management 8:151159. Karch, C. A., and G. H. S. Dann 1996 Close Encounters of the Third World. In The Sociology of Tourism, Y. Apostolopoulos, S. Leivadi and A. Yiannakis, eds., pp. 173189. New York: Routledge.

760

REVISITING HOSTS AND GUESTS

King, B., A. Pizam, and A. Milman 1993 Social Impacts of Tourism: Host Perceptions. Annals of Tourism Research 20:650665. Lacan, J. 1966 Ecrits I. Paris: Seuil. 1971 Ecrits II. Paris: Seuil. Lash, S., and J. Urry 1988 The End of Organized Capitalism. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Lebergott, S. 1993 Pursuing Happiness. American Consumers in the Twentieth Century. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Leiper, N. 1981 Towards a Cohesive Curriculum in Tourism: The Case for a Distinct Discipline. Annals of Tourism Research 8:6983. Lickorish, L. J., and C. L. Jenkins 1997 An Introduction to Tourism. Oxford: Heinemann. MacCannell, D. 1999 The Tourist. A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley: University of California Press. McIntosh, R. W., and C. R. Goeldner 1995 Tourism: Principles, Practices and Philosophies. New York: Wiley. McLaren, D. 1998 Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel. West Hartford CT: Kumarian. Marcuse, H. 1992 One Dimensional Man: Studies in Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (2nd ed.) Cambridge: Beacon. Marin, M. 1997 Irun boicotea a las mujeres-soldado. Madrid: El Pais (July 1) Marx, K. 1972 Das Kapital: Erster Band. In Marx und Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA): Band 23. Berlin: Dietz. 1974 Theorien ueber der Mehrwert: Erster Band. In MEGA, Band 26.1 Berlin: Dietz. Merriam Webster Online 1999 Commodity http://www. eb. com: 195/cgi-bin/dictionary?va-commodity Milman, A., and A. Pizam 1988 Social Impacts of Tourism on Central Florida. Annals of Tourism Research 15:191204. Miquel, J. 1992 Derecho Privado Romano. Madrid: Marcial Pons. Mintz, S. W. 1998 Afterword: Swallowing Modernity. In Golden Arches East: McDonalds in East Asia, J. watson, ed., pp. 183200. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Nash, D. 1996 Anthropology of Tourism. New York: Pergamon Press. Nash, D., and V. Smith 1991 Anthropology and Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 18:1225. OFlaherty, W. D. 1975 Hindu Myths. London: Penguin. Oppermann, M. 1995 Travel Life Cycle. Annals of Tourism Research 22:535552. Postman, N. 1986 Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking. 1993 Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage Books. Ritzer, G. 1996 The McDonaldization of Society (revised ed.). Thousand Oaks CA: Smith, S. Pine Forge. 1994 The Tourism Product. Annals of Tourism Research 21:582595.

JULIO ARAMBERRI

761

Smith, V. 1989 Introduction. In Hosts and Guests. The Anthropology of Tourism, V. Smith, ed., 2nd ed., pp. 117. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1992 Introduction. The Quest in Guest. Annals of Tourism Research 19:117. Tonnies, F. 1988 Community and Society. New York: Transaction. Tremblay, P. 1998 The Economic Organization of Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 25:837859. Trevor Roper, H. 1995 The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland. In The Invention of Tradition, E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds., pp. 1541. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tribe, J. 1995 The Economics of Leisure and Tourism. Oxford: Heinemann. 1997 The Indiscipline of Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 24:638657. Urbain, J. -D. 1989 The Tourist Adventure and Its Images. Annals of Tourism Research 16:106118. Urry, J. 1990 The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. New York: Sage. 1995 Consuming Places. London: Routledge. Wagner, R. 1983 Der Ring des Nibelungen: Die Walkure. Berlin: Albert Hentrich. Watson, G. L., and J. P. Kopachevsky 1996 Interpretations of Tourism as Commodity. In The Sociology of Tourism, Y. Apostolopoulos, S. Leivadi and A. Yiannakis, eds., pp. 85103. New York: Routledge. Wood, R. C. 1998 Old Wine in New Bottles: Critical Limitations of the McDonaldization ThesisThe Case of Hospitality Services. In McDonaldization Revisited, M. Alno, J. S. Caputi and R. Wynyard, eds. Westport CT: Praeger. WTO 1998 Previsiones del Turismo Mundial hasta el Ano 2000 y Despues. Madrid: World Tourism Organization. Young, G. 1973 Tourism: Blessing or Blight?. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Submitted 25 August 1999. Resubmitted 30 June 2000. Accepted 31 July 2000. Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor: Valene L. Smith