دانلود رایگان مقاله آژانس توریستی در مقابل دفتر نمایندگی

Abstract

Tourism studies scholars have criticized but not overcome the passivity inherent in analyses of the reproduction of stereotypes in tourism encounters. Problematizing the category of viewers, I open the black box of the circle of representation as a self-reinforcing process, showing how tourists’ (re)production of images of ‘the other’ is rooted in their agency. Using Q-method and film-assisted observations embedded in ethnography, I describe how Dutch tourists reflexively ignore, interpret and mold contrasting information when they reproduce mythical Maasai imagery. This reproduction often contradicts the ‘performance’ of their hosts and is not a post-tourist phenomenon. A typology of three tourist perspectives further underlines the non-monolithical nature of these images, and how ‘the self’ is central in their active reproduction.

Conclusion

Recently, researchers who approach tourists’ images as a dynamic practice and present themselves as ‘‘highly sympathetic to moving beyond the kinds of passivity ... evident in ‘circles of representation’ analyses of tourism experiences” (Forsey & Low, 2014, p. 167) concluded that stereotypical images are more stubbornly reproduced than they had expected, even in the case of highly educated, longer term visitors such as exchange students. I argue that their conclusion that researchers have sometimes tended to ‘‘overemphasize the agency of their subjects” (Ibid.), is not justified, but rather, that the answer lies in their observation that ‘‘shifts away from the dominant images ... occurred only when the students began to re-organise their ideas about the [place] in response to their changing relationship with it” (Ibid.). Images of ‘the other’ are adapted, not so much due to changes in characteristics of ‘the other’ but due to changes in the circumstances of ‘the self’, or changes in the relationship between ‘self’ and ‘other’ (Nederveen Pieterse, 1990, p. 233). I argue that the persistence of an image does not mean that it has been passively accepted, but instead, shows it has been actively reproduced. Agency is characterized by a reflexive capacity that is necessary for intentionality (Eriksen, 2001, p. 48). I found that tourists who visit Maasai and interact with them relatively superficially for only a few hours exhibit the same ability to critically reflect on the stereotypes of their hosts as the exchange students Forsey and Low researched (2014, p. 168). They consciously reflect that many of the events they observe at the tourism site do not comply with their preconceived images. Nevertheless, tourists make the choice and effort to reproduce the pre-existent image they have of Maasai, not so much because they found this imagery accurately describes these people, but because it serves to legitimize their position and relationship with them. The imagery tourists have of Maasai is thus confirmed and even strengthened in the tourism encounter because it has far more to do with ‘the self’ than with ‘the other’