The hidden cultural limitations of the modern travel experience and how the UNESCO heritage programme packages and resells local culture
The traveller sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
― G.K. Chesterton
I'm going to write about something that I think has been essentially examined to death already, a topic that probably has been endlessly parroted by 'travel snobs' who fancy themselves adventurers. Hopefully there's some some value-added here but it's just a topic that I am interested in and I feel like writing about it (so fuck it, I'm doing it live). The central idea behind the post is this: the romanticised idea of travelling to discover new cultures is seldom achieved or perhaps even sincerely desired by most tourists (myself included).
I grew up reading and watching all these tales of epic quests and adventures and while travelling with my family I often imagined myself living out these stories. This childhood habit lingers today as I cling to the idea of travelling as an adventure, a chance to break outside ordinary experience and expectation and feel something authentic. It's a very On the Road-Kerouac idea of grabbing onto something real in a world seemingly so full deadening routine (hate the book by the way). As I've grown older and have travelled more often I've still struggled with the feeling that I'm not getting all I can out of my experiences abroad. I may visit new places without a plan (to encourage spontaneity) but it's difficult to avoid using Lonely Planet Guides or being drawn to tourist hotspots. Even more infuriatingly I even try to actively seek out other foreigners, as if I couldn't just do that back in the UK. The image in my head of the Motorcycle Diaries journey across rural villages and isolated stretches of land, living of the hospitality of strangers, clashes with the reality of garish hostels and omnipresent fast food chains.
If travel is really supposed to 'broaden the mind' why is is that the majority of my travel experiences are so void of authenticity? Am I just chasing a mirage? I'm promised a degree of cultural enlightenment and a chance to know my fellow man and all I get is a repackaged cultural product. To paraphrase Shakespeare's Macbeth: I get a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I'll eat the local food, look at some local art, buy some mass-produced souvenirs, all with e the sneaking suspicion that I'm being sold something which doesn't really exist. As someone who's is from a country that attracts a great number of tourists, I know that the sights and sounds that they experience usually fails to deliver the sort of insight in our way of life that is promised. They may get the opportunity to take interesting selfies but they've progressed little in terms of knowing what it means to be someone from my country. I know that many people who travel do it just to have a good time, but that hardly necessitates a journey across the globe. I'd argue that there's an idea operating in the back of their mind, an image of travelling as a way to see something new and different. What becomes challenging for me is the discrepancy between this expectation and reality.
In short―I have a lot of travel angst. This is enhanced by the fact that I know airplane travel creates a horrendous amount of pollution (greenhouse gas, noise etc.) and that there's a massive effort on the part of travel agencies, airlines, and national governments to promote long-distance recreational travel for commercial purposes at the expense of the environment. Even worse this sometimes takes the guise of ecotourism. This is done under the pretence of celebrating cultural diversity but in reality often offers only a Disney Land version of indigenous culture―leaving out the sex, murder and other controversial aspects (all the actually interesting stuff). It also fails to critically examine the culture and the historical and social reasons behind specific cultural practices. This is where I bring in UNESCO and the practice of designating world heritage sites. The philosophical goal behind it is to identify places of special cultural or natural significance. The political process determining how places are selected is perhaps more murky. The commercial consequences however are readily apparent, UNESCO heritage designations to places like Luang Prabang in Laos increases tourism and tends to be quite lucrative for the people involved. Unfortunately what is sold is the idea of culture being linked to buildings and artefacts. Culture in effect, becomes part of a catalogue and is effectively sterilised. We, as a response, fill our itineraries with plans to visit places long since commercialised, getting our cultural fix and exiting through the gift shop.
I grew up reading and watching all these tales of epic quests and adventures and while travelling with my family I often imagined myself living out these stories. This childhood habit lingers today as I cling to the idea of travelling as an adventure, a chance to break outside ordinary experience and expectation and feel something authentic. It's a very On the Road-Kerouac idea of grabbing onto something real in a world seemingly so full deadening routine (hate the book by the way). As I've grown older and have travelled more often I've still struggled with the feeling that I'm not getting all I can out of my experiences abroad. I may visit new places without a plan (to encourage spontaneity) but it's difficult to avoid using Lonely Planet Guides or being drawn to tourist hotspots. Even more infuriatingly I even try to actively seek out other foreigners, as if I couldn't just do that back in the UK. The image in my head of the Motorcycle Diaries journey across rural villages and isolated stretches of land, living of the hospitality of strangers, clashes with the reality of garish hostels and omnipresent fast food chains.
If travel is really supposed to 'broaden the mind' why is is that the majority of my travel experiences are so void of authenticity? Am I just chasing a mirage? I'm promised a degree of cultural enlightenment and a chance to know my fellow man and all I get is a repackaged cultural product. To paraphrase Shakespeare's Macbeth: I get a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I'll eat the local food, look at some local art, buy some mass-produced souvenirs, all with e the sneaking suspicion that I'm being sold something which doesn't really exist. As someone who's is from a country that attracts a great number of tourists, I know that the sights and sounds that they experience usually fails to deliver the sort of insight in our way of life that is promised. They may get the opportunity to take interesting selfies but they've progressed little in terms of knowing what it means to be someone from my country. I know that many people who travel do it just to have a good time, but that hardly necessitates a journey across the globe. I'd argue that there's an idea operating in the back of their mind, an image of travelling as a way to see something new and different. What becomes challenging for me is the discrepancy between this expectation and reality.
In short―I have a lot of travel angst. This is enhanced by the fact that I know airplane travel creates a horrendous amount of pollution (greenhouse gas, noise etc.) and that there's a massive effort on the part of travel agencies, airlines, and national governments to promote long-distance recreational travel for commercial purposes at the expense of the environment. Even worse this sometimes takes the guise of ecotourism. This is done under the pretence of celebrating cultural diversity but in reality often offers only a Disney Land version of indigenous culture―leaving out the sex, murder and other controversial aspects (all the actually interesting stuff). It also fails to critically examine the culture and the historical and social reasons behind specific cultural practices. This is where I bring in UNESCO and the practice of designating world heritage sites. The philosophical goal behind it is to identify places of special cultural or natural significance. The political process determining how places are selected is perhaps more murky. The commercial consequences however are readily apparent, UNESCO heritage designations to places like Luang Prabang in Laos increases tourism and tends to be quite lucrative for the people involved. Unfortunately what is sold is the idea of culture being linked to buildings and artefacts. Culture in effect, becomes part of a catalogue and is effectively sterilised. We, as a response, fill our itineraries with plans to visit places long since commercialised, getting our cultural fix and exiting through the gift shop.
In my opinion, this masks the real containers of culture: the actual people. We seem to visit a plane of reality that is merely superimposed on the local landscape, one full of caricature and hyperbole, that never actually intersects with their reality. It's the world we see out the window of the tour bus, that we glance at through the balcony of our hotel room. I suspect that getting a sense of culture demands a far less flashy use of time. I might require a bit more research little less instagraming but I hope there'd be a greater understanding of how people live their day-to-day lives. Perhaps we'd find that people's lives aren't so different after all, that people are the same all over. Maybe we'd find that people have radically different interpretations of what constitutes 'the good life', visions of living that are fundamentally irreconcilable. We'd find out something at least.
One of most enjoyable travel experiences has been for work this past summer in East Africa, where I've actually had the chance to interact and involve myself in a local rural community for an extended period of time. Living and working with them had certainly been an illuminating experience―I think for both parties involved. We shared personal stories, our interpretations of current events, cultural practices. We enriched each other's understanding of our respective cultures. Something like that however is difficult to find. Most people don't have the time, opportunity or perhaps even the desire to get to know a place. Even in the time I was there, I knew there was still so much I didn't really know about the place. In three months of intense involvement I could still only scratch the surface.
I suspect that it's far easier to follow the 'flash' of the tourist trap, the packed itinerary and the guide book to fill one's days with events and schedules. Really getting know the 'substance' of a culture takes time and I suspect it can't really be forced or planned. It probably won't fit into the allocated vacations days available or be found over a long weekend. It's an elusive goal, an almost Sisyphean task. What I propose is that we maybe take an honest look at how we justify long-distance travel. Appeals to cultural exchange are misleading. It creates a discourse which supports a smug sense of self-satisfaction that is unwarranted and propels the idea of the vacation as a status-symbol, a marker of an elitist cosmopolitan lifestyle.
I end with a quote which expresses similar views on tourism and connects it to a broader trend of rationalisation in the contemporary world:
One of most enjoyable travel experiences has been for work this past summer in East Africa, where I've actually had the chance to interact and involve myself in a local rural community for an extended period of time. Living and working with them had certainly been an illuminating experience―I think for both parties involved. We shared personal stories, our interpretations of current events, cultural practices. We enriched each other's understanding of our respective cultures. Something like that however is difficult to find. Most people don't have the time, opportunity or perhaps even the desire to get to know a place. Even in the time I was there, I knew there was still so much I didn't really know about the place. In three months of intense involvement I could still only scratch the surface.
I suspect that it's far easier to follow the 'flash' of the tourist trap, the packed itinerary and the guide book to fill one's days with events and schedules. Really getting know the 'substance' of a culture takes time and I suspect it can't really be forced or planned. It probably won't fit into the allocated vacations days available or be found over a long weekend. It's an elusive goal, an almost Sisyphean task. What I propose is that we maybe take an honest look at how we justify long-distance travel. Appeals to cultural exchange are misleading. It creates a discourse which supports a smug sense of self-satisfaction that is unwarranted and propels the idea of the vacation as a status-symbol, a marker of an elitist cosmopolitan lifestyle.
I end with a quote which expresses similar views on tourism and connects it to a broader trend of rationalisation in the contemporary world:
[Touristification] is my term for an aspect of modern life that treats humans as washing machines, with simplified mechanical responses — and a detailed user’s manual. It is the systematic removal of uncertainty and randomness from things, trying to make matters highly predictable in their smallest details. All that for the sake of comfort, convenience, and efficiency. What a tourist in in relation to an adventurer, or a flaneur, touristification is to life; it consists in converting activities, and not just travel, into the equivalent of a script like those followed by actors.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb