ANTHROPOLOGY OF TOURISM

Anthropology of Tourism

Anthropology of Tourism

Introduction

It is often claimed that beneath its pleasant and exotic veneer, the world­wide industry of tourism is one of the major contributors towards unsustainable patterns of production and consumption. This is clearly demonstrated especially in those countries and societies that lack the capacity to benefit from the revenue generated by the influx of tourists. Until recently, there has been common assumption that tourism may be one of the greatest contributors towards helping the local economies since tourism industry is believed to have created much-needed jobs and proved to be a source of revenue in third world countries. The recent research studies, however, show that a major portion of the revenue from restaurants, airlines, tour operators, resorts or hotels go to rich entrepreneurs from the first world courtiers who have invested in these business ventures. Though tourism does result in creating employment opportunities, native people are left with no choice but to do bottom-rung jobs while most of the high-paying positions are held by foreigners.

Thus it can safely be argued that communities in mainly third world and poor countries merely receive a very small portion the wealth generated by tourism industry. For underdeveloped and poor countries of the third world, investment from first world seems like a quick fix to their immediate problem. The reality is, however, quite opposite as the nature of this relationship between the first world and third world countries is parasitic. This has led to a phenomenon where, often, uninformed tourists from rich countries enjoy themselves while the local population is further deprived from reaping the benefits of their beautiful and exotic homelands. Therefore, scholars are right in asserting that tourism is, to a great extent, the newest form of colonialism. This paper aims at analyzing the phenomenon of modern tourism and how tourism industry serves as an instrument of neocolonialism in the third world and poor nations.

Discussion

Colonialism

The colonialism is a policy of conquest and domination of one state over another. The colonization has had its greatest expansion between the sixteenth and the twentieth century, and is still continuing to certain effects. The main beneficiaries of colonialism were European courtiers as those countries, with their superior military power, conquered and colonized many nations of the third world countries (Kerrigan, 2010, p. 315). Through this system, the economic, political and social values of West have been exported to their colonies. The colonization was one of the first major phenomena of globalization. The political organization of the colonies was to be the result of a balance between the imposition by the colonizers and the consent of the colonized. Colonialism had to build this delicate balance that had to do with the lack of knowledge of the subject of domination, the people and territories, and with the management of this domination from their home countries far away from the colonies (Lozanski, 2008, p. 243).

The two main models of colonialism, which also inspired other colonizing powers, were the British model that was based ...