Ethnic tourism, the state, and cultural change in Southeast Asia

ETHNIC TOURISM, THE STATE, AND CULTURAL CHANGE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA Robert E. Wood Department of Sociology and Anthropology Rutgers University. Camden, USA

ABSTRACT International tourism in Southeast Asia increasingly involves a restructuring of the relationship between the state and local cultures. A typology identifies the roles that culture and ethnicity play in Southeast Asian tourism. Tourism involves the state in new relationships with local cultures-as planner of tourist development, as marketer of cultural meanings, as arbiter of cultural practices displayed to tourists, and as an arena for new forms of politics. The state’s role is contradictory and complex, as tourism leads to increased state intervention in local cultures and, at the same time, provides cultural groups with new means of pressing claims against the state. Keywords: tourism, ethnicity, cultural change, Southeast Asia.

Robert Wood is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University (Camden. NJ 08102. USA). He has published articles on Third World tourism in Economic Development and Cultural Change. Journal of Contemporary Asia. and Southeast Asia Chronicle. as well as articles on a variety of aspects of development. of Toun’sm Research. Vol. 1 I. pp. 353-374. Prtnted In the USA. All rtghts reserved.

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RtiSUME Le tourisme ethnique, 1’Etat et le changement culture1 en Asie du Sud-Est. Le tourisme international en Asie du Sud-Est comprend de plus en plus une restructuration des relations entre 1’Etat et les cultures locales. Une typologie identifie les roles que jouent la culture et l’ethnicite dans le tourisme sud-est asiatique. Le tourisme fait intervenir 1’Etat dans de nouveaux rapports avec les cultures locales: en tant que planificateur du developpement touristique, diffuseur de valeurs culturelles a travers le tourisme. arbitre des comportements culturels exposes aux touristes, et initiateur de nouveaux modes politiques. Le role de 1’Etat est contradictoire et complexe: d’une part le tourisme provoque de nouvelles formes d’intervention de 1’Etat dans les cultures locales, mais d’autre part il donne aux groupes locaux de nouveaux moyens de pression contre 1’Etat. Mats Clef: tourisme, ethnicite, changement culturel, Asie du Sud-Est.

INTRODUCTION International tourism is one of the most rapidly expanding sectors of the world economy, perhaps nowhere more strikingly so than in the capitalist countries of Southeast Asia. Several years ago MacCannell (1976:5) urged sociologists to “follow the tourists” to gain an understanding of the modern world, and indeed there has been a mini-explosion of sociological studies of tourism in the past several years (for a useful bibliography, see Jafari 1979). Most of these studies have focused on the nature and consequences of direct interaction between tourists and local people. A recent effort by Cohen (1979) to “Rethink the Sociology of Tourism” and to provide a conceptual framework for future studies focuses almost exclusively on “types of touristic situations.” While not uninterested in these situations, this paper is premised on the notion that the development of an international tourism industry has consequences that extend far beyond the immediate sites of host-tourist interaction and rest on dynamics that increasingly involve a restructuring of the relationship between the state and local cultures. These dynamics arise partly from the general nature of tourism industries and partly from the role which ethnicity and culture play in Southeast Asian tourism in particular. 354

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This paper will first review the growth of international tourism in Southeast Asia, attempting in particular to clarify the role ethnicity and culture play as tourist attractions. Then it will turn to an examination of the way in which the state’s interest in tourism development affects its relationship to indigenous cultures and has resulted in a restructuring of the relationship between state and society in many parts of Southeast Asia. It is possible, on the basis of information available both about Southeast Asian tourism and tourism elsewhere in the Third World, to formulate some tentative hypotheses about how the expansion of tourism has altered the role of the state in Southeast Asian societies. THE EXPANSION

OF SOUTHEAST

ASIAN TOURISM

Despite the physical presence of tourists, international tourism is considered an export industry (since domestically-produced goods and services are sold to foreigners), and hence it is not surprising that reliance on tourism is almost always part of a wider strategy of export-oriented, capitalist-based development. International tourism is negligible in Vietnam, Kampuchea, and Laos. It exists only peripherally in Burma, where the government to date has discouraged its development by restricting tourist visas to seven days and has made little effort to develop tourist facilities. All the capitalist countries of Southeast Asia, however, are actively encouraging the growth of their tourism industries, although the scale of their efforts does vary. Table 1 documents the growth of international tourism in

Table 1 International Visitor Arrivals in Southeast Asia, 1960,1970,1981 Destination

1960

Hong Kong

163.66

1970 1

1981 2.535.203

927,256

Indonesia

6.335

129.319

South

5.930=

173.335

930.247

26.865b

76.374

1.6793382

Korea

Malaysia Philippines

50,657

144.07

Singapore

90.128

52 1.654

Taiwan

20,796

472,452

Thailand

81.340

628.67

aArrWalby

600.151

1

938,953 2.828.622 1.116,008

1

2.015.615

air only.

b 1963 data. Source: WTO 1962.

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the Southeast Asian societies this paper will be concerned with: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. While the latter three countries are not always considered Southeast Asian, their inclusion in the itineraries of many tours in the region warrants their inclusion in this study. The world recession since 1979 has slowed the growth of Southeast Asian tourism. In the cases of South Korea and the Philippines, it has resulted in a decline in visitor arrivals below the previously attained one-million mark. Nonetheless, all but one of the capitalist countries of Southeast Asia are receiving close to or more than one million visitors a year, and three of them receive substantially over two million. Only two countries in the rest of the Third World received over two million visitors in 1981 (Mexico and Tunisia): eight others received over one million. The economic contribution of tourism is not easily inferred from data on tourism receipts. Tourism is an industry with a very high foreign exchange content. Food and building materials are often imported, as are most of the consumer goods tourists buy in such places as Singapore and Hong Kong: management fees paid to multinational hotel chains; millions of dollars spent by government tourist organizations promoting the attractions of their countries, etc. In addition, many observers believe that tourists have a demonstration effect that shifts local consumption in import-oriented directions. Table 2 presents data on the revenues generated by interTable 2

Tourism Receipts of Southeast Asian Countries, 1960.1970, and 1981 (in Millions of Dollars) Countrv

1960

1970

1981

% GDP 1981

Receipts Per Cap&. 1981

Hong Kong lndpnesia South Korea Malaysia PhilippInes shlgapore T&wan Thalland

30.aa 0.7 1.2 4.5b 2.9 2.7d 1.5 9.8

293.0 16.2 46.8 9.2 32.1 n.d. 89.7 104.3

1449.0 288.0 447.6 204.0b 344.0 1090.0 1008.0 983.3

5.3 0.3 0.7 1.4< 0.9 8.4 2.5 2.7

278.65 1.93 11.51 15.34( 6.94 454.17 57.27 20.49

% of Merchandise Exports. 198 1 6.7 1.3 2.1 2.Br 6.0 5.2 4.5 14.2

A I959 data. “1963 data. ‘1979 data. Source:\KTO 1962. 1971. 1982: Asian Development Bank 1979: World Bank 1983.

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Table 3 International Visitor Arrivals by Purpose of Visit. Selected Southeast Asian Countries, 198 1 Purpose of Visit Destination

Holiday/Recreation

Hong Kong Indonesia South Korea Philippines Singapore Taiwan Thailand

Business/Convention

69% 70% 68% 72% 66% 86% 73%

Other 11% 6% 19% 12% 16% 5% 19%

20% 24% 13% 16% 18% 9% 8%

Source: WTO 1982.

national tourists and makes it clear that the relative position of the tourism sector varies considerably in different countries. Relative size of tourism receipts is not the crucial issue: whereas Thailand’s per capita receipts are low in comparison to some other countries, they constitute by far the largest proportion of merchandise exports. Erik Cohen (1974:533) has proposed the following sociological definition of tourists: “A ‘tourist’ is a voluntary, temporary traveller, travelling in the expectation of pleasure from the novelty and change experienced on a relatively long and non-recurrent round trip.” It is clear that a substantial number of the “international arrivals” listed in Table 1 do not meet this definition. Table 3 presents survey data provided by national tourism organizations to the World Tourism Organization for 1981. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of visitors to these countries identified the purpose of their visit as “holiday” or “recreation.” A substantial number of these visitors are from other Southeast Asian countries. Table 4 shows that the Table

4

International Visitor Arrivals by Country of Origin 198 1 Destination

Japan

Hong Kong Indonesia South Korea Malaysia Phtlippines Singapore Taiwan Thailand

20.0% 11.1% 54.5% 7.7% 20.6% 12.5% 53.2% 10.7%

No. America 17.2% 10.3% 15.1% 4.1% 20.8% 5.9% 12.7% 7.0%

Europe

Australia

16.4% 33.9% 6.0% 11.5% 12.0% 14.7% 5.6% 25.8%

8.0% 15.8% 0.5% 6.1% 6.8% 9.1% 1.3% 3.4%

Source: WTO 1982.

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Other

25.0% 24.1% 21.9% 62.6% 24.8% 45.2% 22.5% 37.7%

13.4% 4.8% 2.0% 8.0% 15.0% 12.6% 4.7% 15.4%

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proportion of total visitors from Southeast Asian countries varies considerably, but reaches as high as 45% in Singapore and 63% in Malaysia. Indonesians and Malaysians are the largest groups of visitors to Singapore, while Thais and Singaporeans are for Malaysia. Many of these are presumably travelling for family and commercial reasons. These figures suggest that despite the emphasis on culture in the promotional literature of government tourist organizations, a substantial amount of international travel which gets included in figures on numbers of tourists and on the receipts generated from them is not primarily motivated by cultural interests or directed at specifically cultural destinations. It is doubtful that much of the regional tourism is cultural tourism. On a per capita basis, Indonesians are the biggest spenders in Singapore (Wookey 1977:59), suggesting that a substantial amount of regional travel consists of elites taking advantage of free-trade zones to do their shopping. In addition, an undetermined but substantial proportion of international tourism, particularly in South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand, is primarily for sex. So far the academic literature on tourism has had surprisingly little to say about this, but the tourist guides to the region have been considerably less reticent. For example, the “After Dark” section of theA1IAsia Guide, published by the prestigious Far Eastern Economic Review (1980:261 focuses almost exclusively on the details of procuring prostitutes for the night, and sings the praises of purchased sex in Asia: If you want sex in Asia, it is there: fundamentally to be enjoyed without guilt, a matter of appetite not romance. In most places it is free and easy: most Asians prefer not to talk about it. Of millions of Japanese tourists who wash over Asia’s holiday playgrounds. maybe half are there for sex: perhaps all Germans barrelling into Pattaya in Thailand have that in mind, since it is a big selling point in Europe for their tours. Asia’s lights o’love are mostly young, pretty, gay and a welcome change from the hard-faced crones found in the West. Where else but in Manila would hospitality girls from one of the small bars in Ermita, in a gesture of gratitude to some of their favored clientele, put up a makeshift shrine decorated with three photographs of their top three (journalist1 patrons?

Sex tours, complete with the nightly company of a local prostitute, are increasingly big business in both Japan and Europe. (Sexoriented tours advertised in the U.S. seem to emphasize instead the idea of the tourists having sex with each other, as at some Club Med 358

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Table 5 Selected Data on Tours to the Orient, 1981’ Tours AIlnWdly

Average No. Countries Vtslted

Range of Overnight Stays in Southeast Aslan Countrtes

135 479 80

5.0 6.6 7.6

1-5 1-6 1-8

No.

Duration 15-19 days 21-25 days 26-36 days

aBased on 38 tour options. from 20 tour companies. handled by the MalaysIan Alrllne System Source: MalaysIan Alrllnes System 1981.

resorts.1 Indirect evidence of the predominance of this type of tourism is reflected in the tourist statistics for the major sex-tour destinations: 94% of Japanese visitors to Taiwan and South Korea are male, for example (Awanohara 1975:51. A Japanese travel agent quoted in the New York Times estimates that “possibly as high as 80 percent” of these men travel mainly to buy sex (Stokes 1979:lOl. Local tourism officials in Southeast Asia seem to shrug their shoulders: the head of South Korea’s National Tourism Corporation has said: “I don’t think it is a matter to be overly hysterical about. Women in tourism is a worldwide phenomenon” (Myong-Sik 1979:281. There are an estimated 100,000 prostitutes in Manila alone (Newmann 1979:181: this compares with an estimate of 50,000 for all hotel and restaurant workers in the entire country (NUWHRAIN 19791. Even when tourism in Southeast Asia has a cultural focus, the structure of this tourism has resulted in a quite high level of concentration of tourist destinations. A substantial proportion of tourists to the region are on tours. These tours generally attempt to cover the entire “Orient,” and hence the number of places which can be visited in any given country is very small. Table 5 presents data on 38 Orient tour packages offered by 20 different tour operators, accounting for 694 tours to Southeast Asia annually. In the category of tours lasting 21-25 days, which accounts for 479 of these tours, an average of 6.57 countries is visited with stopovers ranging from one to a maximum ofsix nights. Within any given country, the itineraries of these tours are highly routinized, with virtually all tours drawing on a small pool of common destinations. The capital city is almost always one of these, with the exception of Jakarta and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Kuala Lumpur. CULTURE AND ETHNICITY

AS TOURIST ATTRACTIONS

Club Med has come to Asia. Its first facility has opened near Cherating, on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. Twenty-five 1984 ANNALS OF TOURISM

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miles south, a new Hyatt Hotel has opened in Kuantan, joining the rapidly expanding list of resort hotels in the area. Club Med. with its self-contained and isolated facilities, represents in a sense the antithesis of cultural tourism. Yet the temptation to assume the irrelevance of local culture for Club Med is tempered by the following description from PaciJc Travel News (1980:50): At Cherating village. about 25 miles north of Kuantan. agents can arrange demonstrations of shadow puppet making. top spinning, mengkuang weaving, rice pounding, traditional games and fishing with nets. In addition, the villagers perform local dances, silat (the martial art of self-defense) and sepak raga (a game that’s sort of a cross between soccer and volleyball). The villagers also serve afternoon tea and a traditional dinner at a local home. Asia’s first Club Mediteranee has opened hear Cherating. This example of Cherating indicates how difficult it is to classify types of tourism and to determine the role of cultural attractions. Valene Smith ( 1977:2-3) has suggested a fivefold typology of tourism. One is recreational tourism, or what is often referred to in the .trade as “sunlust” tourism-based on the three s’s of sand, sun and sex, though not actually limited to beach resorts. A second is environmental tourism, focusing either on natural scenery (Mt. Kinabalu, tropical rain forests, etc.) or on unique humanly-created landscapes (e.g., the rice terraces at Banaue). A third is historical tourism, emphasizing the relics of past cultures (e.g., the Buddhist stupa at Borobudor, the royal city of Ayutthaya, etc.). Smith’s other two classifications relate to tourism aimed at living cultures, although her distinction seems unclear and inconsistent. She defines “ethnic” tourism as that “marketed to the public in terms of the ‘quaint’ customs of indigenous and often exotic peoples,” and gives examples of the Eskimo, the San Blas Indians of Panama, and the Toraja of Indonesia. ‘Cultural” tourism, according to Smith, “includes the ‘picturesque’ or ‘local color,’ a vestige of a vanishing life-style that lies within human memory with its ‘old style’ houses, homespun fabrics, horse or ox-drawn carts and plows, and hand rather than machinemade crafts.. . . This is peasant culture, illustrated by the case studies on Bali and Spain” (Smith 1977:2). The distinction is quite unclear. Are the Toraja “quaint” and “exotic,” but not the Balinese? Is one society peasant and the other not? It is certainly open for debate whether Balinese culture is a “vanishing lifestyle.” and it is not clear that the cultures listed under cultural tourism are vanishing more rapidly than those listed 360

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under ethnic tourism. The mistake here, it seems, is to rest the distinction on the nature of the cultures involved. What is critical is the tourist approach to cultures. There is a useful distinction to be made here, but it needs to be reformulated. Ethnic tourism should be defined by its direct focus on people living out a cultural identity whose uniqueness is being marketed for tourists. Tourists may engage in “tours of living culture,” or they may be presented with staged performances (Wood 1980). But in either case the focus of tourist interest is on the cultural practices which define a unique ethnicity. Cultural tourism, on the other hand, may be defined in terms of situations where the role of culture is contextual, where its role is to shape the tourist’s experience of a situation in general without a particular focus on the uniqueness of a specific cultural identity. The focus here is much more on artifacts, particularly buildings, vehicles, food stalls, clothing, etc., rather than on the concrete cultural activities of people. For any given tourist, either of these types of tourism may either be primary or else secondary to another form of tourism. Table 6 provides illustrations of some examples in Southeast Asia of the four possibilities. Any culture can be the object of any of these forms of tourism, but the nature of tourism development in any given area tends to relegate specific cultures and ethnic groups to one dominant role. Examples of primary ethnic tourism include the dominant forms of tourist interest in Balinese and Toraja cultures in Indonesia. in longhouse Iban and Kayan communities in East Malaysia, in the hill

Table 6 Role of Culture and Ethnicity in Different Forms of Tourism Cultural Tourism

Ethnic Tour&m Primary Importance Cultural practices as deflnlng a unique ethnictty of Interest to tourists-e.g.. among the Balinese. Toraja. Thal hill tribes. Borneo longhouse communities. etc.

Secondary Designated vtllages or special performances supplementing other forms of tourism (retreational. historical. envtronmental-e.g.. excursion to Cheratlng village. daytime performantes of Javanese puppet theatre. etc.

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Role of physical artifacts of cultures and general bustle of everyday life In provtdlng Asian flavor to experience of tourists-e.g.. the array of dress and physical appearance. the slght and smell of food stalls. etc.. which make a destlnatlon seem exotic to tourists. Importance Role of local culture in providing a physical setting for other forms of tourism which Imprints them with a sense of unlqueness-e.g.. the setting provided by fIshlng vtllages and rice paddles for resorts on the East coast of Malaysia.

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tribes of Northern Thailand, in Yami culture on Orchid Island off of Taiwan, etc. Only in the case of Bali does primary ethnic tourism currently exist on a mass basis in Southeast Asia. Examples of primary cultural tourism involve the role that the mix of Asian cultures plays in most Asian cities in providing the tourist with a satisfying sense of having experienced “Asia’‘-the sights, sounds, and smells which define this experience. This is the major role culture plays in Southeast Asian tourism today. It is perhaps epitomized in Singapore’s advertised promise to provide “Instant Asia.” Secondary ethnic tourism exists where specific communities have made a business of providing glimpses of their culture to tourists primarily interested in other things-perhaps, an afternoon diversion from the beach. It is reflected in the attitude of the two-thirds of the tourists in a survey in Tunisia who responded, when asked if they were interested in the country, “Yes, but it must not interfere with the vacation” (de Kadt 1979:511. Secondary cultural tourism involves the role of local cultures in imprinting other forms of tourism with a unique flavor-there has to be something different about the Club Med in Asia to induce Europeans to pay the extra money to get the 3 S’s there. The success of resorts like Pattaya suggest that this may well be the predominant role-in terms of numbers of tourists-that culture may play in Southeast Asian tourism in the future. THE STATE AND TOURISM

DEVELOPMENT

In the rest of this paper attempts are made to explore the ways in which the development of tourism tends to involve the state in new relationships to ethnic groups and specifically to involve it in new processes of cultural change. At the outset of tourism development, the state often appears as an independent actor which unilaterally sets the terms of change-making decisions, for example, which determine the relations of culture and ethnicity to tourism discussed in the last section. These decisions set in motion dynamics which tend to involve the state more deeply in the cultural politics of both the nation as a whole and the groups affected by tourism development. This subsequent process, however, entails an increasingly complex and often contradictory role for the state, as the state becomes both an actor in local cultural conflict and an arena for new types of politics, which can include claims against the state itself. These developments are discussed under four headings: the state as planner of tourism development; the state as marketer of cultural 362

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meanings; the state as arbitor of cultural practices: and the state as an arena for new forms of politics. The State as Planner of Tourism Development All the Southeast Asian governments in this study have opted for mass tourism, based on tours and charter flights requiring airports capable of receiving international flights, “international-standard” luxury hotels, etc. The high infrastructural costs of this type of tourism have both necessitated an active state role and have tended to bias the state towards large-scale resort projects, since local skills and capital resources are insufficient for developing mass tourism and large-scale resort complexes offer advantages of economies of scale. This tendency has been encouraged by the availability of World Bank and other aid loans for such projects (e.g., the Pomun Tourist Report near Kyongju. South Korea, and Nusa Dua in Bali). Government decisions to favor such projects ensure that major investors will not be local and will often be foreign. In this sense, government planning decisions determine the structure of entrepreneurial opportunity which tourism brings about, generally to the detriment of local collectivities and investors. This consequence can be reinforced by visa policy-the bans on “hippies” common in Southeast Asia, the limitations on visa renewal, and the delays in processing individual visa applications, all tend to limit alternative forms of tourism which would offer more entrepreneurial opportunities to less elite groups. As de Kadt ( 1979:2 1I has pointed out, there is “no evidence that any government has deliberately set out to assess the overall effects of alternative types of tourism in order to promote those that appear to promise the greatest net social benefits.” Governments are increasingly concerned about the social and cultural consequences of tourism, but their attempts to influence tourism’s effects lie almost wholly within the framework of mass tourism (Wood 198 11. This lack of attention to alternative types of tourism is partly due to a reliance on imported models and a lack of functioning alternatives to choose from. It also reflects the simple fact that tourism planning will reflect wider realities of power in the society. If the government is authoritarian and structures of democratic input are lacking, if a small political elite is allied with comprador and foreign capital, if the ideology of development is capitalist, there are few grounds for expecting tourism planning and development to have different social consequences than other “development” policies. The process of planning for tourism in Bali is perhaps indicative of how the initial role of the state tends to be unilateral and undemo1984 ANNALS OF TOURISM

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cratic. In 1968 the Indonesian central government decided that future tourism development in Bali should be planned, and arranged with the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank to have a master plan prepared by a private consulting firm. Raymond Noronha (1979:196) reports: The 1968 decision to adopt tourism as a means of economic development of Bali was arrived at without local consultation. There was, and is, little awareness among the Balinese of the five-year plan and the subsequent master plan. It was the elite. mainly Jakarta Indonesians. who were aware of these plans and could take economic advantage of the proposals.

According to Noronha, there is no evidence that either in the formulation or in the adoption of the plan prepared by the private consulting firm, either the regional government or the local Balinese organizations (bandjars) were consulted. Nevertheless, the plan was adopted by Presidential decree in 1972. It is the plan which concentrates further tourist development in Bali on the barren Bukit Peninsula at the south end of Bali in a massive resort complex which lies beyond Balinese entrepreneurial capacities. Elsewhere there are cases where government planning has been more sensitive to local needs. Eric Crystal ( 1977:1241 reports that as of 1976 the regional government of Tana Toraja (on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi) had successfully resisted the intrusion of nonregional capital in the hotel industry, although he expresses doubt that this policy will continue into the future. But basic planning for tourism development in Tana Toraja has likewise been primarily a matter of unilateral decisions from the outside. A study of a major tourism project in Mexico, where there was extensive planning “to avoid another Acapulco,” similarly found local participation to be “very limited” (Reynoso Y Valle and de Regt 1979:115). The following short article, from a public-relations newsletter of the Tourist Organization of Thailand (1977:4). provides one more illustration of the common pattern, here reproduced at the regional level: Following a survey of the Hilltribe Village of Doi Pui, Chiang Mai. the Tourist Organization of Thailand [TOT] held a joint meeting with representatives from tourism sector and Chiang Mai authorities on drawing up a conservation and development plan for the village. The plan will include promotion and control of craftsmanships, revival of their exotic culture. meanwhile preserving the tribal identity in their way of life. As a result. a Committee on Conservation and Development Planning for the 364

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Hilltribe Village of Doi Pui was set up, chaired by the Governor of Chiang Mai and composed of representatives from different agencies involved including TOT.

The State as Marketer of Cultural Meanings Fostering international tourism, particularly to the degree that it rests on ethnic or cultural tourism, puts the state in the business of making new kinds of cultural statements. Jamaica, a few years ago, ran an advertising campaign saying, “Jamaica. We’re more than a beach,” explaining that Jamaica has a culture too. Most Southeast Asian countries seem to be moving at least partly in the opposite direction: from emphasizing cultural attractions for the explorertourist to selling beaches to the mass tourist. In either case, the choice of which parts of a country’s cultural heritage to develop for tourism constitutes a statement about national identity which is conveyed to both tourists and locals. An interesting aspect of this process is the way responsiveness to the interests and culture of tourists may affect the definition of national identity and cultural heritage that governments implicitly present through tourism. It is striking, for example, how unmarketable Islam seems to be in Indonesia and Malaysia, the two predominantly Moslem nations of Southeast Asia. Instead Indonesia has an overwhelming emphasis on the unique Hinduism of Bali, followed by the marketing of the Hindu-Buddhist heritage of the past on Java, and selected local cultures in the outlying islands, most notably the Toraja and the Bataks. (This skews tourist perceptions, as illustrated in a conversation between this author and his uncle. Knowing that the uncle had traveled in Asia, the author asked him if he had been to Indonesia. No, he said, only to Bali. He expressed astonishment when he was informed that Bali was indeed in Indonesia.). In Malaysia, the apparent unmarketability of Islam may account for the degree to which the government is fostering beach resort tourism, particularly since on peninsular Malaysia the main cultural contenders would be the Chinese. In East Malaysia, on the other hand, the government has moved to exploit the tourist attractiveness of longhouse communities, portraying them prominently in its promotional literature and generally encouraging their survival. This policy contrasts sharply with Indonesian policy in neighboring West Kalimantan, where an aggressive policy by local government officials (mostly Javanesel to “civilize” the Dyaks has resulted in the destruction of all but a few of the longhouses (Jenkins 19781. 1984 ANNALS OF TOURISM

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Although other factors are also involved, the fact that Indonesia has not chosen to promote tourism in West Kalimantan may have affected the fate of the longhouses there. There is reason to believe that state definitions of tourist attractions, embodied in tourism planning, marketing and development, affect local perceptions of national identity and cultural heritage. Often young people that this author has met in Asia have recited the official definition of tourist sites in their country as a way of making sure she knew what their country had to offer. In Indonesia, cultures that receive particular attention from tourists, such as the Balinese and Toraja, appear to receive an emphasis in the official curriculum of the schools far outweighing their demographic significance. These state choices are also often embodied in state-sponsored cultural productions officially put together for international tourists but which become part of local elite culture as well. Several Southeast Asian countries have constructed large tourist parks outside their capital cities purporting to provide an overview of their cultural diversity and heritage. All of course have national museums. Benedict Anderson ( 1973:61 I considers such cultural productions, particularly monuments, as statements by the officialdom which constructs them: “Few observers have recognized that monuments are a type of speech, or tried to discern concretely what is being said, why form and content are specifically what they are.” The prototype of these model villages is probably the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii, an enormously popular and profitable enterprise of the Mormon Church. As one analysis (Stanton 1977:196- 1971 of the Polynesian Cultural Center makes clear: The Polynesian Cultural Center is a model culture that selectively attempts to portray the best of those tangible. believable aspects of Polynesian culture with which the tourist can identify. Because of the interplay of time imperatives, cultural preferences, and personal inclinations, all facets of Polynesian culture are not portrayed.. . . There simply is not enough time in a oneday visit to discuss the nature of the Polynesian extended family tramage) with its complex variations in political, economic and kinship elements; or to explain the economic aspects of the conscription of manual labor as a form of capital: or to explore many of the other deeper, more complex aspects of Polynesian culture. Nor does the Center see its mission as a forum for addressing the long-standing social and economic injustices found throughout the Pacific. As a model and not the reality, the process of selecting the cultural elements to be shown admittedly creates a “fake cul366

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ture.” one which would not befound today anywhere various Polynesian Islands (emphasis added).

in the

These observations apply as well to the Southeast Asian cases. such as the Korean Folk Village and the Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park, both pushed strongly in the official tourist literature of South Korea and Indonesia, respectively. In the case of Mini, as the Indonesian park is popularly known, there was widespread popular opposition to its construction, raising questions about this particular use of public funds, protesting the evictions of residents to make way for the park and their inadequate compensation, and challenging the cultural definition of Indonesia the park was likely to make. In a well-known speech in January, 1972, Suharto threatened to use his most draconian executive powers against any continuing opposition to Mini, and also made clear his conception of the project: He went on to reveal that the project was intended to make Indonesia known to tourists and to raise national consciousness. As he put it, since there were so few remains of Madjapahit and Sriwidjaja. new things were needed to raise national consciousness and pride (Anderson 1973:65).

Official South Korean tourist literature likewise domestic role of Korean Folk Village plays:

emphasizes

the

The Korean Folk Village near Seoul is a peek (sic) at a past that’s still living and breathing.. . . That’s why Koreans like to visit the Folk Village too, for an authentic glimpse of how their ancestors lived: the customs and designs, the artifacts and pastimes of each province, rounded up and set down on a single 245.acre site only 50 minutes from the capital city (KNTC 198 lb).

Despite tourist literature assurance that the Korean Folk Village “is a real, live and functioning rural Korean community out of a past era” (KNTC 1981al. there is absolutely no attempt to explore the social relations which bound those who lived in the obviously unequal dwellings. As in the context-less houses in Mini-Indonesia, the tourist is presented with justaposition rather than relations, static essence rather than history and change. The smiling inhabitants of these villages apparently never wore rags: even the poorest workers in the most despised crafts are decked out in beautiful special occasion dress. While tourism thus involves the state in interpreting the past through new means, it also introduces what may be the quintes1984 ANNALS OF TOURISM RESEARCH

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sential symbol of modernity: the “international-standard” hotel. Whether owned by the state but managed by a multinational hotel chain, as in the case of the Bali Beach Hotel, or privately owned (but frequently financed through state lending institutions), these hotels and the tourists who stay in them provide one of the most visible definitions of modernity in many parts of the Third World. State tourism policy thus not only affects the definition of the “traditional,” but the definition of the “modern” as well. The State as the Arbitor of Cultural Change Critics of tourism who bemoan the loss of supposedly pristine cultures often underestimate the degree of cleavage and conflict which already exists in these cultures (e.g., Turner and Ash 1976: Bugnicourt 19771. In sponsoring tourism the state does not invent cultural change, but it begins to mediate it in new ways. One can distinguish two ways in which this happens. First, the state becomes involved in redefining “custom” and “authenticity” within the culture involved. Second, the state becomes involved in redefining the culture’s relationship to the rest of society. These processes are most likely to take place when primary ethnic tourism is concerned, but aspects of them may be found with respect to other forms of tourism as well. Tourism may lead the state into direct intervention in local practices in order to shape the culture that will be presented to tourists. Several case studies have shed light on this phenomenon outside of Asia. One of the most intriguing is a study by Theron Nunez (19631 of the Mexican village of Cajititlan, where the state assigned three rural police to suppress cultural practices which were considered unappealing to tourists. In this case the tourists were fellow nationals-wealthy Mexicans who, because of the tremendous social and cultural gap separating them from their compatriots, were mistaken by many villages for North Americans. It is interesting to observe that the particular customs suppressed involved some which might have been much more attractive to international tourists than to the Mexican elite: traditional horse racing. livestock in the street, and tradition forms of male dress. In another study, Davydd Greenwood has reported how pecuniary motives led the municipal government in the Basque town of Fuenterrabia to rule that the public ritual of the Alarde, traditionally a performance for the participants in it, be given twice in one day in order to maximize the number of tourists who could view it. According to Greenwood (1977:1351 “In spite of the fact that the Alar-de has not, to my 368

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knowledge, been given twice, the effect of the council’s action was stunning. In service of simple pecuniary motives, it defined the Alarde as a public show to be performedfor outsiders who, because of their economic importance in the town, had the right to see it.” Greenwood reports that within two years the event had lost its cultural meaning and voluntary participation had fallen to such an extent that the municipal government was considering paying people to participate. In Southeast Asia, Eric Crystal (1977:120) in his analysis of the development of Toraja funerary rituals as tourist attractions, discusses how the increasing numbers of tourists generated by government policy have placed an economic burden on the sponsors of these rituals, and how this may generate conflicts leading to new forms of state intervention: In one known instance, a member of the deceased’s family attempted to sell tickets of entry to the ceremonial grounds. Outraged kinsmen quickly thwarted the effort because tradition demands that all who wish to join in the rites of mourning must be welcomed without qualification. In another case. organizers of a major ceremony altered the normal course of the ritual to create for the several score foreign tourists a more dramatic and shorter spectacle. Conflict between traditionalist and modernist factions halted the ceremony until government officials stepped in and supported the innovators. A somewhat more subtle form of government intervention consists of the use of licensing to certify competence and authenticity. In Bali, DIPARDA, the government Department for Tourism, has moved to examine and license tourist guides. The semi-official LISTIBIYA, the Consultative and Promotional Council for Cultural Affairs, examines performing groups for their competence and authenticity and issues a Certificate of Art necessary for performing to tourists ( McKean 1973: 106- 15). These examples all relate to ethnic tourism as defined above. With cultural tourism, authenticity is less of a concern to the state, but the general quality of tourist-local interactions are. One thus finds periodic government campaigns to influence the way local people interact with tourists. One of the most ambitious of these was organized by Singapore’s Tourist Promotion Board in 1978, involving a massive radio and TV campaign: 200,000 buttons: 17,000 posters: 27,000 stickers; meetings with taxi-drivers, travel agents, airline staff, sales clerks, and even hawkers: and 22 “courtesytesters” who fanned out across Singapore to rate the behavior of 1984 ANNALS

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individual service employees (Far Eastern Economic Review 1978: 521. While as the program gained steam Singapore leaders emphasized that they were trying to promote certain behaviors not just for the sake of tourism but for their own sake. campaigns such as these are one more example of how the state’s interest in tourism may lead it into efforts to intervene in areas of culture to which it was previously indifferent. Just as tourism provides a basis for increased state intervention in cultural practices, so does tourism provide new ways for factions within a given cultural community to use the state to their own advantage. An interesting, as yet unresolved, example of this involves the efforts of a private religious organization in Bali, The Hindu Dharma Parishad, to involve the state in codifying and enforcing religious duties and obligations among the Balinese. Various commentators have observed that this effort runs counter to the eclecticism of Balinese religion and ritual, but an interview by Philip McKean (1973: 1191 with the leader of the Balinese (Hindu Dharma) section of the central government Department of Religion demonstrates both the influence of Hindu Dharma Parishad ideas and the use of tourism to promote them. This official argued for the codification and enforcement of Balinese religion, as well as for a division of authority at the village level between administrative and religious leaders, partly in terms of the importance of preserving village rituals for tourism. Clearly tourism does not provide the original motivation here, but it is a convenient tool for attempting to enlist government support. Tourism thus has the potential to increase the political viability of ethnic appeals in national politics. The discussion in this section so far has focused on cultural changes within a given community. But the state’s interest in tourism may lead it to restructure relations between cultures as well. The tourist importance of Balinese culture has enabled the Balinese to resist Indonesianization of their educational institutions and generally to receive a less haughty hearing in Jakarta (McTaggart 1980:463). The Aluk To Do10 religion of the Toraja has been granted legitimacy both by the Ministry of Religion and by regional elites. who previously had looked down on it as backward and have favored Protestant inroads in the area. The tourist importance of the Toraja religion seems to have been a factor in checking Protestant power in the regional government. Tourism can provide a renewed sense of ethnic identity and an economic rationale for the preservation of that identity (cf. Boissevain 19791. In this sense international tourism may be a contributing factor to the resurgence of ethnic identities on a world-wide level. 370

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CONCLUSION Tourism and New Forms of Politics This analysis began with the state as unilateral planner and has ended with the use of tourism to make claims against other groups and even against the state itself. There is no simple direction to the way the relationship between the state and local groups is restructured; the process is complex and often contradictory. This is reflected in the ways tourism becomes an issue in politics. To the extent that tourism facilitates a reassertion ofethnicity, it may provide both the social-psychological and the economic basis for local claims against the cultural imperialism of the center. On the other hand, it was noted how tourism development also tends to expand the cultural role of the state, bringing about new forms of intervention in aspects of culture to which the state was previously indifferent. At the same time, tourism is notjust a contradictory, but also a rather fragile edifice, as it is very vulnerable to terrorist attack. This was pointedly demonstrated in the fall of 1980, when a bomb went off during the opening session of the annual American Society of Travel Agents (ASTAl conference in Manila just as President Marcos had finished telling the travel agents how democracy was thriving in the Philippines and terrorism was a thing of the past. The blast followed a series of earlier ones two weeks earlier, and helped drive down tourist arrivals by 8- 10 percent almost immediately (Ocampo 1980: 12). In each of these cases, tourism alters the nature of politics without tourism policy itself being the major focus of attention: it is used as a means to other ends. But in addition, there is evidence that tourism itself is becoming an increasingly contested political issue in Southeast Asia. At the time of the ASTA conference in Manila, representatives of 14 nations were gathering to take a more critical look at tourism at a conference organized by the Christian Conference of Asia. The conference statement which came out of this International Workshop on Tourism ( 198O:l) concluded that tourism has “wreaked more havoc than brought benefits to recipient Third World countries,” and argued that tourism can only be salvaged through “a thorough re-thinking and re-structuring of the whole industry.” International conferences of trade unions, such as the International Union of Food and Allied Workers Associations, have likewise begun calling for alternative types of tourism. Political groups in exile, such as the Indonesian Community Party (19721 have singled out tourism projects such as Mini-Indonesia for special condemnation. Tourism seems here to stay in most of Southeast Asia, but its relationship to cultural and political change is still unfolding. 0 0 1984 ANNALS OF TOURISM

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Submitted 12 May 1981 Accepted 22 March 1982 Final version submitted September

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