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Tourism: The Sacred Journey NELSON H. H. GRABURN

The human organism . . . is ... motivated to keep the influx of nov- elty, complexity, and information within an optimal range and thus escape the extremes of confusion [This is Tuesday, so it must be Belgium] and boredom [We never go anywhere!].

D. Berlyne (1962, p. 166)

The anthropology of tourism, though novel in itself, rests upon sound anthropological foundations and has predecessors in previous research on rituals and ceremonials, human play, and cross-cultural aesthetics. Modern

This paper is derived from a series of revisions made of the remarks that I delivered as a dis- cussant to the Symposium on Tourism, organized by Valene Smith at the American Anthro- pological Association meetings in Mexico City, November 1974. A draft of this chapter was presented as "The Anthropology of Tourism" in June 1975 and discussed at a meeting of the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, to whom I direct my gratitude for many suggestions and criticisms. In addition I owe particular thanks to Sheldon Rothblatt and Ian Dengler of the Department of History at Berkeley, for suggestions concerning the development of tourism in European history, and to Valene Smith I owe special gratitude for her stimulating pursuit of this new branch of anthropology and for particular insightful comments on the nature of travel itself, which are incorporated in this chapter.

tourism exemplifies that part of the range of human behavior Berlyne calls "human exploratory behavior/' which includes much expressive culture such as ceremonials, the arts, sports, and folklore; as diversions from the ordinary, they make life worth living. Tourism as defined in the introduc- tion does not universally exist but is functionally and symbolically equiva- lent to other institutions that humans use to embellish and add meaning to their lives. In its special aspect—travel—it has antecedents and equivalents in other seemingly more purposeful institutions such as medieval student travel, the Crusades, and European and Asian pilgrimage circuits.

All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy

A major characteristic of our conception of tourism is that it is not work, but is part of the recent invention, re-creation, which is supposed to renew us for the workaday world, a point emphasized by Nash (chapter 2). Tourism is a special form of play involving travel, or getting away from "it all" (work and home), affording relaxation from tensions, and for some, the oppor- tunity to temporarily become a nonentity, removed from a ringing tele- phone. Stemming from our peasant European (or East Asian) traditions, there is a symbolic link between staying: working and traveling: playing, which may be expressed as a model (Figure 1).

Norbeck (1971) points out that in Western society and Japan, and par- ticularly in Northern European-derived cultures, the work ethic is so impor- tant that very strong moral feelings are attached to the concepts of work and play, including an association of what is "proper" in time and place. From the model, compulsory or serious activities such as making a living properly take place in the workaday world and preferably "at home." Conversely, "proper" travel is voluntary, does not involve routine work, and therefore is "good for you." A majority of Americans and Europeans see life as properly consisting of alternations of these two modes of existence: living at home and working for longish periods followed by taking vacations away from home for shorter periods. However, some sanctioned recreation is often an-

Figure 1. Working/traveling matrix.

Voluntary

Compulsory/ Serious

Stay "Doing nothing" at home

Work (including schoolwork and housework)

Travel Tourism and/or recreation

Occupations requiring travel

Tourism and Leisure: A Theoretical Over22

23 Tourism: The Sacred Journey

other kind of "hard work/7 especially in the rites-of-passage or self-testing types of tourism such as those of youthful travelers (Teas 1976; Vogt 1978). Many tourists admittedly return home to "rest up" from their vacations.

The model also indicates that staying at home and not working is con- sidered improper for normal people. Many would complain that to not go away during vacations is "doing nothing" as if the contrasting "something" must take place away from home or it is "no vacation at all." The very word vacation comes from the Latin vacare, "to leave (one's house) empty," and emphasizes the fact that we cannot properly vacation at home.l People who stay home for vacation are often looked down upon or pitied, or made to feel left behind and possibly provincial, except for the aged and infirm, small children, and the poor. Within the framework of tourism, normal adults travel and those who do not are disadvantaged.

By contrast, able-bodied adults who do not work when living at home are also in a taboo category among contemporary Western peoples. If they are younger or poorer they are labelled "hippies," "bums," or even "welfare chiselers"; otherwise they may be labeled the "idle rich." In both cases, most people consider them some kind of immoral parasites.

The other combination—work that involves compulsory travel—is equally problematic. Somehow, it is improper to travel when we work, as it is improper to work when we travel. The first category includes traveling salesmen, gypsies, anthropologists, convention goers, stewards, and sailors, and our folklore is full of obscene jokes about such people—for their very occupations are questionable, whatever their behavior! Alternately, people on vacation don't want to work, and justifiably complain about their "busman's holiday." Among them are housewives whose families, to save money, rent a villa rather than stay in a hotel; doctors who are constantly consulted by their co-travelers; and even anthropologists who are just trying to vacation in a foreign country.

To Tour or Not to Tour: That Is the Problem

Tourism in the modal sense emphasized here is but one of a range of choices, or styles, of vacation or recreation—those structurally-necessary, ritualized breaks in routine that define and relieve the ordinary. For the

1. Though the sense of "leaving one's house" now implies a holiday or tourism, it was originally intended to describe the itinerant work of people such as craftsmen, apprentices, and circuit judges. Such changes in meaning from holiday = to celebrate a holy day in the home community, and vacation = to go off to work, to the present usage reflects the post-Renais- sance changes in ideology that account for the rise of modern tourism.

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24 Tourism and Leisure: A Theoretical Overview

present discussion our focus is consciously on the more extreme examples of tourism such as long distance tours to well-known places or visiting exotic peoples, in the most enchanting environments. However, the most minimal kinds of tourism, such as a picnic in the garden, contain elements of the magic of tourism. The food and drink might be identical to that normally eaten indoors, but the magic comes from the movement and the nonordi- nary setting. Furthermore, it is not merely a matter of money that separates the stay-at-homes from the extensive travelers. Many very wealthy people never become tourists, and most "youthful" travelers are, by Western stan- dards, quite poor.

The stay-at-home who participates in some creative activity such as re- modeling the house, redoing the garden, or seriously undertaking painting, writing, or sports activities, shares some of the values of tourism in that recreation is involved that is nonordinary and represents a voluntary self- indulgent choice on the part of the practitioner. Still others who, through financial stringency or choice, do not go away during vacations but celebrate the released time period by making many short trips, take the nonworkaday aspects of the vacation and construct events for the satisfaction of their per- sonal recreational urges. Even sending the children away to camp may count as a vacation for some parents. Though not tourism in the modal sense, camping, backpacking, renting a lake cottage, or visiting relatives who live far away function as kinds of tourism, although their level of complexity and novelty may not be as high.

The Sacred and the Profane, or, A Change is as Good as a Rest

Taking our cue from Berlyne, who suggests that all human life tries to maintain a preferred level of arousal and seeks "artificial sources of stimula- tion . . . to make up for shortcomings of their environment" (Berlyne 1968, p. 170), tourism can be examined against its complement: ordinary, worka- day life. There is a long tradition in anthropology of the structural examina- tion of events and institutions as markers of the passage of natural and social time and as definers of the nature of life itself. This stems partly from DurkheinYs (1912) notions of the sacred—the nonordinary experience— and the profane. The alternation of these states and the importance of the transition between them was first used to advantage by Mauss (1898) in his analysis of the almost universal rituals of sacrifice, which emphasized the process of leaving the ordinary, i.e., sacralization that elevates participants to

24 Tourism and Leisure: A Theoretical Overview

the nonordinary state wherein marvellous things happen, and the converse process of desacralization or return to ordinary life.

Leach (1961, pp. 132-36), in his essay on 'Time and False Noses/' sug- gests that the regular occurrence of sacred-profane alternations marks im- portant periods of social life or even provides the measure of the passage of time itself. The passing of each year is usually marked by the annual vaca- tion (or Christmas), and something would be wrong with a year if it didn't occur, as if one had been cheated of time. "The notion that time is a 'discon- tinuity of repeated contrasts' is probably the most elementary and primitive of all ways of regarding time. . . . The year's progress is marked by a succession of festivals. Each festival represents a temporary shift from the Normal-Profane order of existence into the Abnormal-Sacred order and back again/' The total flow of time has a pattern, which may be represented as in Figure 2.

Vacations involving travel, i.e., tourism, since all "proper" vacations in- volve travel, are the modern equivalent for secular societies to the annual and lifelong sequences of festivals for more traditional God-fearing so- cieties. Fundamental is the contrast between the ordinary/compulsory work state spent "at home" and the nonordinary/voluntary "away from home" sacred state. The stream of alternating contrasts provides the meaningful events that measure the passage of time. Leach applies the diagram to "people who do not possess calendars of the Nautical Almanac type," imply- ing that those who have "scientific" calendars and other tacit reminders such as newspapers, radio, and TV rely on the numerical calendar. I believe the

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Figure 2. Flow of time pattern (after Leach 1961:134).

"scientific, secular" Westerner gains greater meaning from the personal rather than the numerical in life. We are happier and better recall the loaded symbolic time markers: 'That was the year we went to Rome!" rather than "that was 1957," for the former identifies the nonordinary, the festive, or ritual.

Each meaningful event marks the passage of time and thus life itself. Each secular or sacred period is a micro-life, with a bright beginning, a middle, and an end, and the beginnings and endings of these little "lives" are marked by rituals that thrust us irreversibly down life's path. Periods A and C in Figure 2 are both segments of our lives but of a different moral quality. The profane period, A, is the everyday life of the "That's life!" de- scriptive of the ordinary and inevitable. The period of marginality, C, is an- other life, which, though extraordinary, is perhaps more "real" than "real life." Vacation times and tourism are described as "I was really living, living it up ... I've never felt so alive," in contrast to the daily humdrum often termed a "dog's life," since dogs are not thought to "vacation." Thus, holi- days (holy, sacred days now celebrated by traveling away from home) are what makes "life worth living" as though ordinary life is not life or at least not the kind of life worth living.

Our two lives, the sacred/nonordinary/touristic and the profane/ workaday/stay-at-home, customarily alternate for ordinary people and are marked by rituals or ceremonies, as should the beginning and end of lives. By definition, the beginning of one life marks the end of the other. Thus, at time B, we celebrate with TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) and going-away parties, to anticipate the future state and to give thanks for the end of the ordinary. Why else would people remain awake and drink all night on an outbound plane en route to Europe when they are going to arrive at 6:40 A.M. with a long day ahead of them? The re-entry ritual, time D, is often split between the ending-party—the last night in Europe or the last night at sea—and the welcome home or welcome back to work greetings and formalities, both of which are usually sadder than the going away.

In both cases the transition formalities are ambivalent and fraught with danger or at least tension. In spite of the supposedly happy nature of the occasion, personal observation and medical reports show that people are more accident prone when going away; are excited and nervous, even to the point of feeling sick; and Van Gennep (1914) suggests that the sacraliza- tion phase of symbolic death lies within our consciousness. It is implied in phrases such as "parting is such sweet sorrow" or even "to part is to die a little." Given media accounts of plane, train, and automobile accidents, liter- ally as tourists we are not sure that we will return. Few have failed to think

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at least momentarily of plane crashes and car accidents or, for older people, dying while on vacation. Because we are departing ordinary life and may never return, we take out additional insurance, put our affairs in order, often make a new will, and leave "final" instructions concerning the water- ing, the pets, and the finances. We say goodbye as we depart and some even cry a little, as at a funeral, for we are dying symbolically. The most difficult role of a travel agent is to hand someone their tickets to travel to a funeral, for the happy aspect of the journey is entirely absent, leaving only a double sorrow.

The re-entry is also ambivalent. We hate to end vacation, and to leave new-found if temporary excitement; on the other hand, many are relieved to return home safely and even anticipate the end of the tense, emotion- charged period of being away. We step back into our former roles (time E), often with a sense of culture shock. We inherit our past selves like an heir to the estate of a deceased person who has to pick up the threads, for we are not ourselves. We are a new person who has gone through re-creation and, if we do not feel renewed, the whole point of tourism has been missed.

For most people the financial aspects of tourism parallel the symbolic. One accumulates enough money with which to vacation, much as one pro- gressively acquires the worries and tedium of the workaday world. Going away lightens this mental load and also one's money. Running out of money at the end of the holiday is hopefully accompanied by running out of cares and worries—with the converse accumulation of new perspectives and gen- eral well-being. The latter counteracts the workaday worries with memories of the more carefree times. In turn, they stimulate the anticipation and planning for the next vacation, and F and G will be different from B and C because we have experienced times A through E.

While traveling, each day is a micro-model of the same motif. After the stable state of sleep, the tourist ventures forth to the heightened excitement of each new day. Nightfall is often a little sad for the weary tourist; the precious vacation day is spent. Perhaps the often frantic efforts at nightlife on the part of tourists who may never indulge at home are attempts to pro- long the "high"—to remain in the sacred, altered state—and delay the "come down" as long as possible.

The Profane Spirit Quest: The Journey Motif in Tourism

Life is a succession of events marked by changes in state. It is both cyclical, in that the same time-marking events occur day after day, year after year,

Tourism: The Sacred Journey tourism

28xTourism and Leisure: A Theoretical Overview

and it is progressive or linear in that we pass through life by a series of changes in status, each of which is marked by a different (though similarly structured) rite of passage. An almost universal motif for the explanation and description of life is the journey, for journeys are marked by beginnings and ends, and by a succession of events along the way.

The travel involved in tourism is more than geographical motion or a symbolically-altered state. For Westerners who value individualism, self- reliance, and the work ethic, tourism is the best kind of life for it is sacred in the sense of being exciting, renewing, and inherently self-fulfilling. The tourist journey is a segment of our lives over which we have maximum con- trol, and it is no wonder that tourists are disappointed when their chosen, self-indulgent fantasies don't turn out as planned.

A journey is seldom without purpose, but culturally-specific values de- termine the goals of travel. In many American Indian societies, a young man left the camp alone to travel and suffer, and to meet the right spirit in order to advance to the next higher status on the journey through life. In India, in medieval Europe, and in the Islamic world, people made difficult pilgrimages to find spiritual enlightenment. Visitors to Las Vegas are also enlightened and often return home with a flat wallet, having sacrificed dearly for their pleasures.

Even if one regards tourism as voluntary, self-interested travel, the tourist journey must be morally justified by the home community. Because the touristic journey lies in the nonordinary sphere of existence, the goal is symbolically sacred and morally on a higher plane than the regards of the ordinary workaday world. Tourists spend substantial sums to achieve the altered state—money that could be invested for material gain or alternately used to buy a new car or redecorate their homes.

"Human exploratory behavior/' says Berlyne (1968, p. 152), "is behav- ior whose principle function is to change the stimulus field and introduce stimulus elements that were not previously accessible/' Thus, as art uplifts and makes meaningful the visual environment, so tourism provides an aes- thetically appropriate counterpoint to ordinary life. Tourism has a stated, or unstated but culturally determined, goal that has changed through the ages. For traditional societies the rewards of pilgrimages were accumulated grace and moral leadership in the home community. The rewards of modern tour- ism are phrased in terms of values we now hold up for worship: mental and physical health, social status, and diverse, exotic experiences.

In medieval Europe, travel was usually for avowedly religious purposes, as were pilgrimages and crusades; for ordinary people travel was difficult

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and dangerous, and even for the ruling classes, who also traveled for reasons of state, travel required large protective entourages. Those who could afford it often retired to retreats or endowed religious institutions in their spiritual quest for the ultimate "truth." It was the Renaissance that changed the world-view by bringing forth the kind of consciousness that provides the cosmological foundation for modern tourism: the idea that truth lay outside the mind and spirit. In all fields this outward, materialist turning, this urge to explore and understand, showed up in such new forms as the new astron- omy, the explorations, the new historical and scientific investigations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Means of land and sea transportation im- proved, and curiosities and exciting tales of discovery were brought back from all over the world.

By the seventeenth century the aristocracy and the wealthy were trav- eling to and in Europe to see the evidence of old historical truths and to converse with the discoverers of the new geographical and scientific ones. For eighteenth-century England the Grand Tour became a fully developed institution; the tourist motive for going abroad was not only cultural but highly educational and political. The post-medieval decline of the univer- sities and the great public and grammar schools as institutions of liberal learning meant the rise of alternative means of instruction: the tutor and the tour were the two principal ones. Milord went abroad not only to see the classical sights, but to learn languages, manners and accomplishments, riding, dancing, and other social graces. The tour was deemed a very neces- sary part of the training of future political and administrative leaders, as well as patrons of the arts.

The Industrial Revolution took hold at the end of the eighteenth cen- tury and set in motion further changes affecting travel and tourism. It en- hanced the need for scientific exchange and learning, for trade and raw materials, and for imperial expansion (see Nash, chapter 2). In addition it gave rise to the romanticism that glorified nature and the countryside, ideas stemming partly from the formerly neoclassical pastoral games of British and French aristocracy. As the Grand Tour in its elitist form declined in sig- nificance, new modes of transportation and new political arrangements made travel safer and cheaper for the bourgeoisie.

Thomas Cook, a Baptist minister and social reformer, taking advantage of the new railway system, in 1842 organized an all-inclusive tour to a tem- perance meeting. Other successful and morally uplifting tours followed; Cook combined his visions of democratic travel and the promotion of so- briety, with the chance to profit financially from the opportunities for taking

tourism

townspeople to the countryside or abroad. His tours expanded from the Lake District, Wales, the Isle of Man, and Scotland, to reach France, Italy, and the glories of the Middle East by the 1870s. Promoting railway expan- sion everywhere, and the standardization of hotels and restaurants, Cook's coupons and later traveler's checks made travel easy for the masses, opening approved parts of the world to the inspection and edification of the educated middle classes. Imitators arose in Europe and America, and travel-made- easy followed closely on the heels of imperial and commercial expansion.

Displaced from their command of the historical and cultural centers of Europe and the Far East, the aristocracy pioneered another form of tourism, which was later to become a form of mass escape: the ruling families and the very wealthy began to leave their palaces and their homes for recreational and health reasons on a regular, yearly basis. Not since Roman times had this been done on such a massive scale. Prior to the eighteenth century the royal families regularly moved between their several castles, for the hunting and falconry seasons; and after the Renaissance a larger part of the ruling stratum began to take "cures" at spas within their own countries, such as at Bath or Baden-Baden. These were the forerunners of the strongly re- creational theme in tourism. Starting in the eighteenth century and be- coming the mode in the nineteenth century, luxurious rivieras were built along the Mediterranean and Adriatic shores to house the royalty and idle rich from the nations of Northern and Eastern Europe. Like the national health spas they displaced, these resorts were often only thinly disguised excuses for gambling and more lascivious pleasures. As the winter abodes for the Northerners were opened in the warmer South, this pleasure- seeking trend led to the establishment of Monte Carlo and other casino re- sorts. By the beginning of the twentieth century even rich Americans came to partake of the idle winter life-style, and great liners and trains made long- distance travel safe all over the world for those who could afford to pay.

The final cultural revolution that set the stage for the mass tourism of today was prompted by the First World War. Not only did this catastrophe pauperize the elite rivieras, but it did away with many of the ruling families and other European aristocrats whose fortunes had fueled the life-style. By the 1920s the newly wealthy Americans came to be the dominant taste- makers, not only in Paris but along the Cote d'Azur. The winter vacation retreats of the elitist "international set" became summer pleasure resorts. No longer was nature shunned and white skin universally admired. Ameri- can experience in Florida and the Caribbean, along with an increasing real- ization of the healthy aspects of exposure to sunlight (pioneered by the

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31 Tourism: The Sacred Journey

discovery of Vitamin D and German experiments in World War I) made the suntan fashionable. An air of freedom from the old mores and the over- throw of the (superficially) stuffy old aristocracies brought out the excesses of the 1920s in every sphere of life. Features of the life-style of common people were studiedly imitated, folk music and jazz were heard, and a snob- bish kind of "slumming" that equated dark skins with sexuality provided a spark for these changing attitudes, which are now well nigh universal. Dur- ing this period aspects of "ethnic" tourism and anthropology itself became popular. Though the Depression put a lid on some of the excesses, the themes of nature, recreation, and ethnic interest were securely added to the previous cultural, historical, and educational motivations that underlie tour- ism today.

Nature Tourism and Cultural Tourism

Symbolically, Nature tourism has two different manifestations, both of which are strongly with us. The purest form is represented by Environmen- tal tourism (McKean, chapter 6) where varied aspects of the land, sea, and sky perform their magical works of renewal—it's the "pure" air, the soothing waters, or the vast vistas that are curative. In its most extreme form the absence of humans is a factor: "There I was, the only person for miles . . . alone in the woods." If Nature is curative, performs magical re-creations and other miracles otherwise assigned to Lourdes, God, or gurus, the medicine is weakened by the presence of other humans. To share is to lose power. Recently, Environmental tourism has bifurcated into Ecological tourism (see Figure 3), wherein the tourist tries to leave as little effect from his visit as pos- sible—concentrating perhaps on photographs and tape recordings—rather than the variant, Hunting and Gathering tourism. The latter includes envi- ronmental tourism and nature appreciating, including hunting, wherein little thought is given to impact, and at least some souvenirs are brought home.

To others, however, Nature in the "raw" is nice but somewhat boring because there is no dialogue; Nature is unresponsive even when threatened by capture on film or violation by campfire. Another way to get close to Nature's bosom is through her children, the people of Nature, once labeled Peasant and Primitive peoples and considered creatures of instinct. Inter- action with them is possible and their naturalness and simplicity exemplify all that is good in Nature herself. What more exciting and uplifting experi- ence could one imagine than to share a few words or, even better, a meal and a bed with such delightful people? Again, the magic is spoiled by the pres-

32 Tourism and Leisure: A Theoretical Overview

ence of too many other tourists. The approach to Nature through Her People is Ethnic tourism (Swain, chapter 4, Smith, chapter 3), whereas the use of Nature for her specified attributes of sun (tanning), wind (sailing), snow (skiing), surf (fishing), and sky (gliding) is Recreational Tourism.

The relation between the various forms of tourism is diagrammed in

Figure 3. Each touristic type has its own special scale of values and its hierarchy

of prestigious places, i.e., those having more "magic/' However, two or more kinds are frequently combined in one trip. For instance, one might visit the museums and cathedrals in Europe (Historical) and then go to Northern Scandinavia to see the Midnight Sun (Environmental) and the Lapps (Ethnic), or one might combine the Historical, Cultural, and Ethnic by touring India. Certain types of tourism are closer in fact and function than others; for instance, Ethnic tourism is a combination of Culture and Nature tourism. Others are conceptually further removed, such as Cultural tourism, with its emphases on the great traditions, in contrast to Hunting and Gathering tourism represented by African hunting safaris. Within these categories of tourism, there are an almost infinite variety of substyles including class, and ethnic and national variations. The rush of urban Ger- mans to the southern and western coasts of Europe is different from the Scandinavians7 junket to the Adriatic; the French take to their countryside quite differently from how the British take to theirs. The levels of preferred arousal and the nature of the touristic goals vary almost as much by age group and personality as by national origin and sex, and cannot all be de- scribed here.

Figure 3. Interrelation of touristic types.

The Holy Grail: Symbols and Souvenirs

Few tourists come home from a vacation without something to show for it, whether it is matchcovers, folk art, or rolls of exposed film. The type of vacation chosen and the proof that we really did it reflect what we consider "sacred." The Holy Grail is the myth sought on the journey, and the success of a holiday is proportionate to the degree that the myth is realized.

Souvenirs are tangible evidences of travel that are often shared with family and friends, but what one really brings back are memories of experi- ences. As Carpenter (1973, p. 17) puts it so well:

The connection between symbol and things comes from the fact that the symbol—the word or picture (or artifact)—helps give the 'thing' its identity, clarity, definition. It helps convert given reality into experienced reality, and is therefore an indispensable part of all experience.

The chosen style of tourism has its counterpart in types of souvenirs. The Environmental tourist is usually content with pictures and postcards but the Hunter and Gatherer wants rocks and sea shells, or even pieces of an archae- ologic ruin. Bolder members bring back heads or even whole animals to stuff, to testify to their vacation glory. The Ethnic tourist rarely has the op- portunity to bring home the "whole Primitive" but is content with arts or crafts, particularly if they were made by the ethnic for his/her own (prefer- ably sacred) use. Items made specifically for the tourist market have much less symbolic appeal, and this authenticity is often overstated (Graburn 1976).

The limitations of tourist travel, especially for jet-setters who cover so much ground so fast, diminish experienced reality and the momentos and souvenirs serve as cues by which to relive the experience at a slower pace. In photography, to get oneself in the picture is common to tourists of both Occidental and Oriental origins as evidence of identity and placement. If they are not afraid of soul-loss, native peoples often project themselves into tourists' pictures as a momentary escape from their environment and as a means of "getting into" the imagined happiness and affluence of the tourist's home situation. As one impoverished African in a remote ex-colonial coun- try said to the anthropologist who was taking last-minute photos of all his informants, "And when you develop the photo, please make me come out white."

"Wish you were here"

Tourists almost ritualistically send postcards from faraway places to those whom they wish to impress as well as to those they love. Partly, it is to let

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the latter know they are well and enjoying themselves, and partly to be re- membered and awaited. Conversely, the sacred charisma rubs off; those left at home feel partly uplifted, though perhaps jealous, when they receive such cards and may even display them near their work desks or on bulletin boards. The next best thing to traveling is to know someone who did.

Yet if they did go along, had already been there, or were about to visit the same area, there would be heightened excitement in sharing, which par- allels Huizinga's (1950, p. 12) observations about play:

The [co-traveling] community tends to become permanent even after it is over . . . the feeling of 'being apart' together in an exceptional situation, of sharing something important, or mutually withdraw- ing from the rest of the world and rejecting the usual norms, retains its magic beyond the duration . . . surrounds itself with an air of se- crecy . . . dressing up ... disguised together as other beings.

Even aboard jets, we all know the "stranger on the train" phenomenon, or the "shipboard romance" that didn't last. The magic of sharing a touristic activity lasts only when (1) the event is really nonordinary; (2) participants initially share similar value systems; and most importantly, when (3) they already know each other or are in the same profession or institution. The popularity of conferences (held in vacation settings such as Hawaii or Disney- land), or touring groups of farmers or attorneys as well as "in-house" travel planned for factory workers, attest to the fact that the magic of tourism is enhanced by group identity and, later, reliving the experience with associ- ates. Analogous to the truism that "Distance is to love as wind to fire; it enflames the great and puts out the feeble," experiences shared at a distance strengthen relationships between the like-minded but may push others fur- ther apart.

Tourism is rife with snobbery, and within each of its basic forms hier- archies of rank and prestige exist that illustrate the continuum and the con- trast between the ordinary/nonordinary. Obviously, what is extraordinary for some—for a rural Britisher, a trip up to London to the theater—may be an almost daily affair for others (a London suburbanite). Thus one man's excitement may be another man's boredom and threshold from which the more urbane measures his sacred.

To measure the hierarchies of prestige, the journey motif suggests that the further removed from the ordinary, the better; the sacred/profane motif suggests that the more extraordinary, the better; while the time measuring aspect suggests that the longer the period or more frequent the trips, the better. Each theme can be translated into the one-upmanship of the genre of

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tourists. For the young, rebellious Ethnic and Environmental tourist (or non- tourist as they proudly claim), distant and exotic places such as Kathmandu or Goa are "in," and prestige is enhanced by the length of uninterrupted travel.

Others of a more rugged bent, the elite tourists, emphasize the struggle against Nature, and gain their prestige through solitude, and a high degree of self-reliance in the communion. Driving alone from Cairo to Capetown, or daring raft trips down wild rivers are pale imitations of what were once rugged individual efforts worthy of Explorer's Club membership.

A common theme in these contrasting examples of Ethnic and Environ- mental tourism is the emphasis on the "spirit quest" or the self-testing, often maturing, pioneer endurance that they both effect in their different ways. This spirit quest may be imagined, for Cohen (1973) suggests that modern drifter-tourism is as safe and commonplace as riding a New York subway. Nevertheless, these apparently dangerous and effortful styles of tourism seem to attract the young, as a kind of self-imposed rite of passage to prove to themselves and to their peers that they can make their own way in life—probably never to repeat it later on. Or, this high adventure attracts the affluent, often highly educated middle-aged for whom social constraints and a Depression denied their youthful wanderlust. Money is not the crite- rion of prestige. For the youthful traveler, Cohen (1973) notes that voluntary poverty is the sacred/nonordinary quality of tourism for the middle-class "Nomads from Affluence."

In sharp contrast is the tourism of the timid—often parents of the youthful travelers—who have money and don't mind spending it, as long as they can carry the home-grown "bubble" of their life-style around with them. They rely on the advice and blandishments of tourist brokers in order to live as comfortably as at home or even more luxuriously, for the holiday is nonordinary, and one should eat, drink, and spend beyond the rules of the ordinary. Though undoubtedly enchanted by the view of God's handi- work through the pane of the air-conditioned bus or the porthole, they wor- ship "plumbing that works" and "safe" water and food. The connection with the unfamiliar is likely to be purely visual, and filtered through sun- glasses and a camera viewfinder. These tourists are likely to have the great- est impact on the culture and environment of the host peoples both by virtue of their greater numbers and by their demands for extensions of their home environments for which they are willing to pay handsomely. Cohen (1973) points out that mass drifter-tourism stimulates the hosts to maintain specially designed receptive institutions, even if the travelers are unaware of the degree to which they are being catered.

35 Tourism

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Although the outward rationale for tourism has as many variations as there are tourists, the basic motivation seems to be the human need for re- creation. Tourism is one manifestation of the fulfillment of this need—one that, because of the more affluent economic status of the developed world, is enabling many people to see "how the other half lives/'

University of California, Berkeley

Tourism ans Leisure: