tourist sites

Tourist SitesAuthor(s): Nick WebbSource: Visual Arts Research, Vol. 28, No. 2, Visual Culture (2002), pp. 64-76Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20716065 .Accessed: 13/09/2014 10:34

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Tourist Sites

Nick Webb Nova Scotia School of Art and Design

Abstract

The paper commences with a description of the author's own city's attempts to attract tourists.

The author offers a complex view of the relationships between local businesses,

governments, ordinary citizens, and tourists.

Situating his analysis in an historical framework, he develops a psychology of tourism. The paper concludes with a list of practical classroom activities that focus student attention on the complexity of tourism.

The paper begins by suggesting the

possibility of "reading" tourist environ ments. It goes on to provide a historical context for tourism together with some con

temporary observations. It concludes by making suggestions for teaching contexts.

As a child I was lucky enough to visit continental Europe every summer, and the cross-Channel ferry became for me a sym bol of impending strangeness. Growing up in pre-tunnel England, I was acutely aware of our British isolation. But I not only rec

ognized social and cultural differences, I was jealous of them; after all, the English never sat outside for a cafe lunch. Conti nental streets smelled of cigars, of exotic

cigarettes, of fresh bread, and of coffee which the English had still not learned to make. Signage was testing, languages fast and mysterious. Shops were riveting, menus bewildering. But strange was good.

The generalized jealousy that perme ated my sense of greener grass found spe cific focus in the world of fashion?not in the extremes of haute couture but in the

everyday. Until Carnaby Street discovered it could sell Union Jack underwear, the Brits

were a dowdy bunch and I knew it even then. Khaki shorts and pumps reeked of

more colonial days when being British was

enough. But on the Channel ferry, it did not seem to matter whether I was comparing the British with French, German, Dutch, or Italians?as a nation, we were not cool.

While I wore a pair of National Health

glasses and sported porcelain white knees, tanned continentals pushed their sun

glasses up onto their upper foreheads where, inexplicably, they stayed. Gold glinted from wrists, necks, and teeth; white trousers showed that if you were foreign, dirt would ignore you. They had cool suit cases, cool cars; they didn't get seasick; they were ... perfect from the "genes" on up.

As a young man in 1973,1 took my first

trip to the United States. Everyone was big ger than I. In 6 weeks, I did 11,000 miles on Greyhound buses and have never taken a bus since. Oklahoma City blended with Amarillo and Kansas with Nashville. Dazed most of the time, I lost 20 pounds. My hair grew and I almost got a tan. I learned that I talked funny, and of the cultural impor tance of donuts. I returned changed.

More recent trips to Asia and Africa added experience, not just of cultural dif ference but also of cultural disorientation. But cultural vertigo is as enabling as it is

disabling, since we never voluntarily change our most basic cultural coordi nates. Dislocating ourselves is one way of achieving a distance?a place to reflect from. Otherness becomes apparent only when we are visitors. I haven't stopped reflecting on my identity. Indeed, being a

transplant, one who has spent as much of my adult life in Canada and the United States as in the United Kingdom, compari sons are a fact of life. Being an alien, an

64 VISUAL ARTS RESEARCH ? 2003 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois


immigrant, confirms constantly that "things ain't necessarily so." But if being a tourist or a transplant gives me access to the other, simply hailing from somewhere gives oth ers access to you?you may be the subject of their reflections. Why do folks come to my town? Where are they from? What do they see? Do they see what I see? What do they want? Is our city attractive? Do they think we are quaint? A little surprised that anyone would care, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, we are adapting to those "from away." In 1981,1 could not have given you a tour in a rickshaw, a London double-decker, or a

Mississippi paddle steamer. Now I can, if you come. Halifax is cleaner now. We have a farmer's market, and malls as big as yours. We have moody restaurants and we'll bring our history right to your lobster-deco rated table. We have lots of flowers, flags, and famous stuff. We rebuilt the waterfront and added a casino. We welcome buskers. We are contenders. If you were here in 1981, you would not recognize us now. I

was and I don't either. Shouldn't there be laws limiting or banning: strategic civic plant pots, double-decker buses, souvenir shops, and random bagpipers? These things do not express our identity ... do they?

While what follows provides selective historical and political contexts for think ing about tourism, our experience and ob servations contribute as much to building models and theories?we can look at the residue of tourism.

Travel and tourism enrich us?new smells and tastes, new sights both synthetic and natural, new sounds of language, mu sic, and living. So we are part way to being justified in expecting an aesthetic of tour ism. The fact that many tourists seek beau tiful destinations, and that newness is a fac tor in our choices, should be further evi dence of aesthetic interest. But our inter ests are also historical; we record our lives.

Among the ways we record are the tour ist pursuit of telling snapshots and the search for souvenirs. It may be that holi day snaps have no aesthetic component, that they are familial relics dutifully printed because some grandchild has a right to

thrill at Grampy's knees. Maybe we all have a duty to bear witness to the lives of oth ers, and cannot escape a more or less ethi cal commitment to documenting experi ence. Maybe our efforts are to be more

cynically interpreted as colonization

through photography (Sontag, 1973), since today everything exists to end in a photo graph (1979). Perhaps holiday snaps ex hibit a combination of partial or stereotypi cal aesthetic sensitivities that nevertheless represent a genuine commitment to do jus tice to extraordinary experience. Perhaps the poses, props, and proclivity for the pic turesque are ways we signal difference.

Our commerce with tourist souvenirs is no less interesting. These souvenirs may be chosen quickly?often bus tours are

given only minutes to "symbolize" their ex

periences. I learned at a gift shop in

Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, that a large proportion of tourists on a particular bus may purchase the same item. This sug gests that the function of souvenirs as

memory triggers may be more important than any aesthetic qualities they may have. Perhaps, like snapshots, they are instru mental in marking disruptions in the pat terns of our working lives. But these par ticular visual residues of tourism are not my focus. My primary interest is in the resi dues of place: how we and our environ ments respond to the tourist gaze, and in whether we are instigators or victims. I am interested in what makes a sight a site.

Out of sites, out of mind: A case study

As travel and tourism have increased, so has the realization by municipalities that financial advantages accrue to those who take their guests seriously: "A tourist is as valuable as a bale of cotton and twice as easy to pick" (anon, in Rosenow and Pulcipher, 1980, p. 183). But these munici palities also recognize that "it is possible that images ... may have as much to do with an area's tourism development suc cess as the more tangible recreation and tourism resources" (Hunt, in Rosenow and Pulcipher, 1980, p. 179) and that

Tourist Sites 65


... People develop images which are an

individual's representation of reality. The

significance of this process of image con

struction is that people base decisions and their actions on what they think reality is and so visitors can be influenced to visit ... by the images portrayed through the

marketing ... of individual cities. (Page, 1995, p. 223)

Civic change reflects not necessarily how we are, but how we would have oth ers see us. Villages, towns, and cities vie to become magazined destinations. The search for regional personality begins so that we can stop somewhere becoming anywhere. The civic residue is physical and its effects are both social and psycho logical.

It is often easier to draw conclusions about our identity from our ambitions to ward other places than it is to articulate

exactly how we relate to, and are molded by, our own place. Perhaps we can achieve some objective insight only when, for ex

ample, visitors arrive to see our town or

city. Whereas we are generally able to de velop a hierarchy of sights and sites for their consumption, our choices may say as

much about who we are as about our envi

rons. Hough (1990) makes a similar point in the context of developing an ecological perspective for tourism: "Modifying the de structive aspects of tourism ... may be a matter best resolved by understanding the culture and environment of one's own home place" (p. 155).

As examples of image/identity construc tion via tourist sites in my home town, I undertook 1) to ride the Halifax double decker tour bus, and 2) to walk the new waterfront boardwalk.

1) The Bus Tour

These notes represent a relatively compre hensive description of the tour commentary.

History 1751 Halifax founded 1759 Naval dockyards established 1867 Dominion of Canada established

Pier 21 processed immigrants to Canada

Halifax hosted the G7 in 1996

Economics

The major industries of Halifax are con

tainer traffic, Christmas trees, gypsum, blueberries, and tourism.

British ties Halifax Citadel?Sentry wears a British uniform, and the Changing of the Guard occurs just as in London

Citadel grounds boast a clock given by UK Point Pleasant Park given by UK

The First/the Biggest The Xerox tower, first building in the world to use seawater in its air-conditioning sys tem

1917 Biggest non-nuclear explosion in the world

Oldest Yacht Squadron in North America Oldest military library Oldest public gardens?the gates from Scotland

Oldest Board of Trade Oldest fire hall Oldest Province House in Canada

The oldest house with addresses on three streets in North America

The first law school The tallest granite spire in North America The second-deepest harbor in the world

1752 first newspaper in Canada

1755 first post office in Canada Institute of Oceanography?one of top 3 in the world

The birthplace of Samuel Cunard - first

scheduled transatlantic service

Seven institutes of higher learning?most educated community in North America

Young St.?the most expensive city ad dress?millionaire's row -33 millionaires on Titanic

Shipyards recently purchased by Irving? one of the wealthiest families in North America

Culture

Halifax is home to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

Halifax is home to the Maritime museum

which includes Titanic memorabilia

66 Nick Webb


Minorities

Two Jewish synagogues

The Pope visited in 1984 The three Mic-Mac curses prior to the

opening of the McDonald Bridge in 1955 Basin Park was the town of Africville until 1967 when the black residents were relo cated

Miscellaneous

Canada has only three submarines, none

of which are nuclear

The Halifax Commons, a sports open space, is the subject of a bye-law which still allows folk to graze their cows there Titanic graves found in three different churchyards All malls open till 9:00

Summary

These notes were dispersed appropriately through the ride. My categories were added later as an attempt to unravel the message, intended or otherwise. Clearly, the compara tive/superlativecategory provides the primary theme. Designations of first or most capsu late efficiently. Allusions to minorities ensure inclusiveness. References to the Titanic re inforce a contemporary fascination that has potential market consequences. The provi sion of mall opening hours hints at Halifax's commercial sophistication. It is easy to criti cize but much harder to formulate the kind of information that portrays fairly and entertain ingly all aspects of Halifax or any other loca tion. After all, the route chosen and the ac companying text may constitute the only lens available in a tight tourist schedule. But it seems fair to conclude that the message is that Halifax is old but not old-fashioned ?

history-conscious but forward-looking.

2) The Halifax Boardwalk

I used Halifax's Historic Properties as the northeastern limit and Pier 21- the newest city-orchestrated heritage site?as the southwestern limit for my walk. My notes are included only as an example of my re flection process:

Sidewalk material brick, selective cobble,

exposed aggregate, wooden decking

Street lights, three different nautical de signs, and a Victorian reproduction

Signage Signposts carved wood store signs with gilt, visitor map and interpretation boards,

Heritage bulletin boards, "Welcome to

Halifax" signs

Landscaping Concrete planters, mulched beds edged with 8x8 treated lumber, saplings, shrubs, strategic treated lumber boardwalk benches, raised lumber "stages"

Monuments

Two marble war memorials, bronze sailor, wave sculpture, marble relief from people of Venice, Sheraton Hotel reproduction of original warehouse clock, naval dockyard clock rehoused and painted with heritage boards, the "boat playground," Summit Place Arch

Decor

Ship's anchors, rope coils, dories in vari ous states of disrepair, ship's mast flag pole, wheel room as ticket office, buoys, capstans, nets, barrels, sea chests, orna mental rusted corrugated metal sheet,

piped Celtic music, Nova Scotia tartan, flags, bunting, treated lumber lattice, old railcar

Business names

Back-In-Time Photos

Captain's Table

The Harbor Look-Off

Murphy's Company Store Cable Wharf

Sunnyside on the Waterfront

The Bounty Seaside Peddler The Lower Deck

Salty's The Waterfront Warehouse

Attractions

Paddle steamer boat rides Yacht rides Rickshaw rides

London bus city tours

Tourist Sites 67


Summary

In my city, both Halifax's government and commercial sector target the historicity of the city: its seafaring past; its role in the evolution of Canada, its connection to the UK, particularly Scotland, and its separate ness from the United States. The procla mations of the Town Crier reinforce these themes and reflect what the city ought to be, given selective parts of its history. The newly extended boardwalk has "cleaned up" the waterfront, but some bemoan the replacement of the fish market with the Nova Scotia Crystal company (actually a reincarnation of Waterford Crystal in Ire land), arguing that it has stripped the area of its only remaining "original" business. The children's playground, constructed to resemble a trawler, is popular and the treated lumber "stages" that provide ven ues for summer theatre and buskers send a clear message that Halifax welcomes the arts. Skateboarders glide, albeit illegally, up and down The Wave sculpture. Tour ists flock to take rides on culturally incon gruent rickshaws, and concession stand titles boast connections to Maritime life.

But life has returned to the waterfront; life that is cleaner and somehow less omi nous than the dark shadows of the rum-run ners' warehouses. Noone lurks now; every one takes a whale-watching trip. Pier 21 smoothly plays its double role as dock and museum. Cruise ships passengers are greeted by kilted bagpipers and an array of market stalls selling city logos and more or less artisanal wares. More inquisitive visi tors discover the designer-industrial spaces of the Chrysler Welcome Center and the "highly interactive" holographic exhibits of immigrants and refugees arriving by ship to a fledgling Canada. The gaping ware house spaces overlooking Georges Island are now escalatored and comfortably dis tanced and framed by expensive vista win dows. The Multi-Cultural Gallery features different cultures every two weeks?during my visit, I learn more about Tibet.

It is hard not to feel ambivalent about the new Halifax. It is clean; there are toi

lets to spare and the traffic stops for pe destrians. It is easy to take. Halifax is like any other destination; it has an increasingly complex tourist infrastructure, which pre vents the veneer from chipping. But the question of authenticity nags. Doesn't the winding boardwalk and surrounding land scaping steer visitors through a pleasant fiction? But what does authenticity require? Leaving the area dilapidated would be no more authentic. Times change after all? we don't need a rope maker or a dory builder; we do need more amenities. Per haps the turning of sights into sites is a public service. Tourism crafts itineraries and "itineraries are imaginary constructions ..." (Harbison in Zurick, 1995, p.112), con structions that build with abbreviated and digestible images constituted or empha sized by visual markers. These construc tions are often built on the past and tai lored to our taste for nostalgia?a taste that is a prime factor in what I shall describe below as a psychology of tourism.

My observations thus far have been on the surface of my city. I am reading the marketing. We can get further inside the city by dwelling longer on particular choices?on public art, on street furniture

such as signage or street lighting. Who chose? What criteria guided decisions? But we can also complement our specific and practical observations with more general and potentially theoretical inquiry into the history and nature of tourism.

A Selective History and Some Contemporary Distinctions

"A traveler is now called a tour-ist" (Pegge, 1814, in OED)

What was known as the Grand Tour in the period 1700 -1825 was only for the privileged few; rich and eligible male heirs, future diplomats, and military officers spent at least two years visiting France and Italy in particular. It was a rite of social and cul tural passage, rather than a vacational ex perience. But the socially privileged were soon to find unwelcome company. Nine teenth century social change?stemming

68 Nick Webb


from new levels and kinds of commerce and industry that, in turn, saw a redistribu tion of wealth and the rise of the middle

class?spawned new travelers. Increased leisure and income motivated the curious

and adventurous. In addition, the great exhibitions (London 1851, Paris 1875 and 1889, Chicago 1893) demonstrated that improved communications and transport

were making the world more accessible. The world could be encapsulated and the exotic could be commodified. By the turn of the century, the deprecatory tone of tour ism was entrenched. Derivatives such as tourize, tourette, and even tourification

were in use and commentators complained of "a Venice vulgarized by Cook's touristry" (OED). Tourism was "a shallow waste of time, a ramble/excursion" (OED). Almost a century later Webster's defined tourist class as "cheap".

What must I add to the concepts of travel or vacation to get tourism? In being designated a tourist, can I escape feeling accused? If I describe myself as a traveler, am I more or less than a tourist? This dis tinction is not new and again, 19th century history is relevant. Given the evolution of a tourism that included various levels of the middle class, the richer and better edu cated saw the need for a way to distance themselves from the perceived vulgarity of the hordes:

Rome is pestilential with English,?a par cel of staring boobies, who go about gap

ing and wishing to be at once cheap and magnificent. (Byron, 1817, in Buzzard)

We are in our island, wherever we go ...

always separated from the people in the midst of whom we are. (Thackeray, 1851, in Buzzard)

There I stood and humbly scanned, the miracle that sense appalls And I watched the tourists stand, spitting in Niagara Falls.

(Morris Bishop, Public Aid for Niagara Falls) There is but one word to use in regard to [the Americans abroad]?vulgar, vulgar, vulgar. Their ignorance?their stingy,

grudging, defiant, attitude towards every

thing European?their perpetual reference of all things to some American standard or precedent which exists only in their own unscrupulous windbag... On the other

hand, we seem a people of character, we seem to have energy, capacity and intel lectual stuff in ample measure. What I have pointed at as our vices are the ele ments of the modern man with culture left out. It's the absolute and incredible lack of culture that strikes you in common trav

elling Americans. (Henry James to his

mother, 13 Oct. 1869, in Buzzard)

Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, and com

pany supplied a romantic approach to dem

onstrating cultural superiority. Distinction could be achieved by being more sensi tive, traveling further, "getting off the beaten track," searching out exotic and lonesome experiences, and finding aesthetic experi ences in the face of the authentic.

In short, the tourist/traveler distinction in the 19th century can be construed as a snobbery based upon cultural or educa tional privilege rather than the aristocratic

privilege of the 18th century. It is interest ing to note that as early as the mid 1700s, it was recognized that any benefits accruing to travel were as much the re

sponsibility of the tourer as of the tour, an attitude summed up in the proverb, "Travel makes a wise man better, but a fool

worse."

The excitement of the 1920s postwar period was cut short by the Depression and then a world war. But the 1950s saw a sec ond wave of travel and tourism. The end of a second war, the establishment of com mercial air travel, massive advances in communications, the increasing relevance to national economies of currency ex

change markets, all contributed to the growth of more or less classless interna tional mass tourism. By 1970, British and German working people had leased or pur chased virtually the entire east coast of Spain. Young people traveled indepen dently?high school students in the U.S. "did Europe" as a graduation present. An entire generation traveled Route 66 or headed off to Nepal (Turner and Ash,

Tourist Sites 69


1976). At the same time, new national tour ist groups such as the Japanese presented extensive opportunities for entrepreneur ial hosts.

Tourism is not a trivial pursuit. Travel occupies 40% of free time (Williams and Shaw, 1988, p.12). Growing at 5-6% annually, it is estimated that tourism was the world's largest employer by the year 2000 (Urry, 1990, p.6) servicing over 1 billion tourists (Turner and Ash, 1976, p.280). Between 1976 and 1986, visits abroad by UK tourists increased from 11.5 million to 25 million. Between 1960 and 1987, tourist sites in the UK rose from 800 to 3000 (Urry, 1990, p.5). These de

velopments are not just of quantitative in terest. The fact that leaving our home na tion has become a possibility for the ma

jority of the population in developed coun tries, leads to potential qualitative changes?changes in our personal ambi tions and attitudes. But it also produces employment, accrues capital, and changes physical environments. In short, the evo lution of tourism is a significant context for social change on both individual and com

munity levels. It is unlikely that the tourist-traveler dis

tinction is any easier to draw convincingly now than it was in the 19th century. Buz zard (1993) notes the etymological connec tion of travel with travail, and notes the "gritty endurance" of the traveler. In contrast, the tourist is "the cautious, pampered unit of a leisure industry" (p. 2). Most of us balk at

being called a tourist, traveler is doubtless the more flattering appellation. I may be a

spiritual traveler and claim, albeit prosai cally, that my journey is more important than my destination. I may be a more physical traveler and consider myself as a cultural voyageur rather than a cultural voyeur. As a traveler, I am revered for the stories I have to tell?after all, you had to be there and I was. Thus it is that old people and travelers may lie by authority.

With guidebook in hand (Buzzard, 1993, Chapter 3), I am a tourist. I am there to cover ground, not to dig in it, and to tell others that I made it. I drove from Paris to

Rome in one day, wish you were here, and I'll be back on Monday. Too harsh perhaps?

My desire to taste the elixirs of the cultur ally strange in my three weeks of summer bail is surely to be admired. I made the ef fort. It is interesting that, whatever the ex tent of my employer's generosity, the con cept of tourism has a tight schedule wired in. If I can explore Paris and the Loire in two weeks, then I can manage three or four countries in three weeks, despite the ob servation that traveling becomes dull ex

actly in proportion to its rapidity. Tourism is an achievement word. But it is also a per sonality word. I can vaunt my snaps and tell my grandchildren that I really was quite a lad in my time.

But perhaps a convincing distinction between travel and tourism will focus most on our motivation. Perhaps tourism is travel with an attitude?an attitude of assertion rather than of openness, of appropriation and judgment rather than enquiry and re

spect. Perhaps being a tourist is rightly a defensive activity from the beginning. Per haps Fussell's distinctions between explor ers, travelers, and tourists are as refined as we can expect:

All three make journeys, but the explorer seeks the undiscovered, the traveler that which has been discovered by the mind working in history, the tourist that which has been discovered by entrepreneurship and prepared for him by the arts of mass publicity (in Zunick, 1995, p.87).

Sights into sites

Hough (1990) suggests that "tourism has the potential to be a major force in the pro tection and maintenance of regional char acter" (p.149), but that often airlines and multinational corporations decide where tourism will achieve critical mass. He also points to the sheer scale of potential influ ence, citing, for example, that in 1973, 60 million people visited the French Riviera? one third of all international tourists for that

year?and 90% of foreign exchange in Barbados comes from tourism (p. 151). Hough seeks to demonstrate the contra

70 Nick Webb


diction that, as we seek cultural difference, we condemn others for doing the same; it's a good thing we came now, soon it will be spoiled. It is not just a question of num bers. The tourist seeks the excitement of

being away from home while avoiding the loss of home comforts. But this conve nience inevitably changes the life of the communities being visited. Hough's ex

cerpt from a tourist leaflet makes the point sharply:

Travelers today are discovering the an

cient realm of the Queen of Sheba in ...

Yemen. They can make a round of sights not dissimilar to those of the 15th century and still end their day in a jacuzzi whirl pool or an air-conditioned bar (p. 154).

He makes a parallel point in noting that areas of particular ethnic character add color and character to many cities, but "the

very elements that make the culture inter

esting for the visitor are those that help change it.... One of tourism's dilemmas is in ... the urge to make people conform"

(p. 163). Cohen made a related point in 1972, hypothesizing that the larger the flow of mass tourism becomes, the more insti tutionalized and standardized tourism be comes, and, consequently, the stronger the barriers between the tourist and the life of the host country become.

Turner and Ash (1976) have given this

ecological view a political perspective. They pointed out that in 1971, 95% of the world's population did not cross a border, and that only 1% had flown in an airplane (p. 13). But however small the number of tourists is in terms of total population, the effects, not just on the traditional "pleasure periphery" but on developing nations, have been extreme. They argue, "The tourist is involved in nothing less than the rewriting of the economic and political geography of the world" (p. 251), and that "international tourism is like King Midas in reverse (p. 15) ... a severely corrosive force ... a malign force ... a new form of colonialism ... the

geographic dispersal of the rich (pp. 249 51). In sum "A holiday is a political action" (p.181).

Toward a psychology of tourism

Lowenthal (1985) notes that, if the past is a foreign country, nostalgia has made it the

foreign country with the healthiest tourist trade. Lewis notes that "nostalgia is a

growth industry" because many "long to be rooted in a world of permanence" (cited in

Hough, 1995, p. 157). A psychology of tour ism can be approached by reviewing as

pects of this nostalgia as revealed by, for

example, our search for authenticity and our readiness to embrace the myths and simulacra, which often stand in the place of both the historical and contemporary realities we seek. It may well be that "nos

talgia emerges most in times of discontent, anxiety, and disappointment" (Hewison in

Urry, 1990, p. 109), and that "now that the present seems so full of woe ... the profu sion and frankness of our nostalgia... sug gest not merely a sense of loss ... but a

general abdication, an actual desertion from the present" (Wood in Urry, 1990, p. 105). It seems that anyone else's life is somehow more "real" than our own and that those other lives are to be found in older times or in other places. Reality is often seen, not just in being old and exotic, but also in the simplicity, integrity, pastoralism, and artisanal culture that we see as

grounding those qualities (Stewart, 1993, p. 133). An advertisement by an Isle of Man tourism agency guaranteeing the holiday of one's childhood is apposite: "You'll look forward to going back" (Urry, 1990, p. 102). Lowenthal, in noting the growth of muse ums in the UK, cites a commentator's quip that "Britain will soon be appointing a cu rator instead of a prime minister" (cited in

Urry, 1990, p.110). This search for the authentic is reflected

by our satisfaction in seeing "the very place," "the actual pen" (Van Den Abbeele, 1980, p.6), or by our search for the real site that attests to our understanding of a

larger cultural context. For example, we search for the "real" French cafe that au thenticates our impressions of open-air, romantic, and relaxed French life (p.7). We search for undeveloped communities and

Tourist Sites 71


reimagine them as unspoiled hamlets, ha vens of authenticity in an artificial world

(McKay, 1988). Even at home "we see res taurant decor in which preindustrial hand tools are tacked on the walls as if they were prints or paintings" (Stewart, 1993, p. 144) and we witness "the radical generational separation ... which results in certain nos

talgic forms of lawn art... wagon wheels, donkey carts, sleighs, and oxen yokes" denoting "occupants who have become tourists of their parents' ways of life" (p. 149).

Nostalgia thrives only on loss. As mass tourism produces homogeneity in the cul tures it touches, it simultaneously provides simulacra to fill the gaps in authenticity. So when the French cafe is marked as real or

genuine, it is, in the marking, designated as distinct from other unmarked examples, that is, it becomes inauthentic (Van Den Abbeele, 1980, p.7). In short, it is not just our "weakness" in seeking the security of the old, or escape into the exotic, that fu els nostalgia, but also the myths that are

consciously constructed by the tourist in dustry. A kind of political paternalism oper ates wherein airlines, travel agents, hotel managers, and governments act as surro

gate parents in creating or reinforcing the myths in which "our proclivity for nostalgia can dwell under supervision"(Turner and Ash, 1976, p. 150).

In the context of a people's spirituality or cosmology, myth may be the lie that is true. But Barthes (1973) has pointed to a more sinister interpretation in which myth is thought to deprive objects and people of their history. Myth, Barthes, said, acts eco

nomically, abolishing the complexity of hu man actions and providing only the sim plicity of essences. With myth there is no

going beyond what is immediately visible. Myths organize the world as if it were with out contradiction and without depth. Myths wallow in the evident. They establish a blissful clarity, appearing to mean some

thing without reference to anything else. Myth provides for the establishment of

"scripted continents" (Buzzard, 1993, chap.3) and are the fictions that allow us

to reimagine the authentic. Heritage func tions in the same way as Barthes' myth. Heritage can be seen as bogus history. Unlike history, which is continuing and dan gerous, heritage is dead and safe: "If we

really are interested in our history, then we may have to protect it from the conserva tionists" (Hewison, 1987, p.98). McKay (1988a) makes a similar point: "This colo nization of the past by capital and the capi talist state in the interests of increasing tourism revenue poses a threat to the hon est dialogue between past and present" (p. 30). McKay's context is the development of what he calls "Maritimicity," particularly in Nova Scotia. He is critical of the prov ince in that it has orchestrated tourist ex

perience, particularly since 1960 (1988b, pp. 29-37). He cites the new festivals de signed to look old, the use of Scottish tra ditions and "strategic Gaelic." He notes the marketing of the Tall Ships "focussing on vessels that often were simulacra of non existent originals" (p. 34). On the architec tural preservation policies of Halifax, he argues that:

The redevelopment of the city's waterfront has allowed old, functional buildings to be

"saved," but only in the sense that they now convey a vague, stereotypical "pastness" or 1860s-ness while new build

ings, such as the Sheraton Hotel, canni balize plain early 19th-century styles all the better to highlight the brass-infested opulence within, (p. 35)

His conclusion is that:

One does not come to Nova Scotia to es

cape the postmodern sense of unreality, but to feel its sharp cutting edge, not to recover the healthy folk past before capi talism but to glimpse what will happen everywhere once all images are commodi

ties, and all signs fully motivated, (p. 37)

But these accounts mark the tourist as

part victim and part fool. Certainly, our pre paredness to dwell in layered simulacra may be surprising. Urry's (1990) example of Manchester's Granada Studios construct ing copies of the sets used in the Corona tion Street television series is a fine ex

72 Nick Webb


ample. Here, tourists take photographs of a representation of a representation of a

representation. But the strength of our tour ist convictions may be telling us that we are

dealing with a deeply felt lack in our work

ing lives that is not filled by the implicit, or

explicit, derision of any postmodern critique. The development of a "postmodern mu seum culture" (Urry, 1990, p.107) may in deed be a response to experience, which is "increasingly mediated and abstracted"

(Stewart, 1993, p. 133), but our response is no less felt. Urry is one of the few com

mentators prepared to admit that, although heritage may be an abbreviated or mythic version of history, it provides a mechanism for contact with history at some level. He notes that heritage history is distorted be cause it is primarily visual, but that it speaks to a large and interested audience. For ex

ample, in 1990, the UK National Trust had a membership of 1.5 million, which was the

largest mass organization in that country. We may hope for high standards of histori cal inquiry, but we cannot deny people the right to engage in history at some level. I tend to the view that the myths we seek to authenticate are operable ways of ordering the past and validating experience, and that these activities are as much therapeutic, and therefore constructive, as they may be self-delusory. Similarly, we should likely note that tourists have a variety of motives, and

although we may believe the excesses of the tourism industry, and disrespectful tour ist behavior, warrant the apportioning of blame, the desire to see the other is surely in itself healthy. After all, seeing the other

without blame is what we are encouraging when we insist on multicultural images in our classrooms.

A psychology of tourism can and should develop perspectives on the mementos that tourists treasure. Such treasuring is clearly not the result of owning material worth, but of owning personal and singular experi ences. As Stewart (1993) notes, "We do not

buy souvenirs for events that are repeat able, only for those that are reportable" (pp. 135-6). Those events exist through the in vention of narrative, and this narrative is not

of the object but of the possessor. Stewart notes that" the souvenir moves history into private time" (p. 138). This is not an absurd desire, since the increasing sense of mor

tality that we all develop as we age requires that we mark significant events, for the itin erary of our lives slips easily into the worth of our lives. Moreover, in affirming a past leisure-time event, the souvenir separates us from the present, from the more mun dane world of work. It allows us escape from the impudent reality that we must live our lives predominantly in one place. The nar ratives we build are cumulative. We collect our lives, and through our collections, come to recognize ourselves. Such collections, when separated from their owners in death, may lose their contextual value, but if handed on to family members have extraor dinary power in symbolizing a life and be coming fertile ground for building new nar ratives onto those inherited.

Turner and Ash noted in 1976 that "al

ready the 1960s are coming to seem quaint and loveable: nostalgia threatens to over take itself" (p. 131). Perhaps this should not surprise us as paradigms disintegrate and we are challenged to live without the security that "universal values" offered. There is a sense in which "people are much of the time 'tourists' whether they like it or not. The tourist gaze is intrinsically part of contemporary experience, of postmodernism" (Urry, 1990, p.82). The disconnection or longing that the gaze im plies may be the natural corollary of decentering notions of place. We may all speculate how we shall engage the ironies that surface when homogeneity emerges from the drive to be plural.

Conclusions

The continued growth of tourism is inevi table. The fact that only 7% of U.S. citi zens had passports in 1990 (Urry, 1990, p. 51), and the rapid development of such countries as China, suggest that traditional tourist destinations like the French Riviera and the Caribbean will be even shorter on

capacity and patience, and that many new

Tourist Sites 73


destinations will be forged from willing or

unwilling hosts. I have tried to balance the

rightfully pessimistic arguments concern

ing the eradication of cultural differences and the construction of fake identities, with the more optimistic view that travel has al

ways been a potentially broadening expe rience. It is facile to argue that the solution to the plasticizing of the travelling mind is to stop travelling, just as it is presumptu ous to suggest that I ought not to hold on to my myths about French romanticism or Russian stoicism. Clearly, the phenomenon of mass tourism poses problems for the maintenance of cultural identities, as do some forms of multiculturalism. The pace of global mobility has outstripped the de

velopment of our coping and adapting strat

egies. One response is that our academic

persona will be able to put the entire en

terprise of tourism in quotation marks. We will become "posttourists" (Urry, 1990, pp.100-102). But one of the problems of

postmodernism is its tendency to forget that we have to act in the world. We can be frozen into domesticity by guilt over our cultural insensitivity or we can act to dis cover our own cultural context and identi ties. And this is a challenging theme for any postmodern art educator.

Thoughts on Education Practice

We began in Halifax. It seems fitting to re turn there for a moment to example the kinds of teaching activities that can bring out interpretations of local identity and its conscious development. The Summit Place arch marks a G7 gathering in 1996 with a construction left too late to be "designed." The federal government was concerned that the views from and immediate sur rounds of the building chosen for the sum

mit should be fitting for the importance of such an occasion. Parking lots were paved, the boardwalk was extended, and trees were planted. What was missing was a fo cal point in the form of a historical marker, a monument, a photographic prop. What better form than an arch? L'Arc de

Triomphe, the Marble Arch provide a per

feet lineage. An arch is a doorway, a pas sage through. It marks specialness. Unfor

tunately both time and money were short and so the city works department was given the job of building an arch for which no

plans had been drawn up. Perhaps the arch is a tribute only to good intentions.

In looking at the Summit Place arch, the formalist in me notes its lazy lines celebrat

ing neither curve nor angle. The craftsman in me notes the visible seams. The de

signer in me notes that the identifying text

fights the arch at every step. Its plywood and stucco construction deny ornament and specialness. Most importantly, the arch connects nothing?it just is. Should I take a more ironic stance? The arch is a play on traditional archness. Unlike its histori cal counterparts, it can be maintained by caulking and paint. The lettering is delib

erately askew, for this arch denies the au

thority of graphic conventions. The Arch can connect anything we want?it is po tentially mobile. This is a postmodern arch. So, do you want it for your city? What would you want connected? Would you change it in any way?

The most recent addition to Halifax civic clocks is the original navy shipyard clock, refurbished and rehoused. The result pro vides a contrast between the industrial gantry and the softness of the cedar

shingles and rounded dome. Gas light rep licas and nautical lights, exposed aggre gate, symmetrical garbage cans, a heritage plaque, and an information board help to make this a "site." Does your city have a similar retrofit? What is your reaction to it?

The large welcome signs situated at the

periphery of the Halifax downtown core

appeared around 1993. They were com missioned by the Downtown Business Im

provement Commission and had a "this is where the action is" message. The origi nal lilac, green, and yellow, together with the anarchic axes of the Halifax font, es tablished an '80s Miami graphic quality. Perhaps this was an intentional link to the Nova Scotia license plate epigram that read, "Canada's Ocean Playground." Re

painted in 1999, the colors are stronger and

74 Nick Webb


more sedate and the web address has been added. On the reverse, the words "Do even more?Halifax Downtown" also have been added.

Dartmouth, Halifax's neighbor across the harbor, makes an instructional comparison. The Dartmouth downtown sign presents a coat of arms, a scroll, chiseled gold letter ing, and, oddly, a windmill. Heritage is the central message. This is interesting in that Dartmouth has a poor record of articulating or preserving its history, and is less wealthy than Halifax. Perhaps pointing to the future rather than the present is the point. Halifax, secure in its reputation as old and interest

ing, can afford to present other dimensions less well established?its technological connectedness and its vibrancy.

The increase in cruise ship traffic has caused the city to review the infrastructure that surrounds such visits. Where are pas sengers received? What are their first im pressions? How do we get them to the downtown core? Pier 21 was for more than a century the first point of entry for immi

grants to Canada. As both dock and mu seum, the site infrastructure had to be re viewed. Do you see evidence of such in frastructure changes in your community?

In Halifax, as elsewhere, restaurants, bars, and shops are the major component of the downtown core district. Businesses typically seek to reinforce heritage through the decor of their buildings. Can you iden tify a connection in your community between business decor and community identity?

For those involved in education at any level, I hope that the foregoing examples have suggested potential teaching projects. I have worked with university stu dents on the following activities, but these sorts of projects may also be readily inter preted and adapted for secondary level school students:

1. Take an inventory of identity markers, historic and otherwise: heritage plaques, signposts, information panels, welcome signs, and so on. How are

they sited? Is there a consistent style? Can you find out who designed, pro duced, and sited them? What were the

criteria for the decisions made? What is the intended atmosphere? How is tourist traffic, motor and pedestrian, manipulated through the structures of the site?

2. Complete a visual/written analysis of a tourist site that you know, noting the site markers and their relationship to the site. (A marker is everything from a

signpost or a fence to a gift shop or a

leaflet). Is it clear where the historical site is or has it been generalized? How does the "street furniture" contribute to the site? Can you comment on the au

thenticity of the site and its historical context, and on the nature of market ing strategies employed? Are there any bylaws that relate directly to the site(s)? How are tourists routed?

3. Go to your local tourist office and pre tend to be a tourist. Try to collect infor mation on tourist statistics as well as on the sites themselves. Visit your air port, train station, bus station, and so on, and describe the products offered to tourists as they first arrive. Try to articulate the official texts, written and visual, spoken or unspoken. Could you find examples of areas of your town/ city that exude "authentic" character and compare them to those that dem onstrate a more packaged character? Now, design an "antitourist" tour of your area. Include text and images. This is a tour for those who want to experience the "real thing."

4. Produce a map of the area that con tains your tourist site(s). What kinds of business have developed in and around the site(s)? Are they year round or seasonal? Does the exterior/interior decor relate to the site(s)?

5. Interview tourists; take their photo graphs. Where are they from? How did they come? Why did they come? What did they expect? Are they satisfied/dis satisfied? In what ways? Can you find data providing information on where tourists to your area come from? Can you trace why tourists come from these areas and not others? Present your

Tourist Sites 75


findings by making a chart, a map, or a video documentary.

6. Visit a typical tourist/souvenir shop. Try to classify the merchandise. Talk to the owner. Document in written and visual form what are the most popular gifts and souvenirs. Develop your own

theory of why particular items and these shops in general are so popular.

Why do we buy souvenirs? What quali ties must a souvenir have to be attrac tive to a tourist?

7. Imagine you are a tourist in your own

town/city. Buy a guidebook or a set of leaflets. Take the suggested tours. Take

photographs accordingly. To what ex tent is your experience structured by the 'tourist authorities," that is, by city council or commercial attractions? Do you walk on designated paths or streets? Is there a tourist "flow pattern"? Exhibit your snaps and try to articulate

why you took them, and what you have learned about your own area.

8. Design and produce a souvenir for tour ists visiting your area.

9. Conceptualize and design a tourist leaf let for your state, province, county, city or town. What histories or myths will you focus on? What sites will you pick as exemplary? What interests are you appealing to?

10. Conceptualize a travel poster for your country. What are the stereotypical in terpretations of your national charac ter? What message do you want to send about the people and the places? How will you condense your invitation so that it is effective as a selling tool?

11. What are the locations, images, and at

mospheres that make you feel "at home" in your community? Are these the images that tourists would seek? Do these images coincide or compete?

References

Barthes, R. (1973). Mythologies. (A. Lavers,

Trans.). Frogmore: Paladin

Buzzard, J. (1993). The beaten track: European tourism, literature, and the ways to culture' 1800-1918. Oxford: Clarendon.

Cohen, E. (1972). Toward a sociology of interna tional tourism. Social Research 39(1), pp164 182.

Hewison, R. (1987). The heritage industry. Lon

don: Methuen.

Hough, M. (1990). Out of place: Restoring iden tity to the regional landscape. Newhaven: Yale

University Press.

Lowenthal, D. (1985). The past is a foreign coun try. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McKay, I. (1988, Summer). Twilight at Peggy's Cove: Toward a genealogy of maritimicity. Border/Lines, pp. 29-36. (a)

McKay, I. (1988). Among the fisherfolk: J.F.B.

Livesay and the invention of Peggy's Cove. Journal of Canadian Studies, 23( 1and2) pp.23-45. (b)

Page, S. (1995). Urban Tourism. London.

Routledge. Rosenow, J. and Pulsipher, G. (1980). Tourism:

the good, the bad, and the ugly. Century Three Press.

Sontag, S. (1973, November). Photography. New York Review of Books, 18, pp.59-63.

Sontag, S. (1979). On photography. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Stewart, S. (1993). On longing: Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the col lection. London: Duke University.

Turner, L., and Ash, J. (1976). The golden hordes: International tourism and the pleasure periph ery. New York: St Martin's Press.

Urry, J. (1990). The tourist gaze: Leisure and travel in contemporary societies. London:

Sage. Van Den Abbeele, G. (1980, December). Sight

seers: The tourist as theorist (review of The Tourist: A new theory of the leisure class, Dean MacCannell). Diacritics, pp.2-14.

Williams, A., and Shaw, G. (1988). Tourism:

Candyfloss industry or job creator. Town Plan

ning Review, 59. pp.81-103. Zurick, D (1995). Errant journeys. Austin, TX:

University of Texas Press.

Nick Webb Nova Scotia School of Art and Design 5163 Duke Street Halifax, Canada B3J 3J6

76 Nick Webb


Article Contentsp. 64p. 65p. 66p. 67p. 68p. 69p. 70p. 71p. 72p. 73p. 74p. 75p. 76

Issue Table of ContentsVisual Arts Research, Vol. 28, No. 2, Visual Culture (2002), pp. 1-108Front MatterEditorial [pp. 1-3]Theorising Everyday Aesthetic Experience with Contemporary Visual Culture [pp. 4-15]Please Stand By for an Important Message: Television in Art Education [pp. 16-26]Electronic Media and Everyday Aesthetics of Simulation [pp. 27-37]Engaging Advertisements: Looking for Meaning In and Through Art Education [pp. 38-47]Teaching about Surfing Culture and Aesthetics [pp. 48-56]Community Celebrations as Ritual Signifiers [pp. 57-63]Tourist Sites [pp. 64-76]Shopping Malls from Preteen and Teenage Perspectives [pp. 77-85]Teenagers and Their Bedrooms [pp. 86-93]Can Art Education Become Reflective Praxis? Reflections on Theme Park Experience [pp. 94-101]Tourist Souvenirs [pp. 102-108]Back Matter

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