Introduction

TOURISM AND DEVELOPMENT

Tourism is a dynamic force homogenizing societies and commodifying cultures across the globe. It is promoted as a positive means of economic development for the many countries and communities who have lost their traditional industries, or for those who simply hope to improve their general economic condition. Historically, however, tourism has not been a positive experience for all parties engaged in the development process, or treated all stakeholders in the enterprise equally. While trans-national corporations and entrepreneurs benefit greatly from tourism development, local people often bear the cost of that development without adequate reward. In an attempt to expose these inadequacies and subsequently set out a different course, this book provides a critique of the tourism development process as it has developed historically. This critique is followed by a practical guide to the future development of the industry. It stresses the role of community as the foundation on which tourism development must be constructed if it is to achieve the results proponents suggest are important to society. Tourism is analyzed here from the point of view of holistic development, and the constraints placed on its sustainability by corporate globalization are examined.

After the dramatic attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that 'those responsible will be brought to justice, or justice will be brought to them'. At first blush this may seem to most US citizens like an appropriate response – particularly to those personally affected by the disaster, and their allies across the globe. However, it is recognized by many that this attitude will not deal with the root causes of the problem that provoked the incident in the first place, nor with what has been described as the worldwide rise of terrorism. Some scholars, including McMurtry (1999), argue that these types of event are incubated by what he calls the 'cancer stage of capitalism', and by the rise of trans-national corporate hegemony, leaving a single superpower dominating the world. Democracy is viewed from many parts of the world as skewed in favor of the rich and powerful. In his book Jihad vs McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy, Benjamin Barber wrote:

If democracy is to be the instrument by which the world avoids the stark choice between a sterile cultural monism (McWorld) and a raging cultural fundamentalism (Jihad), neither of which services diversity or civic liberty, then America, Britain, and their allies will have to open a crucial second civic and democratic front aimed not against terrorism per se but against the anarchism and social chaos – the economic reductionism and its commercializing homogeneity – that have created the climate of despair and hopelessness that terrorism has so effectively exploited. A second democratic front will be advanced not only in the name of retributive justice and secularist interests, but in the name of distributive justice ...

(Barber, 1995: xiii)

This book is about the achievement of distributive justice through the development of tourism. However, at present tourism is a major force in the organization of 'McWorld', both symbolically and practically. It is a worldwide phenomenon dominated by transnational corporations, which both exports the culture of the West to developing countries, and – perhaps more importantly – drains the developing world of its resources, including capital. Tourism is a product of the hegemony of the West, and demonstrates both the rising difference in the conditions of material subsistence between wealthy and poor nations, and the growing Third World conditions found in many parts of the wealthy nations themselves. It is often the poorest people living in these already underprivileged circumstances who provide labor to the tourism industry across the globe. Employment in tourism provides a meager living to its workers, rarely allowing them to lift themselves beyond conditions of social marginalization and poverty. For distributive justice to be achieved, tourism will have to develop a new approach in both its planning and development processes, producing a project that would look very different to the one prevailing at present.

This book provides a critique of the principles on which tourism is structured at present, and presents an alternative prescription for tourism development, designed to address more directly the goal of distributive justice. The priorities of community planning and control are given greater importance in this new design, as opposed to the prerogatives of the trans-national corporation.

Economic globalization affects all countries and continents. Corporate globalization has been legitimized by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the supposed triumph of capitalism over socialism. Without a global counter-force, capital enjoys free rein to exploit labor and other resources in all corners of the globe. This exploitation is supported by the mantra of development, supposedly for the benefit of those who are left behind by the economic advances and increased standard of living created in the industrialized world. Tourism is advanced by businesses and governments alike as a development mechanism which can lift people out of poverty and make them equal partners in society. But regardless of how altruistic this claim may sound, it is doubtful whether those who are intended to benefit – at least according to the rhetoric – have gained nearly as much as those promoting tourism through corporate globalization. While no one can condone the carnage of the events of September 11, they must be viewed as a rejection of corporate globalization and the exploitation taking place across the globe, and not simply as the actions of a few deranged individuals, as some would have us believe. As Barber suggests, referring to public attitudes towards these events throughout the developing world, 'their quarrel is not with modernity but with the aggressive neo-liberal ideology that has been prosecuted in its name in pursuit of global market society more conducive to profits for some than to justice for all'. (Barber, 1995: xv)

The tourism sector is tied closely to the globalizing force which pursues profits over justice. In fact, tourism is one of the main products being globalized, while some even argue that it is one of the main forces driving globalization (Brown, 1998; George, 2002). While globalization is made possible by the drive of capitalism to expand and grow, and by the development and pervasiveness of new technologies, tourism is one of the important beneficiaries and vehicles of its expression. New technologies such as the internet and air travel have...