tourism and the geographical imagination
TRANSCRIPT
This article was downloaded by: [Louisiana State University]On: 28 August 2014, At: 18:35Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Leisure StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlst20
Tourism and the geographicalimaginationGeorge Hughes aa Department of Geography , University of Edinburgh ,Drummond Street, Edinburgh, EH18 9XPPublished online: 02 Dec 2011.
To cite this article: George Hughes (1992) Tourism and the geographical imagination, LeisureStudies, 11:1, 31-42, DOI: 10.1080/02614369100390291
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614369100390291
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoeveras to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of theauthors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracyof the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verifiedwith primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms
& Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
Tourism and the geographical imagination
GEORGE HUGHES
Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh, EH18 9XP
The application of modern marketing techniques involves a significant philosophical com- mitment to commercial objectives, which put product marketability before development. When these techniques are transferred to the promotion of places, as tourist destinations, adherence to this philosophy raises issues for communities. This paper deconstructs some promotional text from Scotland, as a way of illustrating the singularity of this representation of reality, and suggests that there are tourist 'ways of seeing' places that differ from other representations. The fusion of tourist representations and marketing philosophy blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, through the commodification of place imagery. In aggregate this amounts to a geography of the imagination in which places increasingly vie with each other to get on the tourist map.
Introduction
In the last several decades the importance of place-centred studies has become established in human geography. Although the idiographic approach of authors such as Hartshorne (1939) and Stamp (1946) contributed to place description, the wave of spatial modelling characteristic of what was loosely called the quantitative revolution in geography of the 1960s (Burton, 1963) swept much of this aside and indeed sought to discredit place studies as 'merely' descriptive and untheoretical. It has taken the individual and collective efforts of geographers such as Yi-Fu Tuan (1975) and Lowenthal (1975), among others, to set about restoring place in geogra- phy. Human geography has been released from the necessity to mimic the physical sciences by restoring its anthropocentric domain. This involves the study of the diversity of human significance accorded to places beyond any functions they may play in the search for spatial patterns.
More recently authors such as Cosgrove (1983; 1985) and Daniels (1988; 1989) have introduced a more critical dimension to these culturally orientated studies. The work of Cosgrove, in particular, illustrates the way in which arbitrary perspectives on the world have become naturalized and constitute 'ways of seeing'. This is a theme that has been extensively developed in media studies by Berger (1972). The main thrust of this aprpoach is to argue that common-sense views of the world are culturally constructed and the process of construction operates through picturing. Thus the legacy of depictions of the world in painting, architecture and other forms of graphic representation are not absolute records of the historic environment. Nor are they simply the manifestations of the various artists' existential interpretation, but rather should be seen in the context of visual codes of communication that were current during the historic period of their construction.
Leisure Studies 11 (1992) 31-42 0261-4367/92 $03.00+.12 �9 1992 E. & F.N. Sport
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
32 G. Hughes
Drawing on the work of the French school of 'nouvelle philosophy' (Derrida, 1978; Baudrillard, 1983; Lyotard, 1984), this thesis has been extended to all forms of communication and especially language. The recognition that communication functions within a cultural code, tautologically necessary for the transfer of mean- ing, has opened up an 'Aladdin's Cave' of questions concerning the ideological content of messages that get embedded and naturalized in the process of communi- cation. Carried in and through language and pictures are social constructions whose meanings are ever negotiated, and sometimes contested, but always exhibiting the potential to secrete into messages 'ways of seeing' that are more than the sum of the words or imagery.
With international tourism now said to represent the single most important motivation for the temporary movement of people in the contemporary world (Smith, 1989) it is germane to examine the potential influence that tourism exerts in the social construction of places.
Created in the image of tourism
The origins of tourism are uncertain, but the term 'tour' gained widespread social use in the 18th-19th centuries, specially as a description of the European travel undertaken by the more affluent society from Britain. However, there is widespread evidence of travel for leisure purposes before this period, and the mass movement of population for pilgrimages dates back to the Middle Ages. Indeed Ousby (1990) documents, entertainingly, the growth of a souvenir industry in Stratford upon Avon, within a century of the death of Shakespeare. A mulberry tree, beneath whose branches Shakespeare was reputed to have composed his verse, became the raw material from which a range of snuff boxes and other such trinkets was fashioned, in such abundance that the manufacturer was pressed to swear an affi- davit that all his wares were made solely from the original tree!
What is now termed domestic tourism became widespread from the turn of the 18th century onward. It would seem that the troubled nature of European politics, throughout much of the early 19th century, combined with the improvement in roads and the later expansion in the rail network stimulated travel within Britain (Butler, 1985). The growth of tourism in the Lake District is well documented (Squire, 1988, Andrews, 1989, Ousby, 1990) and owes much of its scholarly inter- est to the associations between William Wordsworth and the area, but tourist interest in Wales, Scotland and the English uplands was similarly expanding. The rise of a literary and artistic sensibility, which developed into Romanticism, fuelled a fashionable interest in rugged and wild landscape and also in antiquity. Elaborate preparations were undertaken to enable visitors to experience the ambience of places, including the regular use of cannon in the Lake District to simulate thunder and the visitation of ruins at night, supplemented by special lighting effects (Ousby, 1990).
From its inception therefore tourism has been framed by particular ways of seeing that are the product of social construction. The character of places has been reinterpreted in the social imagination in sufficiently comprehensive ways as to change the dominant perceptions of them at various historic periods. Contempo- rary domestic tourism in Britain retains a substantial legacy of Victorian tourist
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
Tourism and the geographical imagination 33
ways of seeing and it is only since the second world war that different perspectives have become ascendent. This has profound social and economic consequences for British regions since the fashion change has resulted in a decline in domestic tourism within a rising propensity on the part of the British to take holidays. The countervailing trends of increasing leisure demand and decline in traditional forms of domestic holidaytaking has prompted a wholesale reassessment of the domestic tourist industry, with traditional tourist destination areas revamping their product, while places not formerly associated with tourism are carving out opportunities from the rising trend in leisure. The effect is to modify the character of places in the tourist imagination, often accompanied by physical reshaping designed to lend credibility to the promoted place representations.
Place marketing, aimed at attracting tourists, is now so widespread that it warrants attention as a social phenomenon (Burgess, 1982; Burgess and Wood, 1988). Much of the explosion in interest has been generated in adversity. The collapse of the manufacturing base, with little or no alternative employment opportunities, has forced some local authorities to reappraise the potential of tourism. Council involvement with leisure and tourism at the District level has also been encouraged by the quirks of local government administration. After reorganization in the early 1970s, District authorities were left with housing provision as a major responsibility in a portfolio of refuse collection and street lighting. Subsequent erosion of the public housing responsibility by Conservative governments has had the effect of raising the relative importance of tourism and leisure as an area of economic intervention still open to District councils. Tourism has thus risen rapidly up the agenda of many local authorities and become inte- grated into general place boosterism.
The balance of this paper, using a Scottish case study, considers some examples of the way in which ways of seeing perpetuated by tourism contribute to the stereotyping of places and then addresses some of the theoretical ramifications. Getting on the 'tourist map' is a policy objective of many local economic policy makers and it is argued here that this 'tourist map' is an apt metaphor to describe a geography of the imagination. Places are being fashioned in the image of tour- ism. The past is being reworked by naming, designating and historicizing land- scapes to enhance their tourism appeal. The value of much recent work in cultural geography (Cosgrove, 1983; Harvey, 1985; Jackson, 1989) has been the exposure of the mechanisms by which landscapes are acculturated or socially constructed. Jackson quotes the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies definition of culture a s , . .
The medium through which people transform the mundane phenomena of the material world into a world of significant symbols to which they give meaning and attach values (Jackson, 1989, p. 48)
This paper seeks to explore the role of tourism in this process of transformation and the implications this may have for the geographical differentiation of places.
Tourist ways of seeing
If there remains among human geographers any residual attachment to the notion of a stable social reality akin to physical realism then it must needs be abandoned
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
34 G. Hughes
to understand tourism. Tourism, it has been suggested, has prefigured the postmodern (Urry, 1990). In so far as the postmodern can be represented as a relatively depthless set of social relations where concepts such as truth and au- thenticity lose their absoluteness then tourism can be grasped with the postmodern. Tourism toys with history in ways similar to that of postmodern forms of architecture. The theme park is but one of the more obvious illustrations of this, offering a bewildering array of diversionary experiences such as Medieval, The Wild West, Tudor England, Futureworlds. But even the less capital intensive forms of holiday-taking involve the construction and perpetuation of myths designed to make the experience extraordinary. To explore this process of mythi- fication, the way in which Scotland has been represented in Scottish Tourist Board (STB) promotion is examined.
In fulfilment of its statutory remit, to attract holidaymakers to destinations in Scotland, the STB is deeply involved in the actual 'creation' of tourists and more specifically holidaymakers. This process is not unique to, or invented by, the STB. Rather, it is part of the working out of the logic of capitalism through which relevant consumption skills are transmitted. Motivated by standard martket crite- ria, holidaymaking is constructed as a consumption good, the 'materiality' of which is sedimented primarily in the imagination. The holiday offerings of the STB would be merely itineraries of accommodation, restaurants, visitor facilities and views but they are welded together by the mythification of Scotland.
This process may be seen at work in the STB's main brochure (STB, 1990a) where both the discourse and the visuals are designed to shape and tutor the imagination. This is not merely the targetting of a readership predisposed to an interest in Scotland. Nor is it merely a touristy representation of Scotland. Rather it is an exercise that binds these two intentions into specific 'ways of seeing' (Berger, 1972; Corrigan, 1988) by the selective use of Scottish mythology. Con- sumers are tutored to see a particular representation of Scotland. The extent to which this tutelage succeeds in comprehensively structuring tourist tastes, or is resisted, has been debated elsewhere (Boorstin, 1964; MacCannell, 1973; Cohen, 1988; Urry, 1990). This paper is rather an exploration of the process itself, designed to illustrate the subtle means by which the construction of consumption, in this case tourism, is simultaneously the construction of an imaginary geography of Scotland. The success of this depiction lies in its ability to link up with a store of perceptions and experiences that are already embedded in commonsense under- standings of the geography of Scotland.
The STB annually produces an 84 page colour brochure, for promotion to the domestic tourist market. In its 'print programme' this is known as the UK Main Guide with a print run of 750000 in 1990/91 (STB, 1990b, p. 28). This guide, simply titled 'Scotland', contains an 'editorial' describing aspects of Scotland, a range of colour photographs illustrating scenes and views and is interleaved with fee paying advertisements for holiday accommodation. It is on the 'editorial' and the photographs that I wish to concentrate for an expositon of the 'techniques' employed in construction. The target of these 'techniques' is described in the marketing plan as those '35-55 years old, married couples in the ABC1 category, living in the North and South East of England who, in the main, are holidaying without dependent children' (STB, 1990b, p. 9).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
Tourism and the geographical imagination 35
The text, credited to Gilbert Summers, introduces 'Scotland' with a diary style reminiscence of a family's recent holiday�9 In the construction of a family the main brochure has departed from the strict target specified in the marketing plan, but in all other respects it adheres closely to the object. The audience of this brochure is identifiable as a family only through reference to 'we', which may be construed as the parents, and allusions to 'the little one', and 'our older boy'. This family appears to have achieved considerable pleasure from their holiday. At various times they were thrilled, surprised, at peace; felt good, romantic, and heady; had their breath taken away and just generally enjoyed themselves! All in all these articulations are not untypical of holiday experiences with which we might empathize.
However, these are not the experiences of human social relations but a two- pronged fabrication. They are, at one level, the invention of Mr Summers but, at a second level, they arise from interaction with nothing other than props, empty roles and misrepresentations. The text is peopled with friendly, helpful 'folk', whose personalities are measured in dimensions of 'accent' and job. Thus the text opens with pipers, followed by weavers, an angler, a boatman, a guide, a stillman and allusions to dairying, distilling and craft manufacture. This is a land in which, apart from the 'hosts' and tourist guides, there exists a population steeped in folk knowledge, ever ready to perform on cue. This family, of Mr Summers, should know for they ' . . . heard all about it from a stillman we met in the harbour pub. He'd been making malt whisky all his working life and certainly gave us a tasting tour!' (STB, 1990a, p. 5).
The techniques of construction that operate in the discourse of the Main Guide have their equivalence in the imagery. The visual depictions that punctuate this guide are comprehensively summarized in the water colour logo that appears on the front cover. In this logo, above the caption 'Scotland; One visit is never enough', an island with baronial castle is surrounded by water, flanked in the foregound by coniferously forested hills, patched with purple heather and the far distance closed by grey hills and cloud. Permutations of these elements are repro- duced in many of the pictures which are also often framed by a foreground tree, branch or thistles in soft focus. A rough content analysis on the 'editorial' sections of the brochure, i.e. excluding the advertising sections whose pages are made up of postage stamp sized pictures of the tourist accommodation, reveals that just under three-quarters of the depictions in the main guide are dominated by the theme of castles and landscape. The balance depicts events, facilities, attractions and strives to represent Scottish 'history'.
Dilley (1986), applying a similar rough content analysis to international tour- ism brochures, found that 'culture themes', including local history and architec- ture, and 'landscape themes' together comprised about two-thirds of illustrations. In the context of tourist destination choice he asserts:
� 9 the significance of the international travel brochure, as one of the most important - and often the most important - medium for the formation of images of overseas recrea- tional opportunities (Dilley, 1986, p.64).
Although the Scottish guide, under discussion here, is targetted at the domestic market rather than the international dimension examined by Dilley, his conclud-
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
36 G. Hughes
ing observation is relevant for this discussion on the tourist construct ion of Scot- land. After a qualification on the place of tour ism-generated imagery within the overall range of imagery available from other sources, Dilley asserts that:
Nonetheless, the material used here is the closest thing to an official tourist image of each country: whatever image the tourist may have, whatever image some third party company may wish to promote, this is how the countries themselves wish to be seen (Dilley, 1986, p. 64).
But the 'sublime Highland landscape' , p romoted by the STB, is of relatively recent origin. Contast the following two descriptions of the 'solitude' to be found in the Outer Hebrides:
Out on the islands, Skye offers not only the splendour of the Cuillins, but also romantic tales of Bonnie Prince Charlie, clan heritage at Dunvegan Castle or the Clan Donald Centre and a flavour of the life of the crofter. Across the Minch (the sea channel off Sutherland), the Western Isles, with Stornoway their main town, are the stronghold of the Gael. You will still hear the Gaelic language spoken in everyday conversation - though everyone speaks English as well. The string of islands from Lewis to Barra are places in which to unwind, with their empty beaches, wildflower machair (shore pasture) and rich wildlife - and altogether a gentler pace of life (STB, 1990a, p. 60-1)
I had heard some rumours of these intentions, but did not realise that they were in process of being carried into effect, until one afternoon, as I was returning from my ramble, a strange wailing sound reached my ears at intervals on the breeze from the west. On gaining the top of one of the hills on the south side of the valley, I could see a long and motley procession winding along the road that led north from Suishnish. It halted at the point of the road opposite Kilbride, and there the lamentation became loud and long. As I drew nearer, I could see that the minister with his wife and daughters had come out to meet the people and bid them all farewell. It was a miscellaneous gathering of at least three generations of crofters. There were old men and women, too feeble to walk, who were placed in carts; the younger members of the community on foot were carrying bundles of clothes and household effects, while the children, with looks of alarm, walked alongside. There was a pause in the notes of woe as the last words were exchanged with the family of Kilbride. Everyone was in tears; each wished to clasp the hand that has so often befriended them, and it seemed as if they could not tear themselves away. When they set forth once more, a cry of grief went up to heaven, the long plaintive wail, like a funeral coronach, was resumed, and after the last of the emigrants had disappeared behind the hill, the sound seemed to re-echo through the whole wide valley of Strath in one prolonged note of desolation. The people were on their way to be shipped to Canada. I have often wandered since then over the solitary ground of Suishnish. Not a soul is to be seen there now, but the greener patches of field and the crumbling walls mark where an active and happy com- munity once lived (Geikie, 1904, quoted in Smout and Wood, 1990, p. 299).
The latter quota t ion describes the harrowing experience of the clearances, which began in Sutherland in the second decade of the nineteenth century, and continued all over the Highlands until a round 1855. The clearances were initiated, with the introduction of sheep farms, as a means of increasing the estate rentals, which required the movement of the peasantry to the coast to become fishermen. The pota to famine of 1846 accelerated enforced clearances as the estates of bank- rupted lairds fell into the hands of trustees who had 'no other plan than to recoup their losses' (Smout and W o o d 1990, p. 198). It was not until the latter end of the
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
Tourism and the geographical imagination 37
nineteenth century that legislation was passed that made enforced clearances illegal. However, the economic marginality of the Highlands was such that 'volun- tary' migration continued unabated until recent decades.
The current tourist Scotland is clearly a picturesque Scotland, based on a land- scape which embodies a history of much human suffering. That this goes largely unremarked in the tourism brochures is but one aspect of the process of depiction, for not only is the landscape of Scotland partially a product of economic par- venus, but the issue of 'landscape' itself has been problematized and shown to be a more modern 'way of seeing'. Cosgrove (1985), employing Renaissance Italian painting, has illustrated the development of 'landscape' as a particular way of seeing which utilizes linear perspective as a core technique. The application of perspective in artistic representation produced an enhanced appearance of reality which, Cosgrove argues, has come to be employed more universally as the way of seeing reality itself. This thesis is extended, by incorporating the social and intel- lectual context within which this particular way of seeing was originally con- structed and subsequently sustained. Cosgrove persuasively links this particular style of representation to the post-Enlightenment rational apprehension of the world arguing that 'implicit in the landscape idea is a visual ideology which was extended from painting to our relationship with the real w o r l d . . . ' (Cosgrove, 1985, p. 55). This visual ideology was the rational carrying over of perspectivism from landscape painting into ways of dividing up nature itself.
Squire (1988) and Corrigan (1988) could be said to supplement this ideological analysis in their exploration of the 'picturesque' as a way of seeing. For Squire the picturesque has its roots in sensibility, a sentimental philosophy that extolled the virtues of the simple life and drew instruction from the beauty and harmony of nature. 'A precursor of sensibility and romanticism, picturesque thought used the eye for sensation, not just for information' (Square, 1988, p. 238). The pictur- esque is maintained in tourism and facilitated by the cropping of brochure photo- graphs. These pictures reflect the continuity of the code or convention of the picturesque through which Scotland is depicted and through which the holiday- maker's perception is tutored. The pervasiveness of the picturesque through tour- ist board promotion suggests, as in Cosgrove's thesis, that the holidaymakers' eventual experience of Scotland will be compared with the depiction. Corrigan (1988) drawing on the work of Keiller (1983) describes such a process as a shift from the picturesque to the picturable. This is a move from seeing somewhere, in this case Scotland, not as somewhere else but to seeing somewhere as a picture of somewhere else.
The picturesque taste in Scottish Highland landscape, stimulated by the roman- tic movement, benefitted from the endorsement of Royal patronage in the arts. Queen Victoria herself painted favourite views as well as awarding commissions for painting herself and family against selected backdrops (Pringle, 1988). But the style in which such landscapes were consumed reflected a profound shift in taste. As Cosgrove illustrates in the case of Renaissance Italian painting, the mode of depiction employed represents a special way of seeing. In the case of the High- lands tbe selection of particular views was achieved against a background litera- ture on painterly depiction. Leading artists of the time, particularly Gilpen, analysed the content of a view and produced codes of good taste to be followed in
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
38 G. Hughes
the appreciation and painting of views. In this way landscapes came to be evalu- ated against landscape painting and, when sightseeing, 19th century tourists often carried a mirror (Claude Glasses) in which to frame the reflected view, thereby achieving a better approximation to a painting.
The mystique of the Highlander, embedded in the tartanry and kilts of promo- tional literature, is also rooted in the Romantic literary revival of the early 19th century. Walter Scott must personally take much responsibility for the fashion to depict the Highlander in romantic vein aided by Queen Victoria's passion for her holiday estate in Deeside (Butler, 1985). Before Scott's Waverley novels the High- lander was being depicted as primitive and surly in the travel writing of Samuel Johnson and the hospitality of the Highlands was roundly castigated in his diaries (Andrews, 1989). But the popularity of Scott's novels, and the Royal sojourns at Balmoral castle, led public taste among the affluent for things Highland such as stag hunting (Butler, 1985, Pringle, 1988).
The characteristic tourist representation of Scotland involves a mix of folk lore, pastoralism, picturesque scenery and the mystique of the Highlander, captured in the mythologizing of historic figures and the colourful heritage of tartans and kilts. In the case of tartanry, historical research (Trevor-Roper, 1983) documents its origins around the time of the visit of George III to Edinburgh. The romantic spirit of the age encouraged the royal visitor to be welcomed with an array of clansmen clad in their respective tartans, many of which had been only recently contrived in anticipation of the event. The case of the kilt must be yet more distressing for any Scot bent on maintaining continuing rancour against England, for the kilt was technically invented by an English Quaker entrepreneur and its original manufacture thought to have taken place in Lancashire (Trevor-Roper, 1983).
This depiction of Scotland differs from other depictions that occasionally achieve national and international prominence, such as the Scottish passion for football, the depressed state of Scottish industry or Scotland as the home of the intellectual enlightenment, etc. The mix of myths, constructed in language and image by the STB, can be seen as a particular tourist representation of Scotland. It is designed for the purpose of selling Scotland as a tourism commodity, which the STB assure us, represents 'incredible value' and is 'so cheap'. This is Scotland as the manifestation of the STB's marketing strategy which seeks to ' . . . increase the awareness of Scotland's unique natural resources (STB, 1990c, p. 3).
Selling places - the management of myth
This small excursion into deconstruction reveals the blurring of boundaries be- tween fiction and history that is characteristic of tourist promotional literature. The deconstruction of ephemera, such as tourism brochures, might be questioned as a misapplication of the tools of serious enquiry. That this is not so depends on the significance of the findings. What I have been seeking to theorize is the link between the mythologizing of places, that is effected through tourism, and the subsequent manifestations on the social and physical shaping of those places. Shields (1991) argues that imagery is transformed into the actuality of social practices through the modification of the beliefs and desires of social actors. The
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
Tourism and the geographical imagination 39
circulation of place myths through tourist brochures becomes one vehicle by which place discourse is shaped. The extent to which these myths become embed- ded as the 'way of seeing' depends on the nature of the competitive struggle for dominance among a cacophony of place representations. There exists a plurality of tourist ways of seeing without turning to the multiplicity of place discourses associated with other social practices.
But while it remains impossible to isolate the force of institutional depiction of places, such as that originating from the STB, from general discourses that are already stuffed with representations, the magnitude of the philosophical shift that underpins it warrants exposure. The purpose behind this management of Scottish myths is overtly commercial and has resulted in the commodification of images of place. It has become conventional to speak of 'selling places'. 'Places can be sold and tourists can be treated as place consumers, but this selling and purchasing of places will only be effective if tourist destinations and tourists are recognized as being different in a number of fundamental respects from the products and cus- tomers in the commercial sector for which marketing science was originally evolved' (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990, p. 14). That places can be sold slips, by elision, into places will be sold. The final challenge to the commodification of place is seen as the 'shaping [of] a pricing mechanism' (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990, p. 14).
The essense of the modern marketing approach, however, lies in its customer orientation; the assessment of the needs and desires of consumers. 'The marketing concept is a philosphy, not a system of marketing or an organizational structure. It is founded on the belief that profitable sales and satisfactory returns on invest- ment can only be achieved by identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer needs and desires - in that order' (Doswell and Gamble, 1979, p. 4). A marketing approach thus shifts the focus of an enterprise from the sales of what it produces, to the production of what will sell. The commodification of places, invoked when marketing precepts are applied, similarly shifts the focus from simply 'selling places' to the production of what will sell. When places become 'marketed' as tourist destinations the 'philosophy' of marketing dictates that the social and physical production of place will therefore be tourist orientated.
Thus places are being constructed in the image of tourism, both socially and physically. In the social sphere the production of tourism requires a structure of host-guest relations that are being simulated through training. The arrival of the Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) in England and Wales, and the Local Enterprise Companies (LECs) in Scotland, are manifestations of this training emphasis at the local level. The friendly welcome, that is an integral part of destination imagery, is featured in national vocational qualifications designed to support the tourist industry. Physically, substance is given to the promotional imagery of destinations, by remodelling through what Relph (1976; 1987) called the processes of Disneyfication and imagineering. Examples include garden fes- tivals and waterfront development. The philosophical shift, embodied in this commercially-motivated representation of place, is from historical representation to fictional depiction. In the former, while the interpretation of the past may be treated as a narrative, the tests of adequacy of that narrative are assumed to be its truthfulness. Tourist depictions demand no such standards and, under the
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
40 G. Hughes
momentum of the marketing approach, substitute pragmatism. (Does it work?) The test of success of promotional material is the volume and value of subsequent tourist arrivals, not the veracity of the means by which they are attracted.
This packaging of place related myths becomes a process through which history is erased, as the 'stories' lose their meaning through reconstruction. Hewison (1987) refers to this as 'heritagization'. But this commercially-motivated mythologizing has not gone unchallenged. In an evaluation of 'Scotch myths' Grigor (1982) and McArthur (1982) examine the significance of the entertain- ment industry's depiction of Scotalnd, as contained in the stage persona of the music hall artist Harry Lauder and the Hollywood film industry. The effects of these stereotypes are seen by Craig (1982) as the enfeeblement of political con- sciousness; as an escape from the 'real' world. 'The speech of Lowland Scotland, the landscape of the Highlands have become cliches which need to acquire a new historical significance before they can be released into the onward flow of the present from the frozen worlds of their myths of historical irrelevance' (1982, p. 15). Similarly, Pringle (1988) examines the formation of picturesque tastes for Highland landscape and its association with royalty. The naturalness of the royal presence in the Highlands has been reinforced in the public imagination through depiction in painting. This naturalness subsumes territorial claims to Scotland, through a geography of the imagination, without the necessity to assert power aggressively.
The philosophical shift implied by the turn to place marketing marginalizes such debates. When the primary goal and evaluation test becomes profitability, pragmatism replaces truth in the absolute sense.
Discrepancies between historical accounts and promotional depictions cease to have significance. What counts is economic growth which translates as income, rent, interest and profit. Places are being shaped by a culture of consumption of which tourism, in a climate of constrained economic opportunity, is an in- creasingly important component. The contribution of tourism promotion to a geography of the imagination has sedimented within it quite fundamental implica- tions for the social and physical shaping of those places.
References
Andrews, M. (1989) The Search for the Picturesque; Landscape, Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain 1760-1800, Scolar Press, Aldershot.
Ashworth, G. and Voogd, H. (1990) Can places be sold for tourism?. In Ashworth, G. and Goodall, B. (Eds) Marketing Tourism Places, Routledge, London, pp. 2-16.
Baudrillard, J. (1983) Simulations Semiotext(e), New York. Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing, BBC/Penguin, London. Boorstin, O.J. (1964) The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, Harper & Row, New
York. Burgess, J. (1982) Selling places: environmental images for the executive Regional Studies 16, 1-17. Burgess, J. and Wood, P. (1988) Decoding Docklands: place advertising and the small firm. In Eyles,
J. and Smith, D.M. (Eds) Qualitative Methods in Human Geography, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Burton, I. (1963) The quantitative revolution and theoretical geography, The Canadian Geographer 7 151-62.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
Tourism and the geographical imagination 41
Butler, R.W. (1985) Evolution of tourism in the Scottish Highlands Annals of Tourism Research 12, 371-91.
Cohen, E. (1988) Authenticity and commoditization in tourism Annals of Tourism Research 15, 371-86.
Corrigan, P. (1988) On visualisation as power: 'innocent stupidities': de-picturing (human) nature. On hopeful resistances and possible refusals: celebrating difference(s) - again. In Fyfe, G. and Law, J. (Eds) Picturing Power: Visual Depiction and Social Relations, Sociological Review Monograph 35, Routledge, London, pp. 255-81.
Cosgrove, D.E. (1983) Towards a radical cultural geography: problems of theory Antipode 15, 1-11.
Cosgrove, D.E. (1985) Prospect, perspective and the evolution of the landscape idea Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 10, 45-62.
Cosgrove, D.E. and Daniels, S.J. (Eds) (1988) The iconography of landscape, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Craig, C. (1982) Myths against history: tartanry and kailyard in 19th century Scottish literature. In McArthur, C. Scotch reels: Scotland in cinema and television, BFI Publishing, London, pp. 7-15.
Daniels, S.J. (1989) Marxism, culture, and the duplicity of landscape. In Peet, R. and Thrift, N. (Eds) New models in geography (Volume 2), Unwin Hyman, London, pp. 196-220.
Derrida, J. (1978) Writing and Difference, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Dilley, R.S. (1986) Tourist brochures and tourist images The Canadian Geographer 30, 59-65. Doswell, R. and Gamble, P.R. (1979) Marketing and planning hotels and tourism projects, Hutchin-
son, London. Grigor, M. (1982) From Scott-Land to Disneyland. In McArthur, C. Scotch reels: Scotland in cinema
and television, BFI Publishing, London, pp. 17-39. Hartshorne, R. (1939) The Nature of Geography, Association of American Geographers, Lancaster,
Pennsylvania. Harvey, D. (1985) Consciousness and the Urban Experience, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Hewison, R. (1987) The Heritage Industry, Methuen, London. Jackson, P. (1989) Maps of Meaning, Unwin Hyman, London. Keiller, P. (1983) Atmosphere, palimpsest and other interpretations of landscape Undercut 7/8. Lowenthal, D. (1975) Past time, present time: landscape and memory The Geographical Review 65,
1-36. Lyotard, J-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge, Manchester University
Press, Manchester. MacCannell, D. (1973) Staged authenticity: arrangements of social space in tourist settings Ameri-
can Journal of Sociology 79, pp. 589-603. McArthur, C. (Ed.) (1982) Introduction, In Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television, BH
Publishing, London, pp. 1-6. Ousby, I. (1990) The Englishman's England: Taste, Travel and the Rise of Tourism, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge. Pringle, T.R. (1988) The privation of history: Landseer, Victoria and the Highland myth. In Cos-
grove, D. and Daniels, D. (Eds) The iconography of landscape; essays on the symbolic rep- resentation, design and use of past environment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 142-61.
Relph, E. (1976) Place and Placelessness, Pion, London. Retph, E. (1987) The Modern Urban Landscape, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Scottish Tourist Board (1990a) Scotland STB, Edinburgh. Scottish Tourist Board (1990b) Marketing Plan 1991, STB, Edinburgh. Shields, R. (1991) Places on the Margin, Routledge, London. Smith, S.L.J. (1989) Tourism Analysis: A Handbook, Longman, Harlow. Smout, T.C. and Wood, S. (1990) Scottish Voices 1745-1960, William Collins, Glasgow. Squire, S.J. (1988) Wordsworth and Lake District tourism: a study of romantic reshaping of land-
scape, The Canadian Geographer, 32, 237-47. Stamp, L.D. (1946) The Land of Britain, Longman, London. Trevor-Roper, H. (1983) The invention of tradition: the Highland tradition of Scotland. In
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014
42 G. Hughes
Hobsbawn, E. and Ranger, T. (Eds) The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 15-41.
Tuan, Y-F. (1975) Place: an experiential perspective Geographical Review 65, 151-65. Urry, J. (1990) The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies, Sage Publications,
London.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Lou
isia
na S
tate
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
8:35
28
Aug
ust 2
014