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Travel as Interaction: Encountering Place and Others
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Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management
Travel as Interaction: Encountering Place and Others
Naomi Rosh White
This article examines ‘encounters’, or interactions between tourists. The focus is on how social life is
Monash University, Australia
established and maintained, specifically the meaning of inter-tourist social interactions in the remote regions
Peter B. White LaTrobe University, Australia
of Australia. The ways in which perceptions of the landscape frame these interactions are also considered. The meaning and significance of these interactions was found to be filtered through the prism of the tourists’ occupation of a physically demanding, sometimes threatening and culturally unfamiliar landscape. Because of the rigours of the travel environment, tourists were keen to be in the company of others, but in encounters or relationships free of the obligation of ongoing attachment, without specific function, content or outcome. Their interactions with other tourists and the local populations enriched their understanding of the social and physical environment. Those interactions offered comfort and companionship in what they perceived to be a hostile and alien environment.
Keywords: tourist interactions, sociability, anxiety, Australian Outback
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management
I wouldn’t have said before (that I travel because of the chance it gives me to meet people), but I would say that now. (Female, travelling with husband)
Touring is conventionally understood to be motivated by a desire to escape ‘normal’ life (Rojek, 1993). However research has shown that this desire to escape is often coupled with the retention of selected routines and elements of everyday life while away (McCabe, 2002). These routines encompass work, domesticity, leisure, and maintaining social relations. For tourists, maintaining relations with friends or family back home constitutes one aspect of the preservation of the familiar and everyday while away (White & White, 2007). There are also the relationships forged with people encountered while touring: those who are part of the tourism industry, the host population and most significantly for the present paper, other tourists (Wearing & Wearing 1996). The impulse to sociability or association has been shown to be integral to the experience of travel and a motivating reason for touring (Sutton, 1967). Research on backpackers has shown that anticipated opportunities for social interaction with other travellers are an important factor in choosing to backpack (Murphy, 2001; McCabe, 2002; Richards and Wilson, 2004). Interactions with others serve a range of
Correspondence Associate Professor Naomi White, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Caulfield Campus, Monash University, Caulfield East VIC 3145, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
functions. Tourists are exposed to the unfamiliar. Social encounters provide the opportunity to gain information about and to affirm congruent understandings of shared occupation of distant social and cultural landscapes (Harrison, 2003; Wang, 1999; Stokowski, 1992). Association is therefore integral to the process of giving meaning to the travel experience. Blumer (1963) argued we are constantly engaged in the process of piecing together information and interpreting its significance for prospective action. Acting and selfindication — taking an element and giving it meaning — always take place in a social context. Through interactions we develop and acquire common understandings or definitions that guide our actions. Where no common definition of situation exists, as in the circumstances in which tourists find themselves, interpretations have to be developed and rules of interaction devised. These interpretations can serve as strategies to cope with the anxieties associated with travellers’ roles as ‘temporary strangers’ in unfamiliar environments (Simmel, 1950; Greenblat & Gagnon, 1983). Social interactions with significant others, significant reference groups, and the generalised other in the form of cultural values are also integral to the process of negotiating a tourist identity (Moore, 2002; Wearing & Wearing, 2001). From this perspective, the tourist experience is produced by tourists through the interactions that tourists have with each other (Pons, 2003) and to a lesser extent, with the host population (Wearing & Wearing, 1996). Interactions between tourists occur in locales in the public realm. Locales are nonprivate spaces such as
42 White, N.R., & White, P.B. (2008). Travel as interaction: Encountering place and others. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 15, 42–48. DOI 10.1375/jhtm.15.42
Travel as Interaction
airport terminals, caravan parks, roadside stops or tourist sites. The occupants of these locales are likely to be dissimilar, strangers, or if known to one another, to be known categorically (i.e., ‘fellow tourists’) rather than personally and individually (Strauss, 1961). Two interrelated elements emerge for consideration with respect to interaction in locales. First, there are the relationships between people who inhabit these locales. Second, these locales are themselves embedded in the larger context of a landscape that is imbued with meaning. Therefore, how locales are experienced in relation to the broader landscape and the ways these locales and landscapes frame tourists’ interactions become relevant objects of study. Relations between inhabitants of locales have been conventionally described as fleeting, formal and displaying only limited segments of the self, as in secondary relationships These relations stand in contrast to the sharing of personal, biographical, idiosyncratic and often emotional aspects of the self integral to primary relationships (Lofland, 1989). However, the daily living arrangements for some tourists are such that interactions take place in shared spaces that are simultaneously public and intimate. Examples include shared ablution blocks, the close proximity engendered by sleeping and living in caravans, recreational vehicles and tents, public meal preparation and a shared sense of being out of one’s normal space. Lofland (1989) has called these particular kinds of relationships ‘unpersonal bounded relationships’. She writes, I use the term ‘unpersonal’ rather than impersonal to describe a relationship that is simultaneously characterised both by social distance and by closeness. Persons in these relationships may share little, if any, intimate information about themselves (they may not know each others’ names, for example) of if they share such information, they do so with the understanding that no relational intimacy is implied. At the same time, the relationship is experienced as ‘friendly’ or sociable’ — its emotional temperature as being ‘warm’, I use the term bounded to convey the restriction of the relationship to public space. (p. 469)
For Lofland (1989), these unpersonal/bounded relationships, by definition, do not ‘leak over’ into the private realms. Lofland’s approach is echoed in what Simmel (1950) describes as relationships free of the obligation of ongoing attachment. Simmel writes about sociability, which Berlant (1998) argues entails ‘an aspiration for a narrative about something shared’. Sociability, argues Simmel (1950, p. 45) consists of an engagement with others that has ‘no objective purpose, no content, no extrinsic results’ other than the success of the particular interaction, and relies on tact and on the personalities among whom it occurs. Sociable conversation is characterised by quick changes of topic: the topic is simply a means. It can include the telling of stories, anecdotes, and jokes that keep the conversation away from individual intimacy and personal elements that cannot be adapted to sociable requirements. The social standing or status of the participants in these interchanges is irrelevant. Reference to or inclusion of these status markers is ‘tactless’ because it ‘intrudes on and militates against interaction’ (Simmel, 1950, p. 46). Sociability thus calls for the purest, most transparent and most casually appealing kind of interaction, that (is)
among equals) (author’s emphasis) … Each … must gain for himself sociability values only if the others with whom he interacts will gain them ... (Simmel, 1950:49) The present study takes up this issue to examine touring in relation to ‘encounters’ or interactions between tourists in the Australian Outback. Tourists are viewed as active agents, ‘gathering and negotiating the world they encounter’ (Crouch and Desforges, 2003:10), engaging in the ‘micro level production’ of their experiences (Moore, 2002; 53). The focus is on how social life is achieved, established and maintained (McCabe, 2002:63), specifically the meaning of inter-tourist social interactions in the remote regions of Australia. In addition the ways in which perceptions of the landscape frame these interactions are also considered. This is important given the particularities of the Australian landscapes and the mythical status of the Outback in the Australian imagination as a harsh and unforgiving land — a site of ‘weird melancholy’ (Rickard, 1996). As consequence, this landscape provides a distinctive context for the social interactions examined.
Method The role of social interaction in the active construction of self as tourist and the tourist experience draws attention to how tourists self-identify social worlds in which they participate while touring (Unruh, 1980; White & White, 2007). ‘To catch the process, the student must take the role of the acting unit whose behaviour s/he is studying … the process has to be seen from the standpoint of the acting unit’ (Blumer, 1963, pp. 186–187). To enable the realisation of this approach, the researchers were themselves travelling in the Outback and living in campgrounds and caravan parks while conducting the research. The study drew on a purposive sample of independent tourists (Baker, 1999). Participants were screened for inclusion in the study if they were urban dwelling Australian residents who were travelling independently in the Outback. Therefore, the travels of those included in the study were not mediated by the tourist industry: that is, hotel staff, tour guides, restaurants. Rather the ‘intermediaries’ were principally fellow travellers. Furthermore, participants were screened with respect to the duration of their travels, inclusion requiring a minimum travel time of 2 months. The travel duration of the participants varied, with the shortest travel duration being 2 months. However, most of the interviewees were engaged in longterm travel for periods of between 4 months and 4 years. Therefore, they comprised a group different from shortterm tourists who might travel to a known destination for a week or two, stay at a hotel and then return to their places of origin. Twenty people were interviewed, eight men and twelve women. All were travelling with spouses, four were travelling with friends and none were travelling alone. The interviewees ranged in age from 34 to 74. The sample therefore excluded the young adult tourist group. Respondents were interviewed using a semistructured interview schedule that covered topics including choice of the Outback as the site for travel, views about the desirability of isolation versus companionship and their patterns of interaction with others while travelling. The Volume 15 2008
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interviews were transcribed and then thematically coded with respect to regularly articulated points of view. The analysis was conducted with a view to taking advantage of the value of qualitative methods in moving beyond precoded categories and distinctions between the ‘subject/object’ allowing the researcher to capture the tourist’s constructions of his or her experiences (Wearing & Wearing, 1996) The ‘trustworthiness’ of the data and its interpretation was ensured as far as is possible through implementation of several of the processes described by Lincoln and Guba (1985) and elaborated by Creswell (1998). The researchers were touring in similar circumstances to the interviewees. This shared situation made it possible for prolonged engagement with and observation of interviewees. It also meant that recruitment could occur after one or more conversations. Establishment of pre-interview rapport and trust between researcher and interviewee were facilitated by this knowledge of a common situation (Finlay, 2003; Graburn, 2002). While the post data collection thematic coding process incorporated negative case analysis through the noting of distinctive points of view as contrasting instances, the ‘credibility’ or truth value (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) of the potential range of findings was explored during post-interview debriefing of interviewees. Finally, peer debriefing (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) to encourage reflexive examination of both data collection and interpretation occurred by means of discussions between the co-researchers at different stages of the research process.
Findings Interacting With the Environment The experience of ongoing immersion in the natural (as opposed to the made) landscape was a significant motif in the interviewees’ accounts of their time in the Outback. For most of the people interviewed, the chance to experience the landscape by walking, driving or simply being in and observing it was the principal motivation for undertaking their trips. They wanted to experience it first hand. Moreover, the particularities of the Australian Outback cultural and physical landscape were integral to their responses. Wearing and Wearing (1996) argue for a conceptualisation of space that incorporates its subjective meaning and state that this meaning is integral to the ‘socially constructed self that comes with and goes home with the tourist’ (Wearing & Wearing, 1996, p. 230). This connection between landscape and self was suggested by tourists’ accounts of sitting as quiet observers of the natural environment, accounts that were permeated by a deeply felt emotion and sense of connection. All of a sudden the dirt changes colour. Desert, bush, the red centre. … The Outback is when you can see the stars on the horizon from there to there. Big sky country. (Female, 46, travelling with husband) We watched the lilies and the crocodiles. Forty pelicans circulated above us one morning, above the wetlands, looking for a place to land. And the kites had obviously decided this was their wetlands and so they went up in a group like little fighter planes against the bombers. … We sat there for three-quarters of an hour. It’s something we are very, very lucky to see. (Male, 74, travelling with wife)
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The preference was to enjoy these sights while being relatively isolated from fellow tourists, but still in the company of a travelling partner. ‘Discovering’ and being in these sites without unknown others present, heightened the experience. When asked about what a good day would be, every person interviewed referred to the beauty of the landscape, hiking through it, observing the native animals in their natural habitat, lying on a beach or in the bush watching the stars or sitting quietly observing water-lilies opening to the sun. These views were expressed despite the considerable inconvenience of mosquitoes, flies crawling tenaciously and persistently into eyes and nostrils, red dust infiltrating every crevice and fibre, oppressive heat and challenging terrain. However, the positive responses to engagement with the landscape and natural environment were matched by the expression of views that signalled an anxiety arising from a keen awareness of being in surroundings that were unfamiliar. This anxiety has been described by some writers as ‘culture shock’ (Suvantola, 2002). While essentially social, it can also be applied to people’s responses to an unfamiliar natural environment. The anxiety engendered by travel per se and the challenges it poses to habitual and preferred ways of managing in daily life was articulated in different ways by interviewees, and more frequently by the older people interviewed. Sometimes anxiety was expressed in relation to severed daily social supports and relationships, or through reference to the struggle to maintain familiar domestic routines in the face of conditions that militated against their success. The family went and here we were just the two of us. We have been alone at home for many years. But the family were always just down the road. I’m a homebody. I love cleaning and housework. I’ve learned no matter how a dusty the caravan gets inside it doesn’t matter. … When we get to what I call civilisation it will all clean off. [In coming on this trip] all of my security went. So that’s been a big change for me. It’s only now six months on that I’m beginning to enjoy it. I can look around now and see beauty that I couldn’t at first. And being dirty and the dust — it’s part of it. (Female, 59, travelling with husband)
The impact of the loss of one’s work-related identity while travelling was also mentioned. You lose your identity [in the city], because you are your job. Who are you? [And as well] you are not anything [when you are on the road]. It takes a while to adjust. (Female, 59, travelling with husband)
This same interviewee also spoke about how the free-floating aspect of long-term travel was difficult to reconcile with preferred and habitual ways of dealing with daily life. I’m a planner. That’s actually one of the things I find difficult about this lifestyle. I like to know where I’m going to be, what I’m going to be doing in 6 months time. The week-to-week thing isn’t easy for me. (Female, 59, travelling with husband)
A vaguer, more generalised anxiety was woven through the interviewees’ accounts of their responses to the landscape. Most interviewees came from densely populated urban or rural agricultural settings where human needs and use have transformed and domesticated the landscape. These were very different from the Outback with its long distances, sparse population and isolation.
Travel as Interaction I found the vastness intimidating. ... I knew it was big, but I never expected it to be as big as what it is. It’s huge. There’s nothing there. It is so vast this Outback. I was brought up in the city. But here it’s very different. … There’ll be a paddock and two trees on it and then in another there’s a termite mound. … It’s been different, really different for me. It’s fear of the unknown. (Female, 60, travelling with husband) We stayed in a free [unofficial] camping area one night. I spent the night locked into the car. I didn’t feel safe. We couldn’t find anywhere to stay so we had to keep driving in the dark until we found somewhere to pull off the road. My husband wanted to put the trailer up but I said no, I’ll stay in the car. (Female, 54, travelling with husband and friends)
Greenblat and Gagnon (1983) have described the ‘unfamiliar’ as having four dimensions. These are first, the range and number of unfamiliar cultural elements, second, the patterning of what appears to be familiar and unfamiliar and third, the rate at which decisions must be made in any cultural context. Finally, there is the degree to which correct and incorrect pathways through the travel environment have been anticipated or shaped by the existence of preformed versions of that environment. For the travellers in the Outback, the unfamiliar physical (rather than cultural) elements and travel through them were highly significant and the source of considerable anxiety. The distinctive characteristics of the largely unpopulated, stark, sometimes harsh Australian Outback and the variable quality of the roads meant that these anxieties were frequently close to the surface. Isolation meant distance from medical help. Getting sick when in a remote site was a concern, particularly for the retirees, some of whom suffered from chronic illness. Younger parents were concerned about their children, and some women were concerned about their often older husbands or partners. For instance, a few of the women, both younger and older, expressed concern about how they might cope should their male partner become temporarily unable to continue with the more physically demanding tasks associated with this kind of travel, such as setting up camp, making running repairs to cars and caravans or the 4W-driving required. Concerns about isolation and remoteness were tempered by the fact that a day would seldom pass without at least one other car passing on the road, and the adoption of precautionary measures such as travelling with at least a week’s supply of water and food. Some tourists were equipped with handheld UHF radios with limited range, mobile phones with intermittent coverage or satellite phones. The interaction afforded by these devices was an important aspect of travelling (White & White, 2007). These measures and careful planning helped to allay concerns. Another means of dealing with these unfamiliar circumstances was to turn the caravan into a substitute home by furnishing it in ways that replicated home comforts: lace curtains, cushions, television sets and layouts that separated sleeping and ‘living’ areas. The most significant fear was of vehicle breakdown in a remote isolated spot. Some interviewees had actually experienced vehicle trouble, and had found the experience disconcerting. The road and the potential dangers posed by its condition were constant topics of conversation, given ritual form through protracted and frequent discussions of the appropriate tyre pressures to deal with rough
conditions. Decisions about whether to visit sites such as the Mitchell Plateau or Kalumbaru in the Northern Territory were made not with reference to the intrinsic interest of these sites, but in relation to the difficulty of the drive. At the extreme, some tourists privileged road conditions over the characteristics of the sites to be visited. For instance, the only comment made by one tourist about his visit to Arkaroola in South Australia was ‘It’s a good run’. The incessant conversations about the road and tyres could be interpreted in different ways. One is that these conversations were routinised travel chatter, a way of entering a conversion, obtaining information and exchanging tips, or even as status-constructing conversations. However, the frequency and predictable form of these conversations suggests another important function beyond the manifest purpose of obtaining information: namely, that ‘the road’ had both literal and metaphorical meanings, some of which were conflicting. In other words, it represented both safety and threat. It was marked, mapped and named, thereby simultaneously separating travellers from the unknown while at the same time leading to it. The road also served as a boundary, physical and social. One tourist interviewed in a site only able to be accessed by a difficult unmade track objected to plans to reconstruct it, because ‘fixing the road will change the kind of people’ who visit. The road screens the kinds of people who can use it, ensuring that access is limited to those prepared to endure risk and hardship, Therefore, in addition to the manifest functions of these conversations about ‘the road’, their replaying suggests their role as an anxiety management strategy engendered by distance and isolation. The interactions enabled tourists to indirectly express feelings about, and to explore congruent understandings of occupation of the social and cultural landscape of Outback Australia. These interactions also brought to light what J.B. Jackson called the ‘vernacular landscape’, by which he meant a landscape that is enlivened by mobility and change, and which is made through talk and action (Bonyhady & Griffiths, 2002:8)
Interacting With Others Even though other research has suggested that even just one travel companion can reduce the need to make other contacts (Suvantola 2002), the interviews conducted for this study showed that interaction with others beyond the travelling dyad played an important role in enabling tourists to manage the challenges of travelling in the Outback. Their accounts made clear the press to the social — the desire to be the presence of others who were in the same situation as themselves.
Meeting the Locals? The interviewees understood that getting to know the ‘real’ Outback required interaction with the locals: both white and Indigenous. This knowledge of Aboriginal Australian, Outback station and small town culture was seen to require extended stays rather than the brief exposure that characterises most tourist contact. As one interviewee said, ‘You don’t experience anything driving along a dirt Volume 15 2008
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road’ (Male, 54, travelling with wife). The resident population was a valued source of local knowledge. When conversations occurred, they were mostly with the non-Indigenous population, and rarely, but on occasion with Aborigines. We went on one of these cruises of the Ord River out of Kunanurra. The skipper was explaining to us that there are four tribes living around the town and there is intertribal rivalry. So when you hear them yelling at each other in the street in the middle of the day and you think ‘That’s a bit confronting’, you understand that that’s going on as well. (Male, 48, travelling with wife)
Although some locals could be accessed via the tourist industry, shops and working on Outback stations, these contacts were not easily made. Many of the people employed in the tourist industry were people who came to the Outback for the 2 or 3 months of the peak tourist season. Therefore, they had limited understanding of the social and natural settings in which they worked. The resident population was perceived to have little interest in other than functional interactions or tips about sights in the area or directions, and most conversations were ‘front-stage’ role-based conversations (Goffman, 2005). We’re transients as far as a lot of the local people are concerned. They just want to see us out of here so that they can get on with their normal lives. (Female, 60, travelling with husband)
As a consequence, tourists felt that they had little contact with the host population. The most informative and extended conversations were with tourists’ acquaintances or friends who were living in a remote area or Outback town or who had worked in remote Aboriginal communities. In all cases there was the satisfaction of having had interactions that did not have a purely commercial basis and as one interviewee put it, these conversations led him to feel like ‘a traveller rather than a tourist’.
Conversing With Fellow Tourists Despite their expressed wish to interact with the locals, for the most part tourists travelled ‘in a world of their own, surrounded by, but not integrated into the host society’ (Cohen, 1972). Although they met people from the tourist industry, they met in role rather than as individuals. When sociability was possible, it occurred mainly between tourists. Initiation of and engagement in social interactions between tourists was gendered and for some entailed a role reversal. When I go on a holiday is my time away from people. … At home I’m very sociable and my husband is fairly quiet. When we’re travelling he’s the social one and the organiser. I’m the organiser at home. (Female, 48, travelling with husband)
The women interviewed tended to get into conversations over domestic tasks, such as while washing clothes in the laundry or washing dishes in the communal kitchen areas. Many of the women interviewed spoke about travel offering respite from social engagement and the social responsibilities they felt they carried in their daily lives at home. The men were generally more socially proactive, and campground approaches were most often made by them. For the men, the campground offered the possibility of sociability that was bounded, transitory, nonintimate, 46
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brief, and focused on functional issues, rather than engendering relationships requiring maintenance and nurturing. These social interactions between tourists were ritualised both in form and content. Greetings and ensuing conversations were formulaic, consisting of ‘Where have you been? Where are you going? and Where should we visit?’ Some expressed frustration with these conversations. However, despite the scepticism with which fellow tourists’ advice and suggestions were regarded, and despite protestations expressing distaste, and occasional derision of these types of conversations, most of the people interviewed repeatedly engaged in them. They were valued because they enabled contact with people from diverse backgrounds and because they affirmed a sense of shared circumstance: namely that of travelling in the Outback. You meet people that you wouldn’t normally talk to or you wouldn’t hear about that opinion because you don’t normally associate with that type of person. So that’s what’s good about travelling. … There’s been a big shift in our attitudes and opinions. (Female, 46, travelling with husband and another couple) People are more open on the road. If you went down to your local shopping centre in Perth you’re not just going to stop somebody in the middle of a shopping centre to say ‘What have you been buying today?’ They’re going to think you’re a freak. But up here you can say ‘What have you been up to?’ and they’ll tell you. And you’ll stop for 20 minutes and have a conversation with a total stranger. Share things. (Male, 36, travelling with wife) It’s great having a yarn with someone. … It’s very easy to meet people when you travel, because people are doing the same thing. (Female, 47, travelling with husband and friends)
The social engagement afforded by these conversations was valued for the ease with which it could be initiated. As such, it clearly exemplified what Simmel (1950:58) referred to as sociability: interactions in which the topic is simply the means for transitory social engagement with others whose social standing or status was irrelevant. Although status is a nuanced entity encompassing factors such as travel experience, type of travel set-up (including GPS devices, satellite phones, types of vehicle, and so on) these were marginal to the conversation rituals reported. The topics of conversation illustrated Simmel’s analysis in another respect: namely, conversations usually involved the telling of stories, sharing anecdotes and jokes and steered away from individual intimacy and purely personal concerns. While the manifest purpose and content of these conversations was travel-related advice, these conversations also served to manage ‘culture shock’ or anxiety. Although ritualised impersonality was the norm, there were occasions when this convention was breached. Sociability and the anonymity of transient relations offered the possibility of disclosure of personal information normally regarded as private. Some tourists described how they took the opportunity to reveal aspects of themselves that they would withhold in their established friendship and family networks. You can share things about yourself that you would normally keep pretty much to yourself. … Because you’re in a completely different place, and you’re relaxed and you start talking and before you know each you’re spitting out quite personal details. (Female, 34, travelling with husband)
Travel as Interaction Some people you meet, in 5 minutes you know their family history, their financial position, where they’ve been, and who their friends and enemies are. ... We’re not like that; we are private in that respect. (Male, 50, travelling with wife.)
Simmel, in his account of the stranger, alludes to these ‘confidences which sometimes have the character of a confessional and which would be carefully withheld from a more closely related person’ (Simmel, 1950: 404). That is, anonymity allowed for various connections, the most common being a bounded sociability, but also, on occasion, a transitory intimacy. Previous research has shown that interactions between tourists give rise to friendships, be they impermanent or enduring and that they offer intimacy and closeness in unfamiliar settings and in circumstances of separation from family and friends (Harrison 2003). While the present study has documented the occurrence of transitory relationships that may involve disclosure of personal information, these relationships more closely approximated ‘unpersonal bounded relationships’ (Lofland, 1989) than meetings giving rise to continuing friendships.
the presence of others revealed that they very rarely stayed on their own in the bush. ‘Isolation’ was considered to be camping grounds in National Parks. Most people interviewed stayed in caravan parks. In these parks, the physical layout is such that caravans are lined up in rows mimicking the proximity and regularity of suburban streetscapes. The difference though is that there are no fences or high walls, and no drive-in garages with automatic doors that protect residents from having contact with others in the neighbourhood street. In contrast to the average suburban street, campgrounds offer the possibility of chit-chat functionally equivalent to the neighbourly chat over the fence. As argued by Harrison (2003) and Wang (2002), these interactions enable reaffirmation of a sense of individual humanity and existential authenticity that moves beyond the physical imperatives of finding shelter and food. They also allowed the tourists to simultaneously appreciate the exotic, novel properties of the Outback setting from a position of security and comfort of familiarity (Suvantola, 2002).
Concluding Remarks
The Significance of the ‘Mere Presence’ of Others One response to the insecurity of leaving home ground for a landscape that is unknown and perceived as slightly threatening is to travel ‘within the tourist space’, with its backup of familiar elements (Suvantola, 2002, p. 200). ‘The tourist space is the metaworld that allows the escape from the confusion’ (Suvantola, 2002, p. 201). While the confined conditions, enforced proximity and recurrent encounters in caravan parks could on occasion be experienced as oppressive, particularly when people were seen to be ‘too different’ or intrusive, the pull of the presence of others was evident even for those interviewees who stated that their primary motive was not to meet other people and who said they found the constant presence of other tourists disappointing and an impediment to their enjoyment. Most people travelling through the Outback were with a partner, companion, or in nuclear family units; however, this companionship was not enough. All the tourists interviewed spoke about the need for the presence of additional others. While there were variations in preference with respect to how frequently the company of others beyond their travelling companions was desired, and also variations in preferences regarding the scale and intensity of interactions with this company, the interviewees’ showed a clear desire for the comfort of strangers. The presence of anonymous others provided a sense of physical and psychological security. In some ways it’s comforting to have people around, but far enough away that you have your own space. (Female, 60 travelling with husband) I prefer to be where there are other tourists. I don’t want to be on my own. I don’t like a million people around but I do want somebody around, even if we don’t speak to them. (Female, 60, travelling with husband)
The pleasure of being able to move between partnered isolation and having one’s own space on the one hand, and the sociability of fellow tourists on the other was mentioned. When questioned further, the interviewees who enjoyed the movement between relative isolation and
Putting oneself in the presence of others, with its attendant social interactions and conversations, was found to be a potent way of dealing with the anxieties associated with the terrain and the circumstances in which tourists found themselves. These interactions were with travel partners, with fellow tourists, tourist industry personnel and, where possible, local residents in the various sites visited. The meaning and significance of these interactions was filtered through the prism of the tourists’ occupation of a physically demanding, threatening and culturally unfamiliar landscape, and overlaid by the mythological status of the Outback in the Australian imagination. The interviewees’ responses suggested that the landscape framed their interactions with others. The distinctive characteristics of the Australian Outback’s topography were integral to how the people interviewed responded to touring through this part of the country. In addition to appreciation of the landscape’s beauty, a recurring response to it was anxiety arising from being in surroundings that were unfamiliar and seen as threatening. Social interactions played a role in the management of this anxiety. Highly ritualised, repeated conversations that enabled expression and exploration of these anxieties were a common feature of life on the road. The transitory relationships that were forged during these encounters served to provide information, but more significantly given the unfamiliar settings, offered companionship and resources that allowed tourists to create and share meaningful experiences (Stokowski, 1992). The importance, persistence, and prevalence of interactions between tourists in particular suggested the detached sociability described by Simmel (1950) and the ‘unpersonal bounded relationships’ described by Lofland (1989). That is, the interactions between tourists consisted of an engagement with others through information exchange, but this manifest exchange function was to some extent extrinsic to the interaction. In other words, the ‘success’ of the particular interaction was not measured by its utility. Volume 15 2008
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The conversation topics were the means rather than the ends of interactions between tourists, whose social standing or status in these interchanges was largely irrelevant. The interactions with locals or people from the tourist industry were slightly different. There, information gathering was of greater significance. However, all these relationships were simultaneously characterised both by social distance and by friendliness, ‘warmth’, and closeness with no implication of relational intimacy, even when personal information was divulged, and were usually forged and enacted in public spaces. The press to sociability (Simmel, 1950) and the establishment of the ‘unpersonal bounded relationships’ described by Lofland (1989 ) was evident in people’s accounts of their travel experiences. That is, tourists were keen to be in the company of others, but in encounters or relationships free of the obligation of ongoing attachment, without specific function, content or outcome. These tourists shared information about places to visit, routes to take, accommodation to avoid (or seek out), foods to try, precautions to be taken or sights not to miss. Their interactions offered companionship and opportunities to have conversations about what they had seen, done, experienced, and felt about it all (Harrison, 2003). The enriched understanding of the social and physical environment arising from conversations with the local white and indigenous populations was also mentioned, despite the former’s infrequency and the latter’s inaccessibility. The issue of reflexivity would provide fertile ground for further research, as would alternative physical layouts for camping grounds and caravan parks, small town initiatives to encourage tourist–local interaction and links between tourists to bolster the benefits offered by the comfort of strangers.
References Baker, T.L. (1999). Doing social research (3rd ed.). San Francisco: McGraw-Hill. Berlant, L. (1998). Intimacy: A special issue, Critical Inquiry, 24, 281–288. Blumer, H. (1963). Society as symbolic interaction. In A. Rose (Ed.), Human behaviour and social processes: An interactionist approach (pp. 179–192). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Bonyhady, T. & Griffiths, T. (2002). Landscape and language. In T. Bonyhady & T. Griffiths (Eds.), Words for country: Landscape and language in Australia (pp. 1–13). Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales Press.
Goffman, E. (2005). Interaction Ritual: Essays on face-to-face behaviour. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick. Graburn, N. (2002). The ethnographic tourist. In G. Dann (Ed.), The tourist as a metaphor for the social world (pp. 19–39). Wallingford, England: CABI International. Greenblat, C.S., & Gagnon, J.H. (1983). Temporary strangers: Travel and tourism from a sociological perspective, Sociological Perspectives, 26, 89–110. Harrison, J. (2003). Being a tourist: Finding meaning in pleasure travel. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Hennig, C. (2002). Tourism: Enacting modern myths. In G. Dann (Ed.), The tourist as a metaphor for the social world (pp. 169–187). Wallingford, England: CABI International. Lincoln, Y.S., & Guba, E.G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Lofland, L. (1989). Social life in the public realm. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 14, 453–482. McCabe, S. (2002). The tourist experience and everyday life. In G. Dann (Ed.), The tourist as a metaphor for the social world (pp. 61–75). Wallingford, England: CABI International. Moore, K. (2002). The discursive tourist. In G. Dann (Ed.), The tourist as a metaphor for the social world (pp. 41–59). Wallingford, England: CABI International. Murphy, L. (2001). Exploring social interactions of backpackers, Annals of Tourism Research, 28, 50–67. Pons, P.A. (2003). Being-on-holiday: Tourist dwelling, bodies and place, Tourist Studies, 3, 47–66. Richards, G., & Wilson, J. (2004). The global nomad: Motivations and behaviour of independent travellers worldwide. In G. Richards & J. Wilson (Eds,), The global nomad: Backpacker travel in theory and practice (pp. 14–42). Clevedon, England: Channel View. Rickard, J. (1996). Australia: A cultural history (2nd ed.). London: Longman. Rojek, C. (1993). Ways of escape: Modern transformations in leisure and travel, London: Macmillan. Simmel, G. (1950). Sociability. In K.H. Wolff (Ed.), The sociology of Georg Simmel (pp. 40–57), New York: Free Press. Stokowski, P. (1992). Social networks and tourist behaviour. American Behavioural Scientist, 36, 212–221. Strauss, A. (1961). Images of the American city. New York: Free Press. Sutton, W.A. (1967). Travel and understanding. International journal of comparative sociology, 8, 218–223. Unruh, D. (1980). The social organization of older people: A social world perspective. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 3, 147–170. Wang, N. (1999). Rethinking authenticity. Annals of Tourism Research, 26, 349–370. Wearing, B., & Wearing, S. (1996). Refocussing the tourist experience: The Flâneur and the chorister, Leisure Studies, 15, 229–243.
Cohen, E. (1972). Towards a sociology of international tourism, Social Research, 39, 164–182.
Wearing, S., & Wearing, B. (2001). Conceptualizing the selves of tourism. Leisure Studies, 20, 143–159.
Cresswell, J.W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
White, N.R., & White, P.B. (2007). Home and away: Tourists in a connected world, Annals of Tourism Research, 34, 88–104.
Crouch, D., & Desforges, L. (2003). The sensuous in the tourist encounter, Tourist Studies, 3, pp. 5–22.
White, P.B., & White, N.R. (2007). Staying safe and guilty pleasures: Tourists and CB radio in the Australian outback. M/C: A Journal of media and culture, 10, ??–??.
Dann, G. (2002). The tourist as a metaphor for the social world. In G. Dann (Ed.), The tourist as a metaphor for the social world (pp. 1–59). Wallingford, England: CABI International.
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Finlay, L. (2003). The reflexive journey: Mapping multiple realities. In L. Finlay & B. Gough, (Eds.), Reflexivity: A practical guide for researchers in the health and social sciences. (pp. 1–20). Oxford: Blackwell.
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management
Wolff, K. (Trans.). (1950) The sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press.
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management
Travel as Interaction: Encountering Place and Others
Naomi Rosh White
This article examines ‘encounters’, or interactions between tourists. The focus is on how social life is
Monash University, Australia
established and maintained, specifically the meaning of inter-tourist social interactions in the remote regions
Peter B. White LaTrobe University, Australia
of Australia. The ways in which perceptions of the landscape frame these interactions are also considered. The meaning and significance of these interactions was found to be filtered through the prism of the tourists’ occupation of a physically demanding, sometimes threatening and culturally unfamiliar landscape. Because of the rigours of the travel environment, tourists were keen to be in the company of others, but in encounters or relationships free of the obligation of ongoing attachment, without specific function, content or outcome. Their interactions with other tourists and the local populations enriched their understanding of the social and physical environment. Those interactions offered comfort and companionship in what they perceived to be a hostile and alien environment.
Keywords: tourist interactions, sociability, anxiety, Australian Outback
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management
I wouldn’t have said before (that I travel because of the chance it gives me to meet people), but I would say that now. (Female, travelling with husband)
Touring is conventionally understood to be motivated by a desire to escape ‘normal’ life (Rojek, 1993). However research has shown that this desire to escape is often coupled with the retention of selected routines and elements of everyday life while away (McCabe, 2002). These routines encompass work, domesticity, leisure, and maintaining social relations. For tourists, maintaining relations with friends or family back home constitutes one aspect of the preservation of the familiar and everyday while away (White & White, 2007). There are also the relationships forged with people encountered while touring: those who are part of the tourism industry, the host population and most significantly for the present paper, other tourists (Wearing & Wearing 1996). The impulse to sociability or association has been shown to be integral to the experience of travel and a motivating reason for touring (Sutton, 1967). Research on backpackers has shown that anticipated opportunities for social interaction with other travellers are an important factor in choosing to backpack (Murphy, 2001; McCabe, 2002; Richards and Wilson, 2004). Interactions with others serve a range of
Correspondence Associate Professor Naomi White, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Caulfield Campus, Monash University, Caulfield East VIC 3145, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
functions. Tourists are exposed to the unfamiliar. Social encounters provide the opportunity to gain information about and to affirm congruent understandings of shared occupation of distant social and cultural landscapes (Harrison, 2003; Wang, 1999; Stokowski, 1992). Association is therefore integral to the process of giving meaning to the travel experience. Blumer (1963) argued we are constantly engaged in the process of piecing together information and interpreting its significance for prospective action. Acting and selfindication — taking an element and giving it meaning — always take place in a social context. Through interactions we develop and acquire common understandings or definitions that guide our actions. Where no common definition of situation exists, as in the circumstances in which tourists find themselves, interpretations have to be developed and rules of interaction devised. These interpretations can serve as strategies to cope with the anxieties associated with travellers’ roles as ‘temporary strangers’ in unfamiliar environments (Simmel, 1950; Greenblat & Gagnon, 1983). Social interactions with significant others, significant reference groups, and the generalised other in the form of cultural values are also integral to the process of negotiating a tourist identity (Moore, 2002; Wearing & Wearing, 2001). From this perspective, the tourist experience is produced by tourists through the interactions that tourists have with each other (Pons, 2003) and to a lesser extent, with the host population (Wearing & Wearing, 1996). Interactions between tourists occur in locales in the public realm. Locales are nonprivate spaces such as
42 White, N.R., & White, P.B. (2008). Travel as interaction: Encountering place and others. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 15, 42–48. DOI 10.1375/jhtm.15.42
Travel as Interaction
airport terminals, caravan parks, roadside stops or tourist sites. The occupants of these locales are likely to be dissimilar, strangers, or if known to one another, to be known categorically (i.e., ‘fellow tourists’) rather than personally and individually (Strauss, 1961). Two interrelated elements emerge for consideration with respect to interaction in locales. First, there are the relationships between people who inhabit these locales. Second, these locales are themselves embedded in the larger context of a landscape that is imbued with meaning. Therefore, how locales are experienced in relation to the broader landscape and the ways these locales and landscapes frame tourists’ interactions become relevant objects of study. Relations between inhabitants of locales have been conventionally described as fleeting, formal and displaying only limited segments of the self, as in secondary relationships These relations stand in contrast to the sharing of personal, biographical, idiosyncratic and often emotional aspects of the self integral to primary relationships (Lofland, 1989). However, the daily living arrangements for some tourists are such that interactions take place in shared spaces that are simultaneously public and intimate. Examples include shared ablution blocks, the close proximity engendered by sleeping and living in caravans, recreational vehicles and tents, public meal preparation and a shared sense of being out of one’s normal space. Lofland (1989) has called these particular kinds of relationships ‘unpersonal bounded relationships’. She writes, I use the term ‘unpersonal’ rather than impersonal to describe a relationship that is simultaneously characterised both by social distance and by closeness. Persons in these relationships may share little, if any, intimate information about themselves (they may not know each others’ names, for example) of if they share such information, they do so with the understanding that no relational intimacy is implied. At the same time, the relationship is experienced as ‘friendly’ or sociable’ — its emotional temperature as being ‘warm’, I use the term bounded to convey the restriction of the relationship to public space. (p. 469)
For Lofland (1989), these unpersonal/bounded relationships, by definition, do not ‘leak over’ into the private realms. Lofland’s approach is echoed in what Simmel (1950) describes as relationships free of the obligation of ongoing attachment. Simmel writes about sociability, which Berlant (1998) argues entails ‘an aspiration for a narrative about something shared’. Sociability, argues Simmel (1950, p. 45) consists of an engagement with others that has ‘no objective purpose, no content, no extrinsic results’ other than the success of the particular interaction, and relies on tact and on the personalities among whom it occurs. Sociable conversation is characterised by quick changes of topic: the topic is simply a means. It can include the telling of stories, anecdotes, and jokes that keep the conversation away from individual intimacy and personal elements that cannot be adapted to sociable requirements. The social standing or status of the participants in these interchanges is irrelevant. Reference to or inclusion of these status markers is ‘tactless’ because it ‘intrudes on and militates against interaction’ (Simmel, 1950, p. 46). Sociability thus calls for the purest, most transparent and most casually appealing kind of interaction, that (is)
among equals) (author’s emphasis) … Each … must gain for himself sociability values only if the others with whom he interacts will gain them ... (Simmel, 1950:49) The present study takes up this issue to examine touring in relation to ‘encounters’ or interactions between tourists in the Australian Outback. Tourists are viewed as active agents, ‘gathering and negotiating the world they encounter’ (Crouch and Desforges, 2003:10), engaging in the ‘micro level production’ of their experiences (Moore, 2002; 53). The focus is on how social life is achieved, established and maintained (McCabe, 2002:63), specifically the meaning of inter-tourist social interactions in the remote regions of Australia. In addition the ways in which perceptions of the landscape frame these interactions are also considered. This is important given the particularities of the Australian landscapes and the mythical status of the Outback in the Australian imagination as a harsh and unforgiving land — a site of ‘weird melancholy’ (Rickard, 1996). As consequence, this landscape provides a distinctive context for the social interactions examined.
Method The role of social interaction in the active construction of self as tourist and the tourist experience draws attention to how tourists self-identify social worlds in which they participate while touring (Unruh, 1980; White & White, 2007). ‘To catch the process, the student must take the role of the acting unit whose behaviour s/he is studying … the process has to be seen from the standpoint of the acting unit’ (Blumer, 1963, pp. 186–187). To enable the realisation of this approach, the researchers were themselves travelling in the Outback and living in campgrounds and caravan parks while conducting the research. The study drew on a purposive sample of independent tourists (Baker, 1999). Participants were screened for inclusion in the study if they were urban dwelling Australian residents who were travelling independently in the Outback. Therefore, the travels of those included in the study were not mediated by the tourist industry: that is, hotel staff, tour guides, restaurants. Rather the ‘intermediaries’ were principally fellow travellers. Furthermore, participants were screened with respect to the duration of their travels, inclusion requiring a minimum travel time of 2 months. The travel duration of the participants varied, with the shortest travel duration being 2 months. However, most of the interviewees were engaged in longterm travel for periods of between 4 months and 4 years. Therefore, they comprised a group different from shortterm tourists who might travel to a known destination for a week or two, stay at a hotel and then return to their places of origin. Twenty people were interviewed, eight men and twelve women. All were travelling with spouses, four were travelling with friends and none were travelling alone. The interviewees ranged in age from 34 to 74. The sample therefore excluded the young adult tourist group. Respondents were interviewed using a semistructured interview schedule that covered topics including choice of the Outback as the site for travel, views about the desirability of isolation versus companionship and their patterns of interaction with others while travelling. The Volume 15 2008
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interviews were transcribed and then thematically coded with respect to regularly articulated points of view. The analysis was conducted with a view to taking advantage of the value of qualitative methods in moving beyond precoded categories and distinctions between the ‘subject/object’ allowing the researcher to capture the tourist’s constructions of his or her experiences (Wearing & Wearing, 1996) The ‘trustworthiness’ of the data and its interpretation was ensured as far as is possible through implementation of several of the processes described by Lincoln and Guba (1985) and elaborated by Creswell (1998). The researchers were touring in similar circumstances to the interviewees. This shared situation made it possible for prolonged engagement with and observation of interviewees. It also meant that recruitment could occur after one or more conversations. Establishment of pre-interview rapport and trust between researcher and interviewee were facilitated by this knowledge of a common situation (Finlay, 2003; Graburn, 2002). While the post data collection thematic coding process incorporated negative case analysis through the noting of distinctive points of view as contrasting instances, the ‘credibility’ or truth value (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) of the potential range of findings was explored during post-interview debriefing of interviewees. Finally, peer debriefing (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) to encourage reflexive examination of both data collection and interpretation occurred by means of discussions between the co-researchers at different stages of the research process.
Findings Interacting With the Environment The experience of ongoing immersion in the natural (as opposed to the made) landscape was a significant motif in the interviewees’ accounts of their time in the Outback. For most of the people interviewed, the chance to experience the landscape by walking, driving or simply being in and observing it was the principal motivation for undertaking their trips. They wanted to experience it first hand. Moreover, the particularities of the Australian Outback cultural and physical landscape were integral to their responses. Wearing and Wearing (1996) argue for a conceptualisation of space that incorporates its subjective meaning and state that this meaning is integral to the ‘socially constructed self that comes with and goes home with the tourist’ (Wearing & Wearing, 1996, p. 230). This connection between landscape and self was suggested by tourists’ accounts of sitting as quiet observers of the natural environment, accounts that were permeated by a deeply felt emotion and sense of connection. All of a sudden the dirt changes colour. Desert, bush, the red centre. … The Outback is when you can see the stars on the horizon from there to there. Big sky country. (Female, 46, travelling with husband) We watched the lilies and the crocodiles. Forty pelicans circulated above us one morning, above the wetlands, looking for a place to land. And the kites had obviously decided this was their wetlands and so they went up in a group like little fighter planes against the bombers. … We sat there for three-quarters of an hour. It’s something we are very, very lucky to see. (Male, 74, travelling with wife)
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The preference was to enjoy these sights while being relatively isolated from fellow tourists, but still in the company of a travelling partner. ‘Discovering’ and being in these sites without unknown others present, heightened the experience. When asked about what a good day would be, every person interviewed referred to the beauty of the landscape, hiking through it, observing the native animals in their natural habitat, lying on a beach or in the bush watching the stars or sitting quietly observing water-lilies opening to the sun. These views were expressed despite the considerable inconvenience of mosquitoes, flies crawling tenaciously and persistently into eyes and nostrils, red dust infiltrating every crevice and fibre, oppressive heat and challenging terrain. However, the positive responses to engagement with the landscape and natural environment were matched by the expression of views that signalled an anxiety arising from a keen awareness of being in surroundings that were unfamiliar. This anxiety has been described by some writers as ‘culture shock’ (Suvantola, 2002). While essentially social, it can also be applied to people’s responses to an unfamiliar natural environment. The anxiety engendered by travel per se and the challenges it poses to habitual and preferred ways of managing in daily life was articulated in different ways by interviewees, and more frequently by the older people interviewed. Sometimes anxiety was expressed in relation to severed daily social supports and relationships, or through reference to the struggle to maintain familiar domestic routines in the face of conditions that militated against their success. The family went and here we were just the two of us. We have been alone at home for many years. But the family were always just down the road. I’m a homebody. I love cleaning and housework. I’ve learned no matter how a dusty the caravan gets inside it doesn’t matter. … When we get to what I call civilisation it will all clean off. [In coming on this trip] all of my security went. So that’s been a big change for me. It’s only now six months on that I’m beginning to enjoy it. I can look around now and see beauty that I couldn’t at first. And being dirty and the dust — it’s part of it. (Female, 59, travelling with husband)
The impact of the loss of one’s work-related identity while travelling was also mentioned. You lose your identity [in the city], because you are your job. Who are you? [And as well] you are not anything [when you are on the road]. It takes a while to adjust. (Female, 59, travelling with husband)
This same interviewee also spoke about how the free-floating aspect of long-term travel was difficult to reconcile with preferred and habitual ways of dealing with daily life. I’m a planner. That’s actually one of the things I find difficult about this lifestyle. I like to know where I’m going to be, what I’m going to be doing in 6 months time. The week-to-week thing isn’t easy for me. (Female, 59, travelling with husband)
A vaguer, more generalised anxiety was woven through the interviewees’ accounts of their responses to the landscape. Most interviewees came from densely populated urban or rural agricultural settings where human needs and use have transformed and domesticated the landscape. These were very different from the Outback with its long distances, sparse population and isolation.
Travel as Interaction I found the vastness intimidating. ... I knew it was big, but I never expected it to be as big as what it is. It’s huge. There’s nothing there. It is so vast this Outback. I was brought up in the city. But here it’s very different. … There’ll be a paddock and two trees on it and then in another there’s a termite mound. … It’s been different, really different for me. It’s fear of the unknown. (Female, 60, travelling with husband) We stayed in a free [unofficial] camping area one night. I spent the night locked into the car. I didn’t feel safe. We couldn’t find anywhere to stay so we had to keep driving in the dark until we found somewhere to pull off the road. My husband wanted to put the trailer up but I said no, I’ll stay in the car. (Female, 54, travelling with husband and friends)
Greenblat and Gagnon (1983) have described the ‘unfamiliar’ as having four dimensions. These are first, the range and number of unfamiliar cultural elements, second, the patterning of what appears to be familiar and unfamiliar and third, the rate at which decisions must be made in any cultural context. Finally, there is the degree to which correct and incorrect pathways through the travel environment have been anticipated or shaped by the existence of preformed versions of that environment. For the travellers in the Outback, the unfamiliar physical (rather than cultural) elements and travel through them were highly significant and the source of considerable anxiety. The distinctive characteristics of the largely unpopulated, stark, sometimes harsh Australian Outback and the variable quality of the roads meant that these anxieties were frequently close to the surface. Isolation meant distance from medical help. Getting sick when in a remote site was a concern, particularly for the retirees, some of whom suffered from chronic illness. Younger parents were concerned about their children, and some women were concerned about their often older husbands or partners. For instance, a few of the women, both younger and older, expressed concern about how they might cope should their male partner become temporarily unable to continue with the more physically demanding tasks associated with this kind of travel, such as setting up camp, making running repairs to cars and caravans or the 4W-driving required. Concerns about isolation and remoteness were tempered by the fact that a day would seldom pass without at least one other car passing on the road, and the adoption of precautionary measures such as travelling with at least a week’s supply of water and food. Some tourists were equipped with handheld UHF radios with limited range, mobile phones with intermittent coverage or satellite phones. The interaction afforded by these devices was an important aspect of travelling (White & White, 2007). These measures and careful planning helped to allay concerns. Another means of dealing with these unfamiliar circumstances was to turn the caravan into a substitute home by furnishing it in ways that replicated home comforts: lace curtains, cushions, television sets and layouts that separated sleeping and ‘living’ areas. The most significant fear was of vehicle breakdown in a remote isolated spot. Some interviewees had actually experienced vehicle trouble, and had found the experience disconcerting. The road and the potential dangers posed by its condition were constant topics of conversation, given ritual form through protracted and frequent discussions of the appropriate tyre pressures to deal with rough
conditions. Decisions about whether to visit sites such as the Mitchell Plateau or Kalumbaru in the Northern Territory were made not with reference to the intrinsic interest of these sites, but in relation to the difficulty of the drive. At the extreme, some tourists privileged road conditions over the characteristics of the sites to be visited. For instance, the only comment made by one tourist about his visit to Arkaroola in South Australia was ‘It’s a good run’. The incessant conversations about the road and tyres could be interpreted in different ways. One is that these conversations were routinised travel chatter, a way of entering a conversion, obtaining information and exchanging tips, or even as status-constructing conversations. However, the frequency and predictable form of these conversations suggests another important function beyond the manifest purpose of obtaining information: namely, that ‘the road’ had both literal and metaphorical meanings, some of which were conflicting. In other words, it represented both safety and threat. It was marked, mapped and named, thereby simultaneously separating travellers from the unknown while at the same time leading to it. The road also served as a boundary, physical and social. One tourist interviewed in a site only able to be accessed by a difficult unmade track objected to plans to reconstruct it, because ‘fixing the road will change the kind of people’ who visit. The road screens the kinds of people who can use it, ensuring that access is limited to those prepared to endure risk and hardship, Therefore, in addition to the manifest functions of these conversations about ‘the road’, their replaying suggests their role as an anxiety management strategy engendered by distance and isolation. The interactions enabled tourists to indirectly express feelings about, and to explore congruent understandings of occupation of the social and cultural landscape of Outback Australia. These interactions also brought to light what J.B. Jackson called the ‘vernacular landscape’, by which he meant a landscape that is enlivened by mobility and change, and which is made through talk and action (Bonyhady & Griffiths, 2002:8)
Interacting With Others Even though other research has suggested that even just one travel companion can reduce the need to make other contacts (Suvantola 2002), the interviews conducted for this study showed that interaction with others beyond the travelling dyad played an important role in enabling tourists to manage the challenges of travelling in the Outback. Their accounts made clear the press to the social — the desire to be the presence of others who were in the same situation as themselves.
Meeting the Locals? The interviewees understood that getting to know the ‘real’ Outback required interaction with the locals: both white and Indigenous. This knowledge of Aboriginal Australian, Outback station and small town culture was seen to require extended stays rather than the brief exposure that characterises most tourist contact. As one interviewee said, ‘You don’t experience anything driving along a dirt Volume 15 2008
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road’ (Male, 54, travelling with wife). The resident population was a valued source of local knowledge. When conversations occurred, they were mostly with the non-Indigenous population, and rarely, but on occasion with Aborigines. We went on one of these cruises of the Ord River out of Kunanurra. The skipper was explaining to us that there are four tribes living around the town and there is intertribal rivalry. So when you hear them yelling at each other in the street in the middle of the day and you think ‘That’s a bit confronting’, you understand that that’s going on as well. (Male, 48, travelling with wife)
Although some locals could be accessed via the tourist industry, shops and working on Outback stations, these contacts were not easily made. Many of the people employed in the tourist industry were people who came to the Outback for the 2 or 3 months of the peak tourist season. Therefore, they had limited understanding of the social and natural settings in which they worked. The resident population was perceived to have little interest in other than functional interactions or tips about sights in the area or directions, and most conversations were ‘front-stage’ role-based conversations (Goffman, 2005). We’re transients as far as a lot of the local people are concerned. They just want to see us out of here so that they can get on with their normal lives. (Female, 60, travelling with husband)
As a consequence, tourists felt that they had little contact with the host population. The most informative and extended conversations were with tourists’ acquaintances or friends who were living in a remote area or Outback town or who had worked in remote Aboriginal communities. In all cases there was the satisfaction of having had interactions that did not have a purely commercial basis and as one interviewee put it, these conversations led him to feel like ‘a traveller rather than a tourist’.
Conversing With Fellow Tourists Despite their expressed wish to interact with the locals, for the most part tourists travelled ‘in a world of their own, surrounded by, but not integrated into the host society’ (Cohen, 1972). Although they met people from the tourist industry, they met in role rather than as individuals. When sociability was possible, it occurred mainly between tourists. Initiation of and engagement in social interactions between tourists was gendered and for some entailed a role reversal. When I go on a holiday is my time away from people. … At home I’m very sociable and my husband is fairly quiet. When we’re travelling he’s the social one and the organiser. I’m the organiser at home. (Female, 48, travelling with husband)
The women interviewed tended to get into conversations over domestic tasks, such as while washing clothes in the laundry or washing dishes in the communal kitchen areas. Many of the women interviewed spoke about travel offering respite from social engagement and the social responsibilities they felt they carried in their daily lives at home. The men were generally more socially proactive, and campground approaches were most often made by them. For the men, the campground offered the possibility of sociability that was bounded, transitory, nonintimate, 46
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brief, and focused on functional issues, rather than engendering relationships requiring maintenance and nurturing. These social interactions between tourists were ritualised both in form and content. Greetings and ensuing conversations were formulaic, consisting of ‘Where have you been? Where are you going? and Where should we visit?’ Some expressed frustration with these conversations. However, despite the scepticism with which fellow tourists’ advice and suggestions were regarded, and despite protestations expressing distaste, and occasional derision of these types of conversations, most of the people interviewed repeatedly engaged in them. They were valued because they enabled contact with people from diverse backgrounds and because they affirmed a sense of shared circumstance: namely that of travelling in the Outback. You meet people that you wouldn’t normally talk to or you wouldn’t hear about that opinion because you don’t normally associate with that type of person. So that’s what’s good about travelling. … There’s been a big shift in our attitudes and opinions. (Female, 46, travelling with husband and another couple) People are more open on the road. If you went down to your local shopping centre in Perth you’re not just going to stop somebody in the middle of a shopping centre to say ‘What have you been buying today?’ They’re going to think you’re a freak. But up here you can say ‘What have you been up to?’ and they’ll tell you. And you’ll stop for 20 minutes and have a conversation with a total stranger. Share things. (Male, 36, travelling with wife) It’s great having a yarn with someone. … It’s very easy to meet people when you travel, because people are doing the same thing. (Female, 47, travelling with husband and friends)
The social engagement afforded by these conversations was valued for the ease with which it could be initiated. As such, it clearly exemplified what Simmel (1950:58) referred to as sociability: interactions in which the topic is simply the means for transitory social engagement with others whose social standing or status was irrelevant. Although status is a nuanced entity encompassing factors such as travel experience, type of travel set-up (including GPS devices, satellite phones, types of vehicle, and so on) these were marginal to the conversation rituals reported. The topics of conversation illustrated Simmel’s analysis in another respect: namely, conversations usually involved the telling of stories, sharing anecdotes and jokes and steered away from individual intimacy and purely personal concerns. While the manifest purpose and content of these conversations was travel-related advice, these conversations also served to manage ‘culture shock’ or anxiety. Although ritualised impersonality was the norm, there were occasions when this convention was breached. Sociability and the anonymity of transient relations offered the possibility of disclosure of personal information normally regarded as private. Some tourists described how they took the opportunity to reveal aspects of themselves that they would withhold in their established friendship and family networks. You can share things about yourself that you would normally keep pretty much to yourself. … Because you’re in a completely different place, and you’re relaxed and you start talking and before you know each you’re spitting out quite personal details. (Female, 34, travelling with husband)
Travel as Interaction Some people you meet, in 5 minutes you know their family history, their financial position, where they’ve been, and who their friends and enemies are. ... We’re not like that; we are private in that respect. (Male, 50, travelling with wife.)
Simmel, in his account of the stranger, alludes to these ‘confidences which sometimes have the character of a confessional and which would be carefully withheld from a more closely related person’ (Simmel, 1950: 404). That is, anonymity allowed for various connections, the most common being a bounded sociability, but also, on occasion, a transitory intimacy. Previous research has shown that interactions between tourists give rise to friendships, be they impermanent or enduring and that they offer intimacy and closeness in unfamiliar settings and in circumstances of separation from family and friends (Harrison 2003). While the present study has documented the occurrence of transitory relationships that may involve disclosure of personal information, these relationships more closely approximated ‘unpersonal bounded relationships’ (Lofland, 1989) than meetings giving rise to continuing friendships.
the presence of others revealed that they very rarely stayed on their own in the bush. ‘Isolation’ was considered to be camping grounds in National Parks. Most people interviewed stayed in caravan parks. In these parks, the physical layout is such that caravans are lined up in rows mimicking the proximity and regularity of suburban streetscapes. The difference though is that there are no fences or high walls, and no drive-in garages with automatic doors that protect residents from having contact with others in the neighbourhood street. In contrast to the average suburban street, campgrounds offer the possibility of chit-chat functionally equivalent to the neighbourly chat over the fence. As argued by Harrison (2003) and Wang (2002), these interactions enable reaffirmation of a sense of individual humanity and existential authenticity that moves beyond the physical imperatives of finding shelter and food. They also allowed the tourists to simultaneously appreciate the exotic, novel properties of the Outback setting from a position of security and comfort of familiarity (Suvantola, 2002).
Concluding Remarks
The Significance of the ‘Mere Presence’ of Others One response to the insecurity of leaving home ground for a landscape that is unknown and perceived as slightly threatening is to travel ‘within the tourist space’, with its backup of familiar elements (Suvantola, 2002, p. 200). ‘The tourist space is the metaworld that allows the escape from the confusion’ (Suvantola, 2002, p. 201). While the confined conditions, enforced proximity and recurrent encounters in caravan parks could on occasion be experienced as oppressive, particularly when people were seen to be ‘too different’ or intrusive, the pull of the presence of others was evident even for those interviewees who stated that their primary motive was not to meet other people and who said they found the constant presence of other tourists disappointing and an impediment to their enjoyment. Most people travelling through the Outback were with a partner, companion, or in nuclear family units; however, this companionship was not enough. All the tourists interviewed spoke about the need for the presence of additional others. While there were variations in preference with respect to how frequently the company of others beyond their travelling companions was desired, and also variations in preferences regarding the scale and intensity of interactions with this company, the interviewees’ showed a clear desire for the comfort of strangers. The presence of anonymous others provided a sense of physical and psychological security. In some ways it’s comforting to have people around, but far enough away that you have your own space. (Female, 60 travelling with husband) I prefer to be where there are other tourists. I don’t want to be on my own. I don’t like a million people around but I do want somebody around, even if we don’t speak to them. (Female, 60, travelling with husband)
The pleasure of being able to move between partnered isolation and having one’s own space on the one hand, and the sociability of fellow tourists on the other was mentioned. When questioned further, the interviewees who enjoyed the movement between relative isolation and
Putting oneself in the presence of others, with its attendant social interactions and conversations, was found to be a potent way of dealing with the anxieties associated with the terrain and the circumstances in which tourists found themselves. These interactions were with travel partners, with fellow tourists, tourist industry personnel and, where possible, local residents in the various sites visited. The meaning and significance of these interactions was filtered through the prism of the tourists’ occupation of a physically demanding, threatening and culturally unfamiliar landscape, and overlaid by the mythological status of the Outback in the Australian imagination. The interviewees’ responses suggested that the landscape framed their interactions with others. The distinctive characteristics of the Australian Outback’s topography were integral to how the people interviewed responded to touring through this part of the country. In addition to appreciation of the landscape’s beauty, a recurring response to it was anxiety arising from being in surroundings that were unfamiliar and seen as threatening. Social interactions played a role in the management of this anxiety. Highly ritualised, repeated conversations that enabled expression and exploration of these anxieties were a common feature of life on the road. The transitory relationships that were forged during these encounters served to provide information, but more significantly given the unfamiliar settings, offered companionship and resources that allowed tourists to create and share meaningful experiences (Stokowski, 1992). The importance, persistence, and prevalence of interactions between tourists in particular suggested the detached sociability described by Simmel (1950) and the ‘unpersonal bounded relationships’ described by Lofland (1989). That is, the interactions between tourists consisted of an engagement with others through information exchange, but this manifest exchange function was to some extent extrinsic to the interaction. In other words, the ‘success’ of the particular interaction was not measured by its utility. Volume 15 2008
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The conversation topics were the means rather than the ends of interactions between tourists, whose social standing or status in these interchanges was largely irrelevant. The interactions with locals or people from the tourist industry were slightly different. There, information gathering was of greater significance. However, all these relationships were simultaneously characterised both by social distance and by friendliness, ‘warmth’, and closeness with no implication of relational intimacy, even when personal information was divulged, and were usually forged and enacted in public spaces. The press to sociability (Simmel, 1950) and the establishment of the ‘unpersonal bounded relationships’ described by Lofland (1989 ) was evident in people’s accounts of their travel experiences. That is, tourists were keen to be in the company of others, but in encounters or relationships free of the obligation of ongoing attachment, without specific function, content or outcome. These tourists shared information about places to visit, routes to take, accommodation to avoid (or seek out), foods to try, precautions to be taken or sights not to miss. Their interactions offered companionship and opportunities to have conversations about what they had seen, done, experienced, and felt about it all (Harrison, 2003). The enriched understanding of the social and physical environment arising from conversations with the local white and indigenous populations was also mentioned, despite the former’s infrequency and the latter’s inaccessibility. The issue of reflexivity would provide fertile ground for further research, as would alternative physical layouts for camping grounds and caravan parks, small town initiatives to encourage tourist–local interaction and links between tourists to bolster the benefits offered by the comfort of strangers.
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