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The cultural construction of sustainable tourism
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Tourism Management, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 49-59, 1995 Copyright ~ 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0261-5177/95 $10.00 + 0.00
The cultural construction of sustainable tourism George Hughes Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK Injunctions towards more sustainable forms of development now characterize official as well as pressure group manifestos. In tourism this is marked by a discourse of sustainable tourism and the sponsorship of initiatives addressing the relationship between tourism and the environment. This paper, using a Scottish example, demonstrates that the dominant approach to sustainable tourism is technical, rational and scientific. It suggests that, while necessary, this has eclipsed the emergence of an ethical response. The paper concludes with some tentative strategies for sustainable tourism fashioned out of an ethical interest in the development of people, as tourists, and destination populations, as communities. Keywords: sustainable tourism, ethics, restorative tourism, c o m m u n i t y development
Since the publication of several strategic reviews on the impact of developments on the environment, particularly the Brundtland Commission Report 1 and in the case of Britain the subsequent white paper This Common Inheritance - Britain's Environmental Strategy (The White Paper),2 there has been a noticeable downstream effect on the management of tourism. As a brief review of the themes of conferences and published papers would illustrate, this is but a variation of what has been a more sweeping and longer standing critique of tourism development which has included attempts to incorporate the concepts of carrying capacity, stewardship, green, alternative, responsible, post-industrial and many other constructions which, when viewed collectively, illustrate the sensitivity and vulnerability of the industry to criticism. Tourism, embracing such a diversity of consumption practices, enterprise ownership and structure and regions of impact, is a relatively easy target for criticism. Because of this diversity it is particularly difficult to formulate a response that would be sufficiently effective without major infringement of social liberty. The control of tourism is dispersed across the globe, involving multiple regions of origin and destination, and through the marketplace, comprising a multitude of holiday choices of many individuals. The task of regulating the consumption and development patterns of tourism therefore demands intervention at both the global scale of organization and the personal. This presents a particularly acute dilemma for a sustainable approach to tourism.
It should not be inferred from this, however, that because everything cannot be achieved that nothing should be attempted. The best, in this case, is the enemy of the good. Rather, it is important to recognize, at the outset, that despite the growth in the corporate management of tourism, the essential character of the industry continues to be highly fragmented and intractable to comprehensive planning. The aspiration, therefore, to develop sustainable strategies for tourism should not be derided because of the infant pretensions of those strategies. The history of the environmental movement, as public pressure groups, is hardly more than two decades old yet it has moved from the margins of alternative lifestyles to become a matter of central policy concern, illustrated by the national and international reports referred to above. Sustainable tourism, in its many variants, is principally an injunction for change arising from dissatisfaction with present principles and practices of tourism. What this paper addresses is the character of the argument being advanced both for and against this change. There are two broad provinces in the way in which sustainability has been conceived, although each contains multiple inflexions. On the one hand there is the ecological concern with biodiversity and the long-run capability of global ecological systems to be self-maintaining. This argument finds a particular inflexion in the developing discipline of environmental economics in which the issues, conceived initially in terms of the biosphere, have been translated into social welfare measures using technical methods of 49
The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
economic evaluation. Foremost among these have been the suite of techniques known as contingency valuation methods. 3'4 This position will be summarily referred to here as 'scientific'. It is characterized by a rational approach to the definition of sustainability in which intervention is pursued using a variety of technical, regulatory and management instruments which treat the environment as an object system. The other perspective is described as 'ethical'. This concerns the moral character that motivates much of the drive for sustainability in the first instance. This perspective is less frequently encountered in the public debate about sustainability. Symptoms of this ethical domain are manifested in the language of 'care' and 'concern' about the earth as an organic autonomous life world and are dominant in explicitly religious approaches which sacralize the earth. Of these two perspectives it is the scientific one which dominates debates on sustainability and, in turn, that of sustainable tourism. This will be illustrated by first considering a sample of recent contributions to the literature, as tentative evidence of the universality of the scientific construction of sustainable tourism, and then by a review of the early experience of an initiative in Scotland which has been designed to disseminate the principle, and encourage the adoption, of sustainability in Scottish tourism.
The power of science The classical view of science as a rational, valueneutral and objective pursuit of knowledge has been widely criticized. Kuhn, for example, suggested that the progress of science was marked by the development of paradigms, which are prevailing theories about the world propounded by those who hold the highest status in the hierarchy of science, s The job for the rest of researchers becomes the infilling of the silences and ironing out of the wrinkles within the prevailing paradigms. Only when a paradigm begins to fail widely in its ability to account for experience is there a paradigm contest from which a new dominant paradigm emerges. What Kuhn is at pains to show is that much of this is to do with relationships within the culture of a community of scientists. It is not an objective and altruistic process of theory and counter-theory development but one in which the careers of scientists are intimately bound up with the politics of those whom they support. A more socially comprehensive critique of the value-laden nature of science has been produced by Habermas, who views the explanatory drive of science as the pursuit of technical control over the environment. 6 Habermas has argued that the recent agenda of science has been set by the interests of capital. This approach stresses the ideological character of science. The yet later advent of postmodern
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theories pushes this critique to the extremes when it challenges what remains of claims to objectivity in science. Lyotard argues that pragmatism now prevails and the key test of whether a theory is 'correct' is simply whether it 'works'. 7 The cultural relativism of this is easiest to appreciate in those branches of science that deal with aspects of the human body where the 'correctness' of electric shock therapy, genetic m a n i p u l a t i o n , herbicide and fungicide assisted food production etc throws into relief the relativity of claims presented as objective scientific statements. Despite the comprehensiveness of this critique what characterizes recent academic treatments of sustainability has been the supposedly objective technically rational, or scientific, parameters within which it continues to be discussed. Given the ethical origins of sustainable concerns among bodies such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the variety of animal rights pressure groups and the multiplicity of religious faiths oriented to the sacredness of the earth, the dominance of a technical approach, to the virtual exclusion of an ethical one, is noteworthy. An interpretation of why this might be so follows later, but first it is necessary to demonstrate this scientific effect on the academic treatment of sustainability as taken up in tourism. Turning first to some well-established advocates of a sustainable approach to tourism the instrumental character of their presentation may be identified. An ecological approach has been commended, for example, owing to the impact of changing demographic, economic and lifestyle forces on the demand for tourism. Krippendorf exemplifies this position in his call for the absolute necessity of a 'new conception of tourism and a new marketing of tourism' in response to changes in the marketplace. 8 The arrival of the 'new consumer', oriented to learning and communication with other people, to replace the hedonistic consumer, is complemented by the increasing assertiveness of host communities in tourist destination regions. Butler, at the first official meeting of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, struck a slightly different balance in his consideration of sustainable tourism with his search for some continuing virtue in the character of mass tourism. Rather than equate mass tourism with all that is bad, and alternative tourism with all that is good, he calls for a 'rational objective evaluation of the merits and problems of all types of tourism'. 9 In both these examples it is not the substantive validity of the assertions to which I wish to draw attention but the exclusively 'scientific' character in which the issue of sustainability is addressed. Although values form an important ingredient of these arguments, they are eclipsed by the authors' perceived requirements to make the case for sustainable t o u r i s m in o b j e c t i v e terms. S u s t a i n a b l e approaches to tourism will be necessary as a func-
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The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
tional response to the new niche market of postindustrial tourists. We must not be emotional or irrational in our response to this but m a k e a 'rational objective evaluation'. This need to formulate the virtues of sustainable tourism by reference to objective self-evident criteria, such as job creation, 1° carrying capacity, ~1 stewardship, 12 energy efficiency 13 or the m a n a g e m e n t of conservation and commercial conflict, ~4"15 is also the approach adopted in Wheellet's fulmination a g a i n s t the potency of sustainable tourism.16"17 For Wheeller it is a self-evident question of numbers. The capacity to either attract or absorb sufficient tourists, of the sustainable mould, remains insignificant in the context of an industry regularly cited to become the largest in the world by the end of this century. Despite the emotive tone of the rhetoric Wheeller pursues his critique in very functional terms. 'Tourist or traveller, we are simply cutomers/ clients to be targeted, wooed and seduced by industry' (18 p 105). This critique seems predicated in the commoditization, or logic of capital, theses that earlier informed the left-wing theorizing of scientific socialism. But if the prosecution and the defence of sustainable tourism are both conducted within a scientific perspective this is also sufficiently unsurprising to most people that it would be d e e m e d 'natural'. Yet a cursory review of the origins of the current concern with sustainable relationships illustrates that the brief history of sustainability is m a r k e d by moral and ethical motivations at least as significant as the supposedly objective analysis of scientific treatments.
Environmental ethics As summarized by Bramwell and Lane, 19 environmental m o v e m e n t s began as vague, anti-growth sentiments that widened to encompass the built heritage and traditional societies as well as the natural world. In the 1980s these fragmented interests coalesced under the paradigm of sustainable development. In their brief history of the environmental critique they describe two responses: that of deep ecology, which sought a return to historic values and methods, and a more optimistic response that combined the potential of technical progress with new h u m a n - e n v i r o n m e n t a l relations. Although they acknowledge the growth of environmental groups as political forces they trace the origins of the concept of sustainable d e v e l o p m e n t to thoughts developed within the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources which subsequently found their way into the World Conservation Strategy and the Brundtland Report. This matter-of-fact description is carried through into their definition of sustainable tourism which is summarized as an approach intended to reduce tensions and friction between tourist, resident and the tourist industry.
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It is an approach which involves working for the long-term viability and quality of both national and human resources. It is not anti-growth, but it acknowledges that there are limits to growth. Those limits will vary considerably from place to place, and according to management practices. It recognises that for many areas tourism was, is and will be an important form of development. It seeks to ensure that tourism developments are sustainable in the long term and wherever possible help in turn to sustain areas in which they operate. And, for good measure, sustainable tourism also aims to increase visitor satisfaction. (19 p 2) While acknowledging the s u m m a r y nature of this definition, and hence the limitations it enforces on definitional complexity, it is still excessively unproblematical. It does not address the social or political context through which environmentalism has been born. The environmental agenda, and its permutation sustainable development, did not just emerge. It was produced by a process of active construction which repositioned a wide diversity of public protests into a m o r e comprehensive concern with the environment. Lash and Urry, on the other hand, m a k e a central feature of the social and political influences which bear on the environment, z° A philosophical shift in the representation o f t h e e n v i r o n m e n t has accompanied the process of modernization. From the 17th century onward the dominant construction of nature has changed from a nurturing view of the earth, as mother, to one in which nature was regarded as hostile; an 'other' waiting to be mastered. This perceptual change arises from the philosophical separation of nature and society. Nature has been externalized. We can recognize this in the distinctions we m a k e between nature and culture, natural and planned, town and country etc. In their search for an explanation for the recent growth in environmentalism Lash and Urry emphasize the role of consumerism. Broadly speaking they characterize western society as consumption dominated with the seductive appeal of the m a r k e t providing the main mechanism of social integration. The pursuit of pleasure has b e c o m e the dominant m o d e of living. The paradox of consumption, however, is that as sophistication in consumer skills increases so too does the d e m a n d for consumer rights. As consumers, individuals feel entitled to certain quality standards in the consumption of water, air and scenery. One explanation for environmental support therefore lies in the variety of 'interests' that individuals, represented here as consumers, have in particular environmental threats. Different social groups have different stakes or interests in p l a c e . . . Some people will benefit more from expanding the employment base, others from increasing the range of shops, others from impro-
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The cultural construction o f sustainable tourism: G Hughes
ving the leisure and entertainment facilities, others from making it safer, others from reconstructing the place's 'heritage', others from improving the physical environment, others from making it healthier, and so on. The interests of individuals and groups are therefore heterogeneous, ranging from the material to the cultural, to the medical and especially to the aesthetic. And of course different groups have different resources to realise such interests within a given locality, to ensure that a nuclear power station should be built, or that a sewage outlet should not be constructed, or that a set of old buildings should be preserved rather than demolished, and so on. Resources include not only money and power but also public opinion and organisational capacities. (19 pp 303-304) One particularly powerful set of interests in the environment is that of tourism. The importance of tourism, in defining what is 'natural', is considered by Lash and U r r y to be one of the most important ways in which the relations between humans and nature are now organized. Land has b e c o m e redefined as a resource for leisure and, quoting Wilson, el they consider this process to be part of the larger production of a particular 'culture of nature'. Putting this in m o r e prosaic terms what this implies is that what turns the physical environment into scenery is the cultural context in which that environment is e m b e d d e d . Lash and Urry thus adopt a culturally constructivist reading of the growth of interest in environmentalism, and by implication the particular variant of sustainable tourism. H o w e v e r , their interpretation, while socially and politically m o r e explicit than that of Bramwell and Lane, captures only part of the complexity involved in the cultural construction of what is represented as nature, be it tourist or otherwise. W h a t they neglect is the t h e m e developed by Grove-White: 2z the role of mystery in h u m a n relations with the environment. There is little sign in mainstream discussions of environmental problems of the dimensions of either felt experience or what G r o v e - W h i t e calls the radically unknown character of the future. The explanation for this can be traced to the same root, referred to by Lash and Urry as the source of the separation of society from nature. This division was a characteristic of Enlightenment thinking which spawned a whole new vocabulary of dualisms that we now take for granted. In addition to the nature/culture examples cited above, the depth of this effect can be seen in the distinctions between mind and body, reason and emotion, object and subject, abstract and particular etc. O f relevance here is the dualism between public and private. Grove-White, Morris, Szerszynski and Wynne 23 ~ assert that western societies have developed in such a way that they choose to recognize and respond to only 'objective', 'rational' and 'instrumental' patterns of knowledge which result in other forms of insight such as poetic, moral, spir52
itual, intuitive and relational being treated as 'personal', and hence marginal for public purposes. One important implication of this dominance of the public domain by 'objective', 'rational' discourse is: • . . that the dimensions of mankind's condition notably, the inherent indeterminacy, openmindedness and mystery of our existential situation - have tended to be recast in forms which represent them instead as (mere) scientific uncertainty, or provisional ignorance. The effect is to trivialise or negate them as realities presenting continuing m o r a l challenges to individual men, women and communities• Simply put, we now have a persistent tension between what may be labelled 'rational' and 'romantic' approaches to life, the former being recognised as publicly significant, the latter being consigned almost entirely to the 'private' domain.( 23 p 7)
This dualism privatizes the articulation of emotions and expressions of mutuality. Our public knowledge of the world has b e c o m e so rationalized and objectified that it is difficult to find a public language in which to express these 'personal' or 'private' expressions. This can be sensed in the embarrassment that arises when 'personal' emotions are aired in public. The strategies used to manage such public expressions of the private include depicting them as feminine (or unmasculine) or domesticating them as the proper domain of the h o m e or the nursery. While there is much that suggests a strong moral dimension to the growth of m o v e m e n t s such as Friends of the Earth and G r e e n p e a c e , and the alliances of those concerned with animal welfare, genetic manipulation, the chemical 'enhancements' of the food and cosmetics industries etc, the public expression of this concern characteristically takes on a scientific or rational presentation. The emerging subdiscipline of environmental economics, heralded as a critically significant development in evaluating the substainability of projects and policies, fulsomely exemplifies this instrumental, rational approach.
Environmental
economics
and
nature
Environmental economics treats the environment functionally, on one hand as a stock of material inputs to be used in the process of economic production, and on the other hand as a waste receptacle which has finite limits to its waste-absorptive capacity. In fulfilling the goal of consumer satisfaction, e n v i r o n m e n t a l economics has c o n c e n t r a t e d our attention on the potential scarcity that will obtain in fulfilling both of these functions and has thereby justified the application of economics to the question of sustainability. The concept of sustainability is operationalized by treating the relationship between current resource use and future needs as a trade-off in which the socially desirable solution is the maintenance of the net productive value of environmental
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resources available to future generations. To emphasize the scarce and depreciable character of resource use, and hence the need to consider resource replacement, conservation and substitution strategies, economists apply the term 'natural capital' to environmental resources. M a n a g e m e n t of the net productive value of this natural capital would be cond u c t e d t h r o u g h a s y s t e m of n a t u r a l r e s o u r c e accounting in which the depreciation of the natural capital assets would be calculated to enable the implementation of compensating resource replacement and substitution strategies. Sustainability becomes defined, in the typical equilibrium formulation of economists, as a measurable state towards which intervention strategies can be directed. The technical plausibility with which the definition of sustainable d e v e l o p m e n t has been formulated by environmental economists is sufficiently seductive that it diverts attention away from the m o r e fundamental consideration of the moral and ethical basis of the sustainability debate towards m o r e instrumental considerations of how to measure and systematize the characteristics of sustainable resource use. This economic approach has considerable empirical appeal and takes the concept of sustainability from the domain of philosophy into that of m a n a g e m e n t , but in so doing it also side-steps the philosophical complexity of the sustainability concept since it employs a particular set of assumptions about the character of the h u m a n - e n v i r o n m e n t relationship to underpin this economic approach. Sustainability, in the discourse of economics, is used in an objectifying way. The alarm that the sustainability issue has signalled to economists is not based on a concern with the earth for its own sake but rather for its function as a brake on the advance of consumer welfare. If this appears u n r e m a r k a b l e as a description of our c o n t e m p o r a r y relationship with nature it is this very process of installing this perception, rather than any other, as being ' c o m m o n sense' or 'just natural' that I wish to address. This view of nature, as external to humanity, implies that nature existed before humankind and continues separate from it. W h e n economists address nature, in the form of natural capital, they treat as 'natural' the view that the environment is a 'resource' which is to be exploited. Environmental economics has added a scarcity criterion to what was formerly considered ubiquitous and hence n o n - m a r k e t goods, such as the oceans and the upper a t m o s p h e r e , but it has not shifted the instrumental view of the use of the environment. Indeed economic theorists approach the definition of sustainability through economic growth, but now a growth strategy conscious of environmental constraints. The purpose of this digression into environmental economics has been to illustrate that environmental views which we take for granted, or term 'natural', in our economic exploitation of the earth are not at
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all natural but are, as argued by Lash and Urry, culturally conceived. Thus economic concepts such as 'natural capital' assume the commodification of the environment and are framed in terms of the 'utility' that a 'consumer' may acquire from the 'natural' environment. When we turn to tourism, as a particular economic use of the environment, the significance of the way in which we have constructed nature becomes m o r e explicit, for tourism differs from m a n y of the other forms of economic development in its direct consumption of the environment. There is nothing 'natural' about the various landscapes valued by tourists since they are the result of the history of h u m a n intervention which has manipulated nature in ways conducive to economic growth. The overriding dominance in the discourse of environmental economics of the rational, scientific and instrumental is carried through into official presentations of environmental problems. There has developed a rough consensus on the type of issues considered 'environmental' such as ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, air, sea and river pollution. These are being represented as essentially physical problems that are amenable to scientific and management solutions. The environment, or nature, therefore is not only being commodified but the very terms in which it is possible to discuss publicly this commodifying process marginalize the possibility of articulating felt experience. Public discussion is dominated either by the scientific constructions of ecology or the political constructions of interests, both of which fragment the wholeness of qualitative h u m a n experience and define environmental issues in functional terms. Even the experiential character of tourist interaction with the landscape is reduced to defining land as a 'tourism resource'. What has been washed out of this construction, by the privatizing and domestication of affect, is the domain of culture. The example of the Tourism M a n a g e m e n t Initiative in Scotland is now used to illustrate the way this particular objectifying discourse has percolated into official constructions of sustainable tourism.
The Tourism Management Initiative The Scottish Office established a coordinating group in Scotland for the promotion of the concept of Sustainable Tourism. This group, n a m e d The Scottish Tourism Co-ordinating G r o u p , was composed of representatives of the statutory agencies which interact with tourism. In 1992 the Scottish Tourist Board, on behalf of this G r o u p , published the first of two reports, Tourism and the Scottish E n v i r o n m e n t ; A Sustainable Partnership. 24 This report, combining text and photographs designed for more general appeal, was a broad review of the relationship between tourism and the environment. The essence of this sustainable approach to tour-
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The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
ism was to be the establishment of a Tourism Management Initiative (TM1), co-ordinated at the national level by the Scottish Tourist Board but implemented through local projects, specifically designed to be environmentally friendly and ameliorating. A national framework was to be prepared, within which priority projects and programmes might be identified and guidelines formulated for the manner in which local projects should be prepared to conform with the objectives of sustainable tourism. However, much of the initial deliberations were premised on the need for additional financial support from central government to provide the incentive for local participation in this initiative. In the event an application for financial support was turned down and so the coordinating group was reconvened, and reconstituted as The Tourism and Environment Task Force (the Task Force). One of the first actions of the Task Force was to draw up a set of guidelines through which it could disseminate its philosophy of sustainability to those who would implement projects at the local level. These guidelines were circulated, for written observations, to representatives of local authorities, enterprise agencies and area tourist boards, and several pilot projects were established which could be used to evaluate the practical implementation of this approach to sustainable tourism. In the light of this experience the guidelines were redrafted and published as the second report of the initiative, Tourism and the Scottish Environment: Tourism Management Initiative, 25 and these formed the centrepiece of a ministerial launch in June 1993. Despite offering a list of examples of what might constitute appropriate approaches to sustainable development, the guidelines in this second report are more administrative in their thrust than substantive. They repeat the earlier call for the establishment of locally conceived and implemented projects which are given the formal designation of Tourism Management Programmes (TMPs). The purpose of this initiative, and its set of guidelines, is premised on a central government perception of the need to change attitudes among local authorities and development agencies through raising consciousness of the environmental implications of tourism development. Three themes may be identified in the recommended approach: projects are to be locally driven but within a national strategic overview, they are to be managed through partnership arrangements between implementing bodies, and individual projects must be conceived as part of an integrated programme of local actions. This is all to be achieved, in the absence of additional financial support from central government, by re-prioritizing budgets both locally and nationally. What characterizes this initiative is the centrality of a planned, rational and objective approach. The problems are defined in terms of the physical environment and what is needed to solve
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these is a coordinated programme of management. This is most explicit in the definition of sustainable tourism employed in the guidelines. Sustainable tourism implies that environmental resources will be used and developed for the enjoyment of tourists but that these resources will be conserved for the benefit of future tourists and residents. In this context the 'environment' includes physical resources such as landscape and manmade resources such as historical buildings. (24 p 1) The thrust of this approach is to establish the key problems of the environment as existing in nature. The environment exists as a 'resource' to be 'developed' but it has been the damaging character of tourist intervention into this natural system that threatens sustainability. What is needed therefore is better management, or what I have called the 'scientific' approach. The detailed implementation of this perspective may be appreciated through a brief consideration of two of the projects falling within the initiative.
The Trossachs Trail The Trossachs is a long established area for scenic touring in Central Scotland. Its prominence in the writings of Walter Scott popularized the area, physically and culturally, and the legacy of Rob Roy McGregor is a significant tourist theme. The development of a tourist trail was conceived before the advent of the initiative but the scale and impetus of the project were significantly affected by its incorporation. The trail is geographically, rather than thematically, conceived and forms a rectangular loop which links the communities of Aberfoyle, Brig o'Turk, Callander, Doune, Thornhill and Port of Monteith (Figure 1). The principal routes to the Trail are north from Glasgow, south from Strathyre and west from Stirling. The core of the trail is in its western half between Aberfoyle and Callander, and incorporating Lochs Katrine, Achray and Venachar together with tracts of the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park. Visitor pressure is currently greatest in this area of high scenic value and the Trail has been conceived as a means of dispersing this pressure towards the eastern half of the area. The TMP was therefore an integrated set of visitor management proposals which addressed issues including signposting, car parking, footpath maintenance and development, interpretation, townscape improvement, the distribution and quality of built attractions, and a programme of general management including provision for litter collection and public toilets. The distinctive contribution of the initiative, as an approach to the development of the Trossachs Trail, is summarily captured by the notion of synergy. Under this initiative the work of agencies, variously concerned with tourism or conservation, could be coordinated at the local level through the formation
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The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
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Key .............. Trossachs Trail Not To Scale Figure 1 TrossachsTrail location of a multi-agency partnership which offered the potential to avoid misunderstanding and duplication and to achieve effects through action in partnership that exceeded action undertaken severally. In the case of the Trossachs Trail TMP the participating partners included the local enterprise agency (Forth Valley Enterprise), the area tourist board (Loch Lomond, Stirling and the Trossachs Tourist Board), an existing public-private partnership (Rural Stifling Tourism Management 1995 Volume 16 Number 1
Partnership), Forest Enterprise, the respective local authorities (Stirling District Council and Central Regional Council), the national conservation body (Scottish Natural Heritage) and the national tourist board (The Scottish Tourist Board). It might have been anticipated that the absence of additional central government funding would have had a profound effect on the willingness of local agencies to participate in a centrally inspired initiative but the synergis55
The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
tic advantages of the TMP partnership arrangements were particularly apparent in two aspects of the assembly of finance. First, the statutory restrictions of the various partners constrain the flexibility with which any single agency can allocate their finances between capital and revenue expenditure. Under the TMP multi-agency approach it became possible for 'capital rich' agencies to coordinate with 'revenue spenders' to design mutually supportive programmes. Effectively this could be achieved by two kinds of trade-off. Higher quality investment at the outset could be used as a mechanism to reduce subsequent maintenance requirements and those agencies on whom, in the future, the maintenance liabilities would fall (the local authorities) could trade-off this anticipated liability against their capital commitment. The partners are also exploring the potential of using a trust to facilitate capital-revenue tradeoff. Conceptually this would involve a sort of 'sinking fund' in which the capital-rich agencies could invest and from which future maintenance responsibilities could be serviced. This has been one of the proposals m o o t e d as a means of achieving the intergenerational effects that are the defining criteria for a sustainable form of development and it takes on a more urgent relevance in the context of impending changes to local government. A trust would ensure that the financial liability of future maintenance responsibilities would be met irrespective of the effect of a new local government structure. However, the legal complexities, to date, have overwhelmed progress on this front but the partners remain optimistic that a legally binding and satisfactory arrangement can be achieved. The second advantage was one of leverage in which the several funds of agencies can be seen to 'lever' a total budget that was considerably larger than would otherwise have been the case. The financial assembly for the T M P was organized around a programme of integrated actions. Some 15 individual projects or actions were identified which would collectively contribute to the development and maintenance of the Trossachs Trail. Implementation dates were assigned to each of the actions and the relevant funding partner and level of contribution identified. In this way a total budget could be identified for a programme of actions that was agreed by the partners at the outset of the TMP. The collective effort of this accumulated budget, combined with participation in a programme that was nationally endorsed, raised the profile of the TMP and attracted increased attention and financial support from within the agencies themselves. This leverage had the effect, for example, of taking the project out of the discretionary spending powers of project officers into expenditure levels that required approval by their respective executive boards. In the case of the enterprise agencies, this also raised executive
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consciousness about the potential of tourism as an economic development option, compared with other industries. The Trossachs Trail TMP has therefore been designed to address the problems of visitor pressure on an area of high scenic value using a partnership arrangement within which to coordinate the remedial and development actions of a range of agencies. The strategy of dispersing visitors, spatially and seasonally, is a management strategy intended to mitigate the detrimental effects on the physical environment. This is complemented with investment in facilities designed to enhance aspects of the carrying capacity of the area. Details include the integration of transport networks so that interchange points can be established between car parking and cycle ways and the introduction of a bus service, the Trossachs Trundler, to provide an alternative to the car for travel within the designated area. Improved signposting and on-site interpretation are to be improved and a comprehensive review of the requirement for visitor facilities, such as car parks, toilets and litter receptacles, has been undertaken along with detailed landscaping proposals for visual screening. The St A n d r e w s Tourism M a n a g e m e n t P r o g r a m m e
The Royal Burgh of St Andrews, located in the north-east corner of Fife, has a population of some 14 000 residents. It is the largest settlement in the North East District of Fife and is, perhaps, most famous for its associations with golf. The motivation for adopting a TMP was heavily influenced by concern with the continuing capacity of the historic core of the town to absorb car traffic and parking. However, there was also a range of concerns about the quality of the built environment, the interaction of this environment with tourism, and the effects of the seasonal and spatial concentration of tourism in the town. The partners in the St Andrews' TMP were the local enterprise company (Fife Enterprise), the local authorities (Fife Regional Council and North East Fife District Council), The Scottish Tourist Board, and the St Andrews and North East Fife Tourist Board. As in the Trossachs Trail example, the St Andrews' TMP identified a range of actions with each action having an identified funding agency and implementation date, but costings were less well defined than in the case of the Trossachs. The proposed range of actions, in the project as initially conceived, was also less precise. Participating agencies welcomed the TMP for its coordinating role and for the implied endorsement of central government agencies. The formulation of actions as part of a nationally initiated programme had the same synergistic effect, for project funding, as it did in the case of the Trossachs. However, the advantages of the TMP were not as universally appreciated as in the Trossachs and participating
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agencies differed in their views a b o u t the instrumental effectiveness of the p r o g r a m m e . One agency viewed the T M P in a politically instrumental way. The Burgh, with its concentration of middleclass, articulate and university-dominated population, was characterized as a particularly lively place in matters of public consultation. The national status of the T M P initiative was seen as a mechanism to distance some of the local differences between pressure groups and thereby encourage the d e v e l o p m e n t of cooperative, rather than competitive, inter-group participation. A n o t h e r partner raised a concern as to whether the difference that this initiative m a d e was worth the additional bureaucracy involved. The area already had in place an active m e m b e r s group, which represented most of the partner agencies in the TMP. The representatives of the tourist trade also expressed considerable difficulty in perceiving the benefits that would accrue from the introduction of the TMP. This more critical reception to the T M P may be a feature of the complexity of working in an urban environment where the diversity of opinions, owing to population density, is likely to be greater than in a rural community. It may also, however, reflect c o m m u n i t y resistance to the suppression of felt experience as a result of implementing an environmental p r o g r a m m e that takes the physical environment as its sole reference point.
necessity for environmental pressure groups to conduct their p r o g r a m m e s of opposition in dominantly scientific and rational terms is the consequence of the abstract and objectified character of public discourse. Facts and evidence are the currency of public debate. Anxiety and concern, on the other hand, are private experiences which, in the absence of supporting evidence, are diagnosed as irrational fears. In the m a n a g e m e n t of the environment this division of the positivistic discourse of facts from the normative one of values reached a high point in the environmental discipline of town and country planning in the 1970s. The methodology of Structure and Local Plans was based on a separation of the factual basis of demographic projections, the technical application of standards and the calculation of space demands, from the accumulation of values and opinions from stages of public participation in the planning process. Seen against this background, the attempt of the T M I to change attitudes towards an embrace of sustainable principles characterized by
Sustainable tourism?
seems to be less a change of attitudes but rather m o r e of a reinforcement of the same procedural rationality as characterized Structure and Local Plans! O f course scientific analysis and coordinated intervention are necessary. The defect is rather in the lack of balance and the failure to account for community affect in this initiative. T h e r e are two perspectives on a sustainable approach to tourism that I would tentatively advance. Both of these will require fuller development than is possible within the limitations of this current paper. The first of these is what may be thought of as 'restorative tourism'. One of the models for early tourism was drawn from that class of gentrified travellers whose tastes in sea bathing and the picturesque were taken up and recontextualized as mass tourism in the 19th-century. This has left a particular geographical imprint on the coasts and uplands of Britain. Mass tourism, in something like the form we know it today, is a legacy of the 19thcentury system of industrial production that was characterized by the factory system, rapidly expanding communications and particular patterns of rapid urbanization. W h a t e v e r the motives of those who sponsored mass tourism, it is possible to acknowledge that this tourism experience played an important restorative role in lives that were organized around the discipline of factory production. The legacy of tourism is thus deeply m a r k e d by a dualistic difference between leisure and the disciplinary
There is widespread acknowledgement that we live in an increasingly fragmented and distorting world that poses fundamental threats to the maintenance of a coherent self. Theorists point to the role that language and general sign systems play in the construction of individual identity and, despite radically differing diagnoses, there seems general agreement that the philosophical concept of the individual, born with a ready-encoded personality which develops like a plant from seed, is no longer tenable. The individual is constituted within the culture of the social world in which he or she is e m b e d d e d . Some resistance to this existential threat can be observed in the growth of social m o v e m e n t s in which the experiential rewards of mutuality and inter-personal relations are as much an objective of participation as the substantive issues around which the m o v e m e n t s coalesce. The growth of environmental m o v e m e n t s can be read in such a light. I would describe these as 'communities of affect'. Underlying the prominence of sustainability, as the buzz-word of the 1990s, is a deeper seated concern with the fundamentals of life that are eclipsed by the public discourse of science, regulation and rational intervention. Concerns as varied as those with nuclear reprocessing, the food processing industry, animal rights, air and water quality, the loss of rain forests, criminal threats etc, are not fully articulated by scientific analysis. The
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• . . an analysis of issues, problems and opportunities . . . aims and objectives . . . identification of the broad actions to be pursued, a plan of a c t i o n . . . a programme . . . [indicating] . . . timescale . . . and . . . cost . . . information on the partnership a r r a n g e m e n t s . . , and consideration of the methods of monitoring progress . . . (24 p 1)
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and alienating character of work in industrial Britain of the 19th century. But the dominant present mode of production, reflecting the relative decline in the importance of manufacturing, is being described as post-industrial. It thus becomes necessary to rethink the construction of tourism in the context of these considerable changes to the economy and culture. It is this challenge to which Krippendorf 8 has responded with the identification of a post-industrial kind of tourist embedded in a new unity of life that reduces the polarity of work and leisure. The postindustrial tourist is motivated by a search for fulfilment in all of life's sectors which includes broadening one's horizons, learning and communication with other people, a return to simpler things and nature, a creativity and open-mindedness and a readiness to experiment. This is a very plausible argument but it is presented only in instrumental terms. This new tourism is analysed for the extent to which it will become an established fact. Krippendorf asserts it will be 30--45% of tourism by the year 2000 and supports his case with a brief examination of changes in demographic structure and economic conditions. But, despite its plausibility, this thesis does not address what it is about the character of a postindustrial culture that it should bring about such a change in the consumption patterns of tourists. An answer to this can be found in the work of Beck 26'27 who argues that we have moved into a 'risk society' characterized by hazards that show no respect for national boundaries, such as the effects of Chernobyl. Beck's analysis of the risk society is undertaken as the basis on which he proposes new political structures more appropriate to the late 20th-century character of society which is lived within a global culture. Beck presents a rational critique which unravels some of the complexity of late 20th-century life. The decline in mass industrial production, the erosion of the traditional nuclear family and the demise of class-based societies has led to a process of individualization. Individual agents are now required to make decisions about many aspects of their lives previously thought to be imposed by the structures of the society in which they lived. It is this effect on individuals which has some bearing on this discussion of sustainable tourism. It is not only the increased importance of risks from 'bads', which impact on the individual, but the reinforcing of this through media coverage, which may sometimes reach hysterical proportions. The cumulative effect of this on the person is highly stressful and fragmenting. One form of coping with this fragmentation, in the practice of tourism, has been theorized by Urry. 28 For Urry, this has produced the 'post-tourist' consumer who can simultaneously enjoy the consumption of contrived spectacles while remaining aware of the inauthenticity of it all. This would indeed seem to be one possible response but
58
another, more consistent with the trends identified by Krippendorf, is the post-industrial tourist whose orientation resonates more with the characteristics of sustainable tourism. Tourism, I wish to suggest, can be seen as one of the possible outlets in which the fragmenting effects of risk, on the individual, can be mitigated. Tourism, in other words, can be restorative. Neither scientism nor secularization has completely destroyed the human awe of the mysteries of life. Faced with the need to articulate such 'private' or 'personal' affect, natureand community-oriented tourism can fulfil some of these needs. The notion of 'communities of affect' was introduced earlier and this is the second of my perspectives on sustainable tourism. This builds on Murphy's community approach to tourism, z9 Murphy emphasizes the importance of local community involvement, through festivals and events sponsored by residents, and the development of local themes in the tourism product. I would, however, argue that his analysis requires to be extended politically, to capture a fuller sense of community empowerment than is provided for by public participation programmes. But it is his observation on the 'slow retreat from large-scale technocratic plans toward a more humanistic and small-scale level of development' (29 p 172) which is of immediate interest to the development of a community of affect. Murphy's melding of ecological systems analysis with public participation is intended to allow a more cautious and sensitive approach to development and to enable communities and individuals to be more 'judicious'. Valuable as this is it has the unintended consequence of objectifying human and environmental relationships more than it humanizes them. There is, in this community concept, little acknowledgement of the importance of felt experience, exept as it is translated into the goals and objectives of public participation in tourism planning. The insertion of community interests into the planning and management of tourism is welcome but, as argued earlier, it is in the character of public debate to privilege the abstract, scientific and rational. Consequently, in asserting the importance of the human, Murphy is constrained to represent this in ways which instrumentalize it. Returning to the theme of risk, I wish to suggest that many contemporary forms of community coalesce around perceived threats. Quoting Melucci, Grove-White suggests that membership of social movements has much to do with individuals seeking a fruitful collective engagement with reality through simple human interaction with one another. 22 It is in this type of social interactions where an alternative articulation of the inchoate concerns, marginalized as irrational, private or personal, can be attempted. The formation of community should be valued for its own sake as well as the function it can play as a
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political mechanism. If tourism strategies are to be sustainable, therefore, I would argue that they must be developed, not simply in conjunction with the public, or through public participation, but as forms of community development. Underwriting the ecological alarm with the future of the earth is the unprecedented potential for human intervention into global systems formally considered autonomous. In addressing this we need not only to win minds but also hearts. The latter, largely absent from official discussion of sustainability, surfaces in social movements and is an important way in which individuals establish their cultural identity. The introduction and the notion of sustainability to tourism, as a downstream effect of the international agenda on global ecosystems, brings with it affective dimensions. Given their managerialist remit, organizations such as tourist boards will find difficulty coping with this, but the alternative of reformulating anxieties and concerns as if they were deficiencies in the technical and regulatory instruments of tourism planning misses the point that this is not only a physical and scientific issue but an ethical one as well. It may well be that the official institutions of tourism may come to regret their ready embarkation into sustainability but now that it has become an established part of the canon they are likely to have to learn to live with increasing pressure from communities expressing 'tourism concern'.
Acknowledgement I wish to acknowledge the financial support of The Scottish Tourist Board towards the collection of material used in this article.
References 1World Commission on Environment and Development Our Common Future Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987) 2HMSO This Common Inheritance - Britain's Environmental Strategy Cm 1200, HMSO, London (1990) 3Pearce, D W and Warford, J J World Without End: Economics, Environment and Sustainable Development Oxford University Press for The World Bank, New York (1993) 4Hanley, N in association with ECOTEC Ltd Valuation o f Environmental Effects: Final Report - Stage One Industry Department for Scotland and Scottish Development Agency, ESU Research Paper No 22, 1990, Edinburgh
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5Kuhn, T S The Structure o f Scientific Revolutions University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1962) 6Habermas, J Knowledge and Human Interests Heinemann, London (1972) 7Lyotard, J-F The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Manchester University Press, Manchester (1984) 8Krippendorf, J 'Ecological approach to tourism marketing' Tourism Management 1987 (June) 174-176 9Nash, D and Butler, R 'Towards sustainable tourism' Tourism Management 1990 (September) 263-264 ~°France, L and Towner, J 'Tourism with the trimmings' Geographical 1991 63 1-5 11Romeril, M 'Tourism and the environment - accord or discord' Tourism Management 1989 (September) 204-208 ~2May, V 'Tourism, environment and development; values, sustainability and stewardship' Tourism Management 1991 (June) 112-118 13Denman, R 'Tourism and the environment - challenges and choices for the 90s' Bulletin o f the Tourism Society 1993 (Issue 77) ~4Fagence, M 'Geographically-referenced planning strategies to resolve potential conflict between environmental values and commercial interests in tourism development in environmentally sensitive areas' J Environmental Management 1990 31 (1) 1-18 ~5Inskeep, E Tourism Planning; A n Integrated and Sustainable Development Approach Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York (1991) ~6Wheeller, B 'Tourism's troubled times: responsible tourism is not the "answer" ', Tourism Management 1991 (June) 91-96 17Wheeller, B 'Sustaining the ego' J Sustainable Tourism 1 (2) 121-129 18Wheeller, B 'Is progressive tourism appropriate?' Tourism Management 1992 (March) 104-105 WBramwell, B and Lane, B 'Sustainable tourism: an evolving ~olObal approach' J Sustainable Tourism 1993 1 (1) 1-5 Lash, S and Urry, J Economies o f Signs & Space Sage, London (1994) 21Wilson, A The Culture o f Nature Oxford, Blackweil (1992) 2/Grove-White, R 'Environmentalism: a new moral discourse for technological society' in Milton, K (ed) Environmentalism: The View from Anthropology Routledge, London (1993) 23Grove-White, R, Morris, P, Szerszynski, B and Wynne, B The Emerging Ethical Mood on Environmental Issues in Britain Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Lancaster University, Lancaster (1991) 24The Scottish Tourism Co-ordinating Group Tourism and the Scottish Environment: A Sustainable Partnership The Scottish Tourist Board, Edinburgh (1992) ~SThe Tourism & Environmental Task Force Tourism and the Scottish Environment, Tourism Management Initiative; Guidelines for the Development o f Tourism Management Programmes The Scottish Tourist Board, Edinburgh (1993) 26Beck, U Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity Sage, London (1992) 27Beck, U 'From industrial society to risk society: questions of survival, structure and ecological enlightenment' Theory, Culture and Society 1992 9 97-123 2SUrry, J The Tourist Gaze Sage, London (1990) /9Murphy, P E Tourism; A Community Approach Methuen, London (1985)
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Tourism Management, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 49-59, 1995 Copyright ~ 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0261-5177/95 $10.00 + 0.00
The cultural construction of sustainable tourism George Hughes Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK Injunctions towards more sustainable forms of development now characterize official as well as pressure group manifestos. In tourism this is marked by a discourse of sustainable tourism and the sponsorship of initiatives addressing the relationship between tourism and the environment. This paper, using a Scottish example, demonstrates that the dominant approach to sustainable tourism is technical, rational and scientific. It suggests that, while necessary, this has eclipsed the emergence of an ethical response. The paper concludes with some tentative strategies for sustainable tourism fashioned out of an ethical interest in the development of people, as tourists, and destination populations, as communities. Keywords: sustainable tourism, ethics, restorative tourism, c o m m u n i t y development
Since the publication of several strategic reviews on the impact of developments on the environment, particularly the Brundtland Commission Report 1 and in the case of Britain the subsequent white paper This Common Inheritance - Britain's Environmental Strategy (The White Paper),2 there has been a noticeable downstream effect on the management of tourism. As a brief review of the themes of conferences and published papers would illustrate, this is but a variation of what has been a more sweeping and longer standing critique of tourism development which has included attempts to incorporate the concepts of carrying capacity, stewardship, green, alternative, responsible, post-industrial and many other constructions which, when viewed collectively, illustrate the sensitivity and vulnerability of the industry to criticism. Tourism, embracing such a diversity of consumption practices, enterprise ownership and structure and regions of impact, is a relatively easy target for criticism. Because of this diversity it is particularly difficult to formulate a response that would be sufficiently effective without major infringement of social liberty. The control of tourism is dispersed across the globe, involving multiple regions of origin and destination, and through the marketplace, comprising a multitude of holiday choices of many individuals. The task of regulating the consumption and development patterns of tourism therefore demands intervention at both the global scale of organization and the personal. This presents a particularly acute dilemma for a sustainable approach to tourism.
It should not be inferred from this, however, that because everything cannot be achieved that nothing should be attempted. The best, in this case, is the enemy of the good. Rather, it is important to recognize, at the outset, that despite the growth in the corporate management of tourism, the essential character of the industry continues to be highly fragmented and intractable to comprehensive planning. The aspiration, therefore, to develop sustainable strategies for tourism should not be derided because of the infant pretensions of those strategies. The history of the environmental movement, as public pressure groups, is hardly more than two decades old yet it has moved from the margins of alternative lifestyles to become a matter of central policy concern, illustrated by the national and international reports referred to above. Sustainable tourism, in its many variants, is principally an injunction for change arising from dissatisfaction with present principles and practices of tourism. What this paper addresses is the character of the argument being advanced both for and against this change. There are two broad provinces in the way in which sustainability has been conceived, although each contains multiple inflexions. On the one hand there is the ecological concern with biodiversity and the long-run capability of global ecological systems to be self-maintaining. This argument finds a particular inflexion in the developing discipline of environmental economics in which the issues, conceived initially in terms of the biosphere, have been translated into social welfare measures using technical methods of 49
The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
economic evaluation. Foremost among these have been the suite of techniques known as contingency valuation methods. 3'4 This position will be summarily referred to here as 'scientific'. It is characterized by a rational approach to the definition of sustainability in which intervention is pursued using a variety of technical, regulatory and management instruments which treat the environment as an object system. The other perspective is described as 'ethical'. This concerns the moral character that motivates much of the drive for sustainability in the first instance. This perspective is less frequently encountered in the public debate about sustainability. Symptoms of this ethical domain are manifested in the language of 'care' and 'concern' about the earth as an organic autonomous life world and are dominant in explicitly religious approaches which sacralize the earth. Of these two perspectives it is the scientific one which dominates debates on sustainability and, in turn, that of sustainable tourism. This will be illustrated by first considering a sample of recent contributions to the literature, as tentative evidence of the universality of the scientific construction of sustainable tourism, and then by a review of the early experience of an initiative in Scotland which has been designed to disseminate the principle, and encourage the adoption, of sustainability in Scottish tourism.
The power of science The classical view of science as a rational, valueneutral and objective pursuit of knowledge has been widely criticized. Kuhn, for example, suggested that the progress of science was marked by the development of paradigms, which are prevailing theories about the world propounded by those who hold the highest status in the hierarchy of science, s The job for the rest of researchers becomes the infilling of the silences and ironing out of the wrinkles within the prevailing paradigms. Only when a paradigm begins to fail widely in its ability to account for experience is there a paradigm contest from which a new dominant paradigm emerges. What Kuhn is at pains to show is that much of this is to do with relationships within the culture of a community of scientists. It is not an objective and altruistic process of theory and counter-theory development but one in which the careers of scientists are intimately bound up with the politics of those whom they support. A more socially comprehensive critique of the value-laden nature of science has been produced by Habermas, who views the explanatory drive of science as the pursuit of technical control over the environment. 6 Habermas has argued that the recent agenda of science has been set by the interests of capital. This approach stresses the ideological character of science. The yet later advent of postmodern
50
theories pushes this critique to the extremes when it challenges what remains of claims to objectivity in science. Lyotard argues that pragmatism now prevails and the key test of whether a theory is 'correct' is simply whether it 'works'. 7 The cultural relativism of this is easiest to appreciate in those branches of science that deal with aspects of the human body where the 'correctness' of electric shock therapy, genetic m a n i p u l a t i o n , herbicide and fungicide assisted food production etc throws into relief the relativity of claims presented as objective scientific statements. Despite the comprehensiveness of this critique what characterizes recent academic treatments of sustainability has been the supposedly objective technically rational, or scientific, parameters within which it continues to be discussed. Given the ethical origins of sustainable concerns among bodies such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the variety of animal rights pressure groups and the multiplicity of religious faiths oriented to the sacredness of the earth, the dominance of a technical approach, to the virtual exclusion of an ethical one, is noteworthy. An interpretation of why this might be so follows later, but first it is necessary to demonstrate this scientific effect on the academic treatment of sustainability as taken up in tourism. Turning first to some well-established advocates of a sustainable approach to tourism the instrumental character of their presentation may be identified. An ecological approach has been commended, for example, owing to the impact of changing demographic, economic and lifestyle forces on the demand for tourism. Krippendorf exemplifies this position in his call for the absolute necessity of a 'new conception of tourism and a new marketing of tourism' in response to changes in the marketplace. 8 The arrival of the 'new consumer', oriented to learning and communication with other people, to replace the hedonistic consumer, is complemented by the increasing assertiveness of host communities in tourist destination regions. Butler, at the first official meeting of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, struck a slightly different balance in his consideration of sustainable tourism with his search for some continuing virtue in the character of mass tourism. Rather than equate mass tourism with all that is bad, and alternative tourism with all that is good, he calls for a 'rational objective evaluation of the merits and problems of all types of tourism'. 9 In both these examples it is not the substantive validity of the assertions to which I wish to draw attention but the exclusively 'scientific' character in which the issue of sustainability is addressed. Although values form an important ingredient of these arguments, they are eclipsed by the authors' perceived requirements to make the case for sustainable t o u r i s m in o b j e c t i v e terms. S u s t a i n a b l e approaches to tourism will be necessary as a func-
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tional response to the new niche market of postindustrial tourists. We must not be emotional or irrational in our response to this but m a k e a 'rational objective evaluation'. This need to formulate the virtues of sustainable tourism by reference to objective self-evident criteria, such as job creation, 1° carrying capacity, ~1 stewardship, 12 energy efficiency 13 or the m a n a g e m e n t of conservation and commercial conflict, ~4"15 is also the approach adopted in Wheellet's fulmination a g a i n s t the potency of sustainable tourism.16"17 For Wheeller it is a self-evident question of numbers. The capacity to either attract or absorb sufficient tourists, of the sustainable mould, remains insignificant in the context of an industry regularly cited to become the largest in the world by the end of this century. Despite the emotive tone of the rhetoric Wheeller pursues his critique in very functional terms. 'Tourist or traveller, we are simply cutomers/ clients to be targeted, wooed and seduced by industry' (18 p 105). This critique seems predicated in the commoditization, or logic of capital, theses that earlier informed the left-wing theorizing of scientific socialism. But if the prosecution and the defence of sustainable tourism are both conducted within a scientific perspective this is also sufficiently unsurprising to most people that it would be d e e m e d 'natural'. Yet a cursory review of the origins of the current concern with sustainable relationships illustrates that the brief history of sustainability is m a r k e d by moral and ethical motivations at least as significant as the supposedly objective analysis of scientific treatments.
Environmental ethics As summarized by Bramwell and Lane, 19 environmental m o v e m e n t s began as vague, anti-growth sentiments that widened to encompass the built heritage and traditional societies as well as the natural world. In the 1980s these fragmented interests coalesced under the paradigm of sustainable development. In their brief history of the environmental critique they describe two responses: that of deep ecology, which sought a return to historic values and methods, and a more optimistic response that combined the potential of technical progress with new h u m a n - e n v i r o n m e n t a l relations. Although they acknowledge the growth of environmental groups as political forces they trace the origins of the concept of sustainable d e v e l o p m e n t to thoughts developed within the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources which subsequently found their way into the World Conservation Strategy and the Brundtland Report. This matter-of-fact description is carried through into their definition of sustainable tourism which is summarized as an approach intended to reduce tensions and friction between tourist, resident and the tourist industry.
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It is an approach which involves working for the long-term viability and quality of both national and human resources. It is not anti-growth, but it acknowledges that there are limits to growth. Those limits will vary considerably from place to place, and according to management practices. It recognises that for many areas tourism was, is and will be an important form of development. It seeks to ensure that tourism developments are sustainable in the long term and wherever possible help in turn to sustain areas in which they operate. And, for good measure, sustainable tourism also aims to increase visitor satisfaction. (19 p 2) While acknowledging the s u m m a r y nature of this definition, and hence the limitations it enforces on definitional complexity, it is still excessively unproblematical. It does not address the social or political context through which environmentalism has been born. The environmental agenda, and its permutation sustainable development, did not just emerge. It was produced by a process of active construction which repositioned a wide diversity of public protests into a m o r e comprehensive concern with the environment. Lash and Urry, on the other hand, m a k e a central feature of the social and political influences which bear on the environment, z° A philosophical shift in the representation o f t h e e n v i r o n m e n t has accompanied the process of modernization. From the 17th century onward the dominant construction of nature has changed from a nurturing view of the earth, as mother, to one in which nature was regarded as hostile; an 'other' waiting to be mastered. This perceptual change arises from the philosophical separation of nature and society. Nature has been externalized. We can recognize this in the distinctions we m a k e between nature and culture, natural and planned, town and country etc. In their search for an explanation for the recent growth in environmentalism Lash and Urry emphasize the role of consumerism. Broadly speaking they characterize western society as consumption dominated with the seductive appeal of the m a r k e t providing the main mechanism of social integration. The pursuit of pleasure has b e c o m e the dominant m o d e of living. The paradox of consumption, however, is that as sophistication in consumer skills increases so too does the d e m a n d for consumer rights. As consumers, individuals feel entitled to certain quality standards in the consumption of water, air and scenery. One explanation for environmental support therefore lies in the variety of 'interests' that individuals, represented here as consumers, have in particular environmental threats. Different social groups have different stakes or interests in p l a c e . . . Some people will benefit more from expanding the employment base, others from increasing the range of shops, others from impro-
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The cultural construction o f sustainable tourism: G Hughes
ving the leisure and entertainment facilities, others from making it safer, others from reconstructing the place's 'heritage', others from improving the physical environment, others from making it healthier, and so on. The interests of individuals and groups are therefore heterogeneous, ranging from the material to the cultural, to the medical and especially to the aesthetic. And of course different groups have different resources to realise such interests within a given locality, to ensure that a nuclear power station should be built, or that a sewage outlet should not be constructed, or that a set of old buildings should be preserved rather than demolished, and so on. Resources include not only money and power but also public opinion and organisational capacities. (19 pp 303-304) One particularly powerful set of interests in the environment is that of tourism. The importance of tourism, in defining what is 'natural', is considered by Lash and U r r y to be one of the most important ways in which the relations between humans and nature are now organized. Land has b e c o m e redefined as a resource for leisure and, quoting Wilson, el they consider this process to be part of the larger production of a particular 'culture of nature'. Putting this in m o r e prosaic terms what this implies is that what turns the physical environment into scenery is the cultural context in which that environment is e m b e d d e d . Lash and Urry thus adopt a culturally constructivist reading of the growth of interest in environmentalism, and by implication the particular variant of sustainable tourism. H o w e v e r , their interpretation, while socially and politically m o r e explicit than that of Bramwell and Lane, captures only part of the complexity involved in the cultural construction of what is represented as nature, be it tourist or otherwise. W h a t they neglect is the t h e m e developed by Grove-White: 2z the role of mystery in h u m a n relations with the environment. There is little sign in mainstream discussions of environmental problems of the dimensions of either felt experience or what G r o v e - W h i t e calls the radically unknown character of the future. The explanation for this can be traced to the same root, referred to by Lash and Urry as the source of the separation of society from nature. This division was a characteristic of Enlightenment thinking which spawned a whole new vocabulary of dualisms that we now take for granted. In addition to the nature/culture examples cited above, the depth of this effect can be seen in the distinctions between mind and body, reason and emotion, object and subject, abstract and particular etc. O f relevance here is the dualism between public and private. Grove-White, Morris, Szerszynski and Wynne 23 ~ assert that western societies have developed in such a way that they choose to recognize and respond to only 'objective', 'rational' and 'instrumental' patterns of knowledge which result in other forms of insight such as poetic, moral, spir52
itual, intuitive and relational being treated as 'personal', and hence marginal for public purposes. One important implication of this dominance of the public domain by 'objective', 'rational' discourse is: • . . that the dimensions of mankind's condition notably, the inherent indeterminacy, openmindedness and mystery of our existential situation - have tended to be recast in forms which represent them instead as (mere) scientific uncertainty, or provisional ignorance. The effect is to trivialise or negate them as realities presenting continuing m o r a l challenges to individual men, women and communities• Simply put, we now have a persistent tension between what may be labelled 'rational' and 'romantic' approaches to life, the former being recognised as publicly significant, the latter being consigned almost entirely to the 'private' domain.( 23 p 7)
This dualism privatizes the articulation of emotions and expressions of mutuality. Our public knowledge of the world has b e c o m e so rationalized and objectified that it is difficult to find a public language in which to express these 'personal' or 'private' expressions. This can be sensed in the embarrassment that arises when 'personal' emotions are aired in public. The strategies used to manage such public expressions of the private include depicting them as feminine (or unmasculine) or domesticating them as the proper domain of the h o m e or the nursery. While there is much that suggests a strong moral dimension to the growth of m o v e m e n t s such as Friends of the Earth and G r e e n p e a c e , and the alliances of those concerned with animal welfare, genetic manipulation, the chemical 'enhancements' of the food and cosmetics industries etc, the public expression of this concern characteristically takes on a scientific or rational presentation. The emerging subdiscipline of environmental economics, heralded as a critically significant development in evaluating the substainability of projects and policies, fulsomely exemplifies this instrumental, rational approach.
Environmental
economics
and
nature
Environmental economics treats the environment functionally, on one hand as a stock of material inputs to be used in the process of economic production, and on the other hand as a waste receptacle which has finite limits to its waste-absorptive capacity. In fulfilling the goal of consumer satisfaction, e n v i r o n m e n t a l economics has c o n c e n t r a t e d our attention on the potential scarcity that will obtain in fulfilling both of these functions and has thereby justified the application of economics to the question of sustainability. The concept of sustainability is operationalized by treating the relationship between current resource use and future needs as a trade-off in which the socially desirable solution is the maintenance of the net productive value of environmental
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resources available to future generations. To emphasize the scarce and depreciable character of resource use, and hence the need to consider resource replacement, conservation and substitution strategies, economists apply the term 'natural capital' to environmental resources. M a n a g e m e n t of the net productive value of this natural capital would be cond u c t e d t h r o u g h a s y s t e m of n a t u r a l r e s o u r c e accounting in which the depreciation of the natural capital assets would be calculated to enable the implementation of compensating resource replacement and substitution strategies. Sustainability becomes defined, in the typical equilibrium formulation of economists, as a measurable state towards which intervention strategies can be directed. The technical plausibility with which the definition of sustainable d e v e l o p m e n t has been formulated by environmental economists is sufficiently seductive that it diverts attention away from the m o r e fundamental consideration of the moral and ethical basis of the sustainability debate towards m o r e instrumental considerations of how to measure and systematize the characteristics of sustainable resource use. This economic approach has considerable empirical appeal and takes the concept of sustainability from the domain of philosophy into that of m a n a g e m e n t , but in so doing it also side-steps the philosophical complexity of the sustainability concept since it employs a particular set of assumptions about the character of the h u m a n - e n v i r o n m e n t relationship to underpin this economic approach. Sustainability, in the discourse of economics, is used in an objectifying way. The alarm that the sustainability issue has signalled to economists is not based on a concern with the earth for its own sake but rather for its function as a brake on the advance of consumer welfare. If this appears u n r e m a r k a b l e as a description of our c o n t e m p o r a r y relationship with nature it is this very process of installing this perception, rather than any other, as being ' c o m m o n sense' or 'just natural' that I wish to address. This view of nature, as external to humanity, implies that nature existed before humankind and continues separate from it. W h e n economists address nature, in the form of natural capital, they treat as 'natural' the view that the environment is a 'resource' which is to be exploited. Environmental economics has added a scarcity criterion to what was formerly considered ubiquitous and hence n o n - m a r k e t goods, such as the oceans and the upper a t m o s p h e r e , but it has not shifted the instrumental view of the use of the environment. Indeed economic theorists approach the definition of sustainability through economic growth, but now a growth strategy conscious of environmental constraints. The purpose of this digression into environmental economics has been to illustrate that environmental views which we take for granted, or term 'natural', in our economic exploitation of the earth are not at
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all natural but are, as argued by Lash and Urry, culturally conceived. Thus economic concepts such as 'natural capital' assume the commodification of the environment and are framed in terms of the 'utility' that a 'consumer' may acquire from the 'natural' environment. When we turn to tourism, as a particular economic use of the environment, the significance of the way in which we have constructed nature becomes m o r e explicit, for tourism differs from m a n y of the other forms of economic development in its direct consumption of the environment. There is nothing 'natural' about the various landscapes valued by tourists since they are the result of the history of h u m a n intervention which has manipulated nature in ways conducive to economic growth. The overriding dominance in the discourse of environmental economics of the rational, scientific and instrumental is carried through into official presentations of environmental problems. There has developed a rough consensus on the type of issues considered 'environmental' such as ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, air, sea and river pollution. These are being represented as essentially physical problems that are amenable to scientific and management solutions. The environment, or nature, therefore is not only being commodified but the very terms in which it is possible to discuss publicly this commodifying process marginalize the possibility of articulating felt experience. Public discussion is dominated either by the scientific constructions of ecology or the political constructions of interests, both of which fragment the wholeness of qualitative h u m a n experience and define environmental issues in functional terms. Even the experiential character of tourist interaction with the landscape is reduced to defining land as a 'tourism resource'. What has been washed out of this construction, by the privatizing and domestication of affect, is the domain of culture. The example of the Tourism M a n a g e m e n t Initiative in Scotland is now used to illustrate the way this particular objectifying discourse has percolated into official constructions of sustainable tourism.
The Tourism Management Initiative The Scottish Office established a coordinating group in Scotland for the promotion of the concept of Sustainable Tourism. This group, n a m e d The Scottish Tourism Co-ordinating G r o u p , was composed of representatives of the statutory agencies which interact with tourism. In 1992 the Scottish Tourist Board, on behalf of this G r o u p , published the first of two reports, Tourism and the Scottish E n v i r o n m e n t ; A Sustainable Partnership. 24 This report, combining text and photographs designed for more general appeal, was a broad review of the relationship between tourism and the environment. The essence of this sustainable approach to tour-
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The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
ism was to be the establishment of a Tourism Management Initiative (TM1), co-ordinated at the national level by the Scottish Tourist Board but implemented through local projects, specifically designed to be environmentally friendly and ameliorating. A national framework was to be prepared, within which priority projects and programmes might be identified and guidelines formulated for the manner in which local projects should be prepared to conform with the objectives of sustainable tourism. However, much of the initial deliberations were premised on the need for additional financial support from central government to provide the incentive for local participation in this initiative. In the event an application for financial support was turned down and so the coordinating group was reconvened, and reconstituted as The Tourism and Environment Task Force (the Task Force). One of the first actions of the Task Force was to draw up a set of guidelines through which it could disseminate its philosophy of sustainability to those who would implement projects at the local level. These guidelines were circulated, for written observations, to representatives of local authorities, enterprise agencies and area tourist boards, and several pilot projects were established which could be used to evaluate the practical implementation of this approach to sustainable tourism. In the light of this experience the guidelines were redrafted and published as the second report of the initiative, Tourism and the Scottish Environment: Tourism Management Initiative, 25 and these formed the centrepiece of a ministerial launch in June 1993. Despite offering a list of examples of what might constitute appropriate approaches to sustainable development, the guidelines in this second report are more administrative in their thrust than substantive. They repeat the earlier call for the establishment of locally conceived and implemented projects which are given the formal designation of Tourism Management Programmes (TMPs). The purpose of this initiative, and its set of guidelines, is premised on a central government perception of the need to change attitudes among local authorities and development agencies through raising consciousness of the environmental implications of tourism development. Three themes may be identified in the recommended approach: projects are to be locally driven but within a national strategic overview, they are to be managed through partnership arrangements between implementing bodies, and individual projects must be conceived as part of an integrated programme of local actions. This is all to be achieved, in the absence of additional financial support from central government, by re-prioritizing budgets both locally and nationally. What characterizes this initiative is the centrality of a planned, rational and objective approach. The problems are defined in terms of the physical environment and what is needed to solve
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these is a coordinated programme of management. This is most explicit in the definition of sustainable tourism employed in the guidelines. Sustainable tourism implies that environmental resources will be used and developed for the enjoyment of tourists but that these resources will be conserved for the benefit of future tourists and residents. In this context the 'environment' includes physical resources such as landscape and manmade resources such as historical buildings. (24 p 1) The thrust of this approach is to establish the key problems of the environment as existing in nature. The environment exists as a 'resource' to be 'developed' but it has been the damaging character of tourist intervention into this natural system that threatens sustainability. What is needed therefore is better management, or what I have called the 'scientific' approach. The detailed implementation of this perspective may be appreciated through a brief consideration of two of the projects falling within the initiative.
The Trossachs Trail The Trossachs is a long established area for scenic touring in Central Scotland. Its prominence in the writings of Walter Scott popularized the area, physically and culturally, and the legacy of Rob Roy McGregor is a significant tourist theme. The development of a tourist trail was conceived before the advent of the initiative but the scale and impetus of the project were significantly affected by its incorporation. The trail is geographically, rather than thematically, conceived and forms a rectangular loop which links the communities of Aberfoyle, Brig o'Turk, Callander, Doune, Thornhill and Port of Monteith (Figure 1). The principal routes to the Trail are north from Glasgow, south from Strathyre and west from Stirling. The core of the trail is in its western half between Aberfoyle and Callander, and incorporating Lochs Katrine, Achray and Venachar together with tracts of the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park. Visitor pressure is currently greatest in this area of high scenic value and the Trail has been conceived as a means of dispersing this pressure towards the eastern half of the area. The TMP was therefore an integrated set of visitor management proposals which addressed issues including signposting, car parking, footpath maintenance and development, interpretation, townscape improvement, the distribution and quality of built attractions, and a programme of general management including provision for litter collection and public toilets. The distinctive contribution of the initiative, as an approach to the development of the Trossachs Trail, is summarily captured by the notion of synergy. Under this initiative the work of agencies, variously concerned with tourism or conservation, could be coordinated at the local level through the formation
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The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
N
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Key .............. Trossachs Trail Not To Scale Figure 1 TrossachsTrail location of a multi-agency partnership which offered the potential to avoid misunderstanding and duplication and to achieve effects through action in partnership that exceeded action undertaken severally. In the case of the Trossachs Trail TMP the participating partners included the local enterprise agency (Forth Valley Enterprise), the area tourist board (Loch Lomond, Stirling and the Trossachs Tourist Board), an existing public-private partnership (Rural Stifling Tourism Management 1995 Volume 16 Number 1
Partnership), Forest Enterprise, the respective local authorities (Stirling District Council and Central Regional Council), the national conservation body (Scottish Natural Heritage) and the national tourist board (The Scottish Tourist Board). It might have been anticipated that the absence of additional central government funding would have had a profound effect on the willingness of local agencies to participate in a centrally inspired initiative but the synergis55
The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
tic advantages of the TMP partnership arrangements were particularly apparent in two aspects of the assembly of finance. First, the statutory restrictions of the various partners constrain the flexibility with which any single agency can allocate their finances between capital and revenue expenditure. Under the TMP multi-agency approach it became possible for 'capital rich' agencies to coordinate with 'revenue spenders' to design mutually supportive programmes. Effectively this could be achieved by two kinds of trade-off. Higher quality investment at the outset could be used as a mechanism to reduce subsequent maintenance requirements and those agencies on whom, in the future, the maintenance liabilities would fall (the local authorities) could trade-off this anticipated liability against their capital commitment. The partners are also exploring the potential of using a trust to facilitate capital-revenue tradeoff. Conceptually this would involve a sort of 'sinking fund' in which the capital-rich agencies could invest and from which future maintenance responsibilities could be serviced. This has been one of the proposals m o o t e d as a means of achieving the intergenerational effects that are the defining criteria for a sustainable form of development and it takes on a more urgent relevance in the context of impending changes to local government. A trust would ensure that the financial liability of future maintenance responsibilities would be met irrespective of the effect of a new local government structure. However, the legal complexities, to date, have overwhelmed progress on this front but the partners remain optimistic that a legally binding and satisfactory arrangement can be achieved. The second advantage was one of leverage in which the several funds of agencies can be seen to 'lever' a total budget that was considerably larger than would otherwise have been the case. The financial assembly for the T M P was organized around a programme of integrated actions. Some 15 individual projects or actions were identified which would collectively contribute to the development and maintenance of the Trossachs Trail. Implementation dates were assigned to each of the actions and the relevant funding partner and level of contribution identified. In this way a total budget could be identified for a programme of actions that was agreed by the partners at the outset of the TMP. The collective effort of this accumulated budget, combined with participation in a programme that was nationally endorsed, raised the profile of the TMP and attracted increased attention and financial support from within the agencies themselves. This leverage had the effect, for example, of taking the project out of the discretionary spending powers of project officers into expenditure levels that required approval by their respective executive boards. In the case of the enterprise agencies, this also raised executive
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consciousness about the potential of tourism as an economic development option, compared with other industries. The Trossachs Trail TMP has therefore been designed to address the problems of visitor pressure on an area of high scenic value using a partnership arrangement within which to coordinate the remedial and development actions of a range of agencies. The strategy of dispersing visitors, spatially and seasonally, is a management strategy intended to mitigate the detrimental effects on the physical environment. This is complemented with investment in facilities designed to enhance aspects of the carrying capacity of the area. Details include the integration of transport networks so that interchange points can be established between car parking and cycle ways and the introduction of a bus service, the Trossachs Trundler, to provide an alternative to the car for travel within the designated area. Improved signposting and on-site interpretation are to be improved and a comprehensive review of the requirement for visitor facilities, such as car parks, toilets and litter receptacles, has been undertaken along with detailed landscaping proposals for visual screening. The St A n d r e w s Tourism M a n a g e m e n t P r o g r a m m e
The Royal Burgh of St Andrews, located in the north-east corner of Fife, has a population of some 14 000 residents. It is the largest settlement in the North East District of Fife and is, perhaps, most famous for its associations with golf. The motivation for adopting a TMP was heavily influenced by concern with the continuing capacity of the historic core of the town to absorb car traffic and parking. However, there was also a range of concerns about the quality of the built environment, the interaction of this environment with tourism, and the effects of the seasonal and spatial concentration of tourism in the town. The partners in the St Andrews' TMP were the local enterprise company (Fife Enterprise), the local authorities (Fife Regional Council and North East Fife District Council), The Scottish Tourist Board, and the St Andrews and North East Fife Tourist Board. As in the Trossachs Trail example, the St Andrews' TMP identified a range of actions with each action having an identified funding agency and implementation date, but costings were less well defined than in the case of the Trossachs. The proposed range of actions, in the project as initially conceived, was also less precise. Participating agencies welcomed the TMP for its coordinating role and for the implied endorsement of central government agencies. The formulation of actions as part of a nationally initiated programme had the same synergistic effect, for project funding, as it did in the case of the Trossachs. However, the advantages of the TMP were not as universally appreciated as in the Trossachs and participating
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The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
agencies differed in their views a b o u t the instrumental effectiveness of the p r o g r a m m e . One agency viewed the T M P in a politically instrumental way. The Burgh, with its concentration of middleclass, articulate and university-dominated population, was characterized as a particularly lively place in matters of public consultation. The national status of the T M P initiative was seen as a mechanism to distance some of the local differences between pressure groups and thereby encourage the d e v e l o p m e n t of cooperative, rather than competitive, inter-group participation. A n o t h e r partner raised a concern as to whether the difference that this initiative m a d e was worth the additional bureaucracy involved. The area already had in place an active m e m b e r s group, which represented most of the partner agencies in the TMP. The representatives of the tourist trade also expressed considerable difficulty in perceiving the benefits that would accrue from the introduction of the TMP. This more critical reception to the T M P may be a feature of the complexity of working in an urban environment where the diversity of opinions, owing to population density, is likely to be greater than in a rural community. It may also, however, reflect c o m m u n i t y resistance to the suppression of felt experience as a result of implementing an environmental p r o g r a m m e that takes the physical environment as its sole reference point.
necessity for environmental pressure groups to conduct their p r o g r a m m e s of opposition in dominantly scientific and rational terms is the consequence of the abstract and objectified character of public discourse. Facts and evidence are the currency of public debate. Anxiety and concern, on the other hand, are private experiences which, in the absence of supporting evidence, are diagnosed as irrational fears. In the m a n a g e m e n t of the environment this division of the positivistic discourse of facts from the normative one of values reached a high point in the environmental discipline of town and country planning in the 1970s. The methodology of Structure and Local Plans was based on a separation of the factual basis of demographic projections, the technical application of standards and the calculation of space demands, from the accumulation of values and opinions from stages of public participation in the planning process. Seen against this background, the attempt of the T M I to change attitudes towards an embrace of sustainable principles characterized by
Sustainable tourism?
seems to be less a change of attitudes but rather m o r e of a reinforcement of the same procedural rationality as characterized Structure and Local Plans! O f course scientific analysis and coordinated intervention are necessary. The defect is rather in the lack of balance and the failure to account for community affect in this initiative. T h e r e are two perspectives on a sustainable approach to tourism that I would tentatively advance. Both of these will require fuller development than is possible within the limitations of this current paper. The first of these is what may be thought of as 'restorative tourism'. One of the models for early tourism was drawn from that class of gentrified travellers whose tastes in sea bathing and the picturesque were taken up and recontextualized as mass tourism in the 19th-century. This has left a particular geographical imprint on the coasts and uplands of Britain. Mass tourism, in something like the form we know it today, is a legacy of the 19thcentury system of industrial production that was characterized by the factory system, rapidly expanding communications and particular patterns of rapid urbanization. W h a t e v e r the motives of those who sponsored mass tourism, it is possible to acknowledge that this tourism experience played an important restorative role in lives that were organized around the discipline of factory production. The legacy of tourism is thus deeply m a r k e d by a dualistic difference between leisure and the disciplinary
There is widespread acknowledgement that we live in an increasingly fragmented and distorting world that poses fundamental threats to the maintenance of a coherent self. Theorists point to the role that language and general sign systems play in the construction of individual identity and, despite radically differing diagnoses, there seems general agreement that the philosophical concept of the individual, born with a ready-encoded personality which develops like a plant from seed, is no longer tenable. The individual is constituted within the culture of the social world in which he or she is e m b e d d e d . Some resistance to this existential threat can be observed in the growth of social m o v e m e n t s in which the experiential rewards of mutuality and inter-personal relations are as much an objective of participation as the substantive issues around which the m o v e m e n t s coalesce. The growth of environmental m o v e m e n t s can be read in such a light. I would describe these as 'communities of affect'. Underlying the prominence of sustainability, as the buzz-word of the 1990s, is a deeper seated concern with the fundamentals of life that are eclipsed by the public discourse of science, regulation and rational intervention. Concerns as varied as those with nuclear reprocessing, the food processing industry, animal rights, air and water quality, the loss of rain forests, criminal threats etc, are not fully articulated by scientific analysis. The
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• . . an analysis of issues, problems and opportunities . . . aims and objectives . . . identification of the broad actions to be pursued, a plan of a c t i o n . . . a programme . . . [indicating] . . . timescale . . . and . . . cost . . . information on the partnership a r r a n g e m e n t s . . , and consideration of the methods of monitoring progress . . . (24 p 1)
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The cultural construction of sustainable tourism: G Hughes
and alienating character of work in industrial Britain of the 19th century. But the dominant present mode of production, reflecting the relative decline in the importance of manufacturing, is being described as post-industrial. It thus becomes necessary to rethink the construction of tourism in the context of these considerable changes to the economy and culture. It is this challenge to which Krippendorf 8 has responded with the identification of a post-industrial kind of tourist embedded in a new unity of life that reduces the polarity of work and leisure. The postindustrial tourist is motivated by a search for fulfilment in all of life's sectors which includes broadening one's horizons, learning and communication with other people, a return to simpler things and nature, a creativity and open-mindedness and a readiness to experiment. This is a very plausible argument but it is presented only in instrumental terms. This new tourism is analysed for the extent to which it will become an established fact. Krippendorf asserts it will be 30--45% of tourism by the year 2000 and supports his case with a brief examination of changes in demographic structure and economic conditions. But, despite its plausibility, this thesis does not address what it is about the character of a postindustrial culture that it should bring about such a change in the consumption patterns of tourists. An answer to this can be found in the work of Beck 26'27 who argues that we have moved into a 'risk society' characterized by hazards that show no respect for national boundaries, such as the effects of Chernobyl. Beck's analysis of the risk society is undertaken as the basis on which he proposes new political structures more appropriate to the late 20th-century character of society which is lived within a global culture. Beck presents a rational critique which unravels some of the complexity of late 20th-century life. The decline in mass industrial production, the erosion of the traditional nuclear family and the demise of class-based societies has led to a process of individualization. Individual agents are now required to make decisions about many aspects of their lives previously thought to be imposed by the structures of the society in which they lived. It is this effect on individuals which has some bearing on this discussion of sustainable tourism. It is not only the increased importance of risks from 'bads', which impact on the individual, but the reinforcing of this through media coverage, which may sometimes reach hysterical proportions. The cumulative effect of this on the person is highly stressful and fragmenting. One form of coping with this fragmentation, in the practice of tourism, has been theorized by Urry. 28 For Urry, this has produced the 'post-tourist' consumer who can simultaneously enjoy the consumption of contrived spectacles while remaining aware of the inauthenticity of it all. This would indeed seem to be one possible response but
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another, more consistent with the trends identified by Krippendorf, is the post-industrial tourist whose orientation resonates more with the characteristics of sustainable tourism. Tourism, I wish to suggest, can be seen as one of the possible outlets in which the fragmenting effects of risk, on the individual, can be mitigated. Tourism, in other words, can be restorative. Neither scientism nor secularization has completely destroyed the human awe of the mysteries of life. Faced with the need to articulate such 'private' or 'personal' affect, natureand community-oriented tourism can fulfil some of these needs. The notion of 'communities of affect' was introduced earlier and this is the second of my perspectives on sustainable tourism. This builds on Murphy's community approach to tourism, z9 Murphy emphasizes the importance of local community involvement, through festivals and events sponsored by residents, and the development of local themes in the tourism product. I would, however, argue that his analysis requires to be extended politically, to capture a fuller sense of community empowerment than is provided for by public participation programmes. But it is his observation on the 'slow retreat from large-scale technocratic plans toward a more humanistic and small-scale level of development' (29 p 172) which is of immediate interest to the development of a community of affect. Murphy's melding of ecological systems analysis with public participation is intended to allow a more cautious and sensitive approach to development and to enable communities and individuals to be more 'judicious'. Valuable as this is it has the unintended consequence of objectifying human and environmental relationships more than it humanizes them. There is, in this community concept, little acknowledgement of the importance of felt experience, exept as it is translated into the goals and objectives of public participation in tourism planning. The insertion of community interests into the planning and management of tourism is welcome but, as argued earlier, it is in the character of public debate to privilege the abstract, scientific and rational. Consequently, in asserting the importance of the human, Murphy is constrained to represent this in ways which instrumentalize it. Returning to the theme of risk, I wish to suggest that many contemporary forms of community coalesce around perceived threats. Quoting Melucci, Grove-White suggests that membership of social movements has much to do with individuals seeking a fruitful collective engagement with reality through simple human interaction with one another. 22 It is in this type of social interactions where an alternative articulation of the inchoate concerns, marginalized as irrational, private or personal, can be attempted. The formation of community should be valued for its own sake as well as the function it can play as a
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political mechanism. If tourism strategies are to be sustainable, therefore, I would argue that they must be developed, not simply in conjunction with the public, or through public participation, but as forms of community development. Underwriting the ecological alarm with the future of the earth is the unprecedented potential for human intervention into global systems formally considered autonomous. In addressing this we need not only to win minds but also hearts. The latter, largely absent from official discussion of sustainability, surfaces in social movements and is an important way in which individuals establish their cultural identity. The introduction and the notion of sustainability to tourism, as a downstream effect of the international agenda on global ecosystems, brings with it affective dimensions. Given their managerialist remit, organizations such as tourist boards will find difficulty coping with this, but the alternative of reformulating anxieties and concerns as if they were deficiencies in the technical and regulatory instruments of tourism planning misses the point that this is not only a physical and scientific issue but an ethical one as well. It may well be that the official institutions of tourism may come to regret their ready embarkation into sustainability but now that it has become an established part of the canon they are likely to have to learn to live with increasing pressure from communities expressing 'tourism concern'.
Acknowledgement I wish to acknowledge the financial support of The Scottish Tourist Board towards the collection of material used in this article.
References 1World Commission on Environment and Development Our Common Future Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987) 2HMSO This Common Inheritance - Britain's Environmental Strategy Cm 1200, HMSO, London (1990) 3Pearce, D W and Warford, J J World Without End: Economics, Environment and Sustainable Development Oxford University Press for The World Bank, New York (1993) 4Hanley, N in association with ECOTEC Ltd Valuation o f Environmental Effects: Final Report - Stage One Industry Department for Scotland and Scottish Development Agency, ESU Research Paper No 22, 1990, Edinburgh
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5Kuhn, T S The Structure o f Scientific Revolutions University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1962) 6Habermas, J Knowledge and Human Interests Heinemann, London (1972) 7Lyotard, J-F The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Manchester University Press, Manchester (1984) 8Krippendorf, J 'Ecological approach to tourism marketing' Tourism Management 1987 (June) 174-176 9Nash, D and Butler, R 'Towards sustainable tourism' Tourism Management 1990 (September) 263-264 ~°France, L and Towner, J 'Tourism with the trimmings' Geographical 1991 63 1-5 11Romeril, M 'Tourism and the environment - accord or discord' Tourism Management 1989 (September) 204-208 ~2May, V 'Tourism, environment and development; values, sustainability and stewardship' Tourism Management 1991 (June) 112-118 13Denman, R 'Tourism and the environment - challenges and choices for the 90s' Bulletin o f the Tourism Society 1993 (Issue 77) ~4Fagence, M 'Geographically-referenced planning strategies to resolve potential conflict between environmental values and commercial interests in tourism development in environmentally sensitive areas' J Environmental Management 1990 31 (1) 1-18 ~5Inskeep, E Tourism Planning; A n Integrated and Sustainable Development Approach Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York (1991) ~6Wheeller, B 'Tourism's troubled times: responsible tourism is not the "answer" ', Tourism Management 1991 (June) 91-96 17Wheeller, B 'Sustaining the ego' J Sustainable Tourism 1 (2) 121-129 18Wheeller, B 'Is progressive tourism appropriate?' Tourism Management 1992 (March) 104-105 WBramwell, B and Lane, B 'Sustainable tourism: an evolving ~olObal approach' J Sustainable Tourism 1993 1 (1) 1-5 Lash, S and Urry, J Economies o f Signs & Space Sage, London (1994) 21Wilson, A The Culture o f Nature Oxford, Blackweil (1992) 2/Grove-White, R 'Environmentalism: a new moral discourse for technological society' in Milton, K (ed) Environmentalism: The View from Anthropology Routledge, London (1993) 23Grove-White, R, Morris, P, Szerszynski, B and Wynne, B The Emerging Ethical Mood on Environmental Issues in Britain Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Lancaster University, Lancaster (1991) 24The Scottish Tourism Co-ordinating Group Tourism and the Scottish Environment: A Sustainable Partnership The Scottish Tourist Board, Edinburgh (1992) ~SThe Tourism & Environmental Task Force Tourism and the Scottish Environment, Tourism Management Initiative; Guidelines for the Development o f Tourism Management Programmes The Scottish Tourist Board, Edinburgh (1993) 26Beck, U Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity Sage, London (1992) 27Beck, U 'From industrial society to risk society: questions of survival, structure and ecological enlightenment' Theory, Culture and Society 1992 9 97-123 2SUrry, J The Tourist Gaze Sage, London (1990) /9Murphy, P E Tourism; A Community Approach Methuen, London (1985)
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