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Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 1
It is understood that…concepts are purely differential and defined not by their
positive content but negatively by their relations with the other terms of the system.
Their most precise characteristic is in being what the others are not.
(1966:117)
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics.
Amongst the central features associated with postmodernism in the arts are: the
effacement of the boundary between art and everyday life; the collapse of the
hierarchical distinction between high and mass/popular culture; a stylistic
promiscuity favouring eclecticism and the mixing of codes; parody, pastiche, irony,
playfulness and the celebration of the surface “depthlessness” of culture; the decline
of the originality/genius of the artistic producer; and the assumption that art can
only be repetition. (1991:7-8)
Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism
DRAFT
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 2
Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity
In tourism there are only differences. I hope that Saussure will not be
upset that I appropriated that concept from his writing. Tourism, as Dean
MacCannell has suggested in his important book, The Tourist, can be
understood as an exercise in applied semiotics by travelers who don’t realize
the semiotic nature of their activities. Let me begin by saying something
about the characteristics of international tourism.
Defining International Tourism
Let me suggest that international tourism has the following
characteristics. Tourism is:
1. temporary, done for a relatively short period of time
2. based on choice
3. tied to leisure and pleasure
4. an important part of our consumer culture
5. not involved with business (generally)
6. based on round trips
7. tied to technological developments in travel
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 3
8. a mass phenomenon
MacCannell argues that the tourist should be seen as the best model for
modern man and woman, though I will argue that postmodern is a better
description of tourists.
From a semiotic perspective we can say that tourists consume signs—
signifiers of one sort or another—of the cultures they have visited, and many
of these sign are recorded nowadays on digital cameras. I will deal in more
details with the semiotics of tourism shortly. We begin, then, with the notion
that tourism is a semiotic activity. Semiotics is, I would suggest, an
imperialistic science. For some semioticians, everything can be understood
and explained as essentially semiotic. Semioticians can be regarded as
similar to neurologists, who regards all other kinds of medicines as “sub-
specialties” of neurology.
Tourism may be a semiotic activity but is it a postmodern activity as
well? After discussing the semiotic nature of tourism, I will then deal with
reasons for understanding contemporary tourism as also postmodern in
nature. My thesis, then, is that tourism, though tourists may not know what
semiotics is or what postmodernism is (and some argue that postmodernism
is anything we want it to be) can be understood to be essentially a
postmodern semiotic activity.
It is also a mass phenomenon. A few years ago there were more than
800 million international arrivals according to statistics from the World
Tourist Organization. Since there are around six billion people on earth, it
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 4
means that approximately one person out of eight traveled abroad, whether it
was half way around the world or to a neighboring country.
MacCannell on Differentiation and the Semiotics of Tourism
In The Tourist, MacCannell suggests that his book is based on the
notion of differentiation, which he defines as (1976:11):
the totality of differences between social classes, life-styles, racial
and ethnic groups, age grades (the youth, the aged), political and
professional groups and the mythic representation of the past to the
present. Differentiation is a systemic variable: it is not confined to a
specific institution of society, nor does it originate in or institution or
place and spread to others. It operates independently and
simultaneously throughout society.
In tourism, as in language (as Saussure pointed out) we search for differences;
these differences help us understand ourselves better and see our societies and
cultures in a new light
MacCannell says that he discovered, as a result of his research into
tourism, that (1976:13):
“sightseeing is a ritual performed to the differentiations of society.
Sightseeing is a kind of collective striving for transcendence of the
modern totality, a way of attempting to overcome the discontinuity of
modernity, of incorporating its fragments into unified experience.
The term “sightseeing,” which is a major component of tourism, has, of
course, implications for a semiotic approach to tourism. Tourism is, at its
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 5
most reductionist best, a form of sign consumption. We might call sign-
seeing “sign-seeing,” to suggest its semiotic nature.
Chapter 6 of The Tourist is titled “A Semiotic of Attraction,” and
deals, in particular, with Peirce’s formulation that (1976:109) “a sign
represents something to someone.” Tourist attractions, MacCannell suggests,
are signs and thus semiotics is necessary to understand tourism. He uses the
term “marker” to deal with representations of, or information about, sights
that are found in guidebooks, magazine articles and other media. We can
make the following chart, based on his ideas, to show the relationship
between markers, sights, and tourists and Peirce’s formulation.
Peirce sign represents something to someone
MacCannell attraction marker sign tourist
Markers, MacCannell explains, represent the first contact tourists have with a
sight/site. Markers, we can say, mediate our experiences and a great deal of
tourism is based on them.
What sightseers do, he suggests, is string together a collection of
discrete previously marked sights, so that there is no “totality” to the San
Francisco experienced by tourists but, instead, a collection of certain high
profile sites such as Fisherman’s Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower,
Union Square, Chinatown, North Beach, and so on. We might ask whether
anyone, tourist or resident, ever truly “comprehends” a city or even a tourist
site. What tourists do is visit places of interest, take photographs of them
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 6
(generally speaking), and try to cover all the bases—that is, see the most
important sites that should be seen and have the experiences they have been
told, in the articles and guidebooks they’ve read, that they should have. What
unifies the tourist experience of different places for most people is the slide
show on the computer in which digital photographs are shown, one after
another.
In the Beginning was Roland Barthes
It was Roland Barthes’ Mythologies that showed how a semiotic
approach to French culture can offer astonishing insights and his study of
Japanese culture and society in Empire of Signs that showed how semiotics
can help us understand the tourist experience. Barthes was a tourist when he
visited Japan. Empire of Signs offers us a model for the semiotic analysis of
tourism. This book, first published in French in 1970 and translated into
English in 1982 It consists of 26 short chapters on such topics as Pachinko,
Japanese chopsticks, bowing, Japanese eyelids, tempura and package design.
In the first paragraph of the book, Barthes writes (1982:3)
If I want to imagine a fictive nation, I can give it an invented name,
treat it declaratively as a novelistic object, create a new Garabagne, so
as to compromise no real country by my fantasy…I can also—though
in now way claiming to represent or analyze reality itself (these being
the major gestures of Western discourse)—isolate somewhere in the
world (faraway) a certain number of features (a term employed in
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 7
linguistics), and out of these features, deliberately form a system. It
is this system which I shall call: Japan.
Then, a page later, Barthes makes an important statement. He says he hasn’t
tried to “photograph” Japan, which can be interpreted to men offer a detailed,
coherent, and complete analysis of Japanese culture and society. Instead, he
says, he has done the opposite and that Japan has stimulated in him a number
of “flashes,” or provided him with “a situation of writing” in which he will
find meaning in “gardens, gestures, houses, flower arrangements, faces,
violence.”
This statement reminds us of what MacCannell had to say about the way
tourists experience San Francisco and, by implication, all other places they
visit.
Barthes offers us a model for the touristic analysis and interpretation
of foreign cultures:
1. He will focus on “flashes,” that is—topics, that is sites and
activities that strike him as significant.
2. He will use semiotics to interpret these important cultural signs
and relate them to social, cultural and ideological considerations.
3. He will not attempt to offer a coherent picture of the country he is
analyzing.
In principle, we can posit a “good” tourist, who investigates a culture and
moves beyond the descriptions of places to see found in guidebooks and other
publications. In reality, many tourists—perhaps because they are rushing
around so frantically--don’t make much of an effort to analyze and interpret
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 8
the significance of the sights and sites they see. To my mind, tourists
planning a trip to Japan would find reading Empire of Signs an invaluable
guide to Japanese culture which would greatly enhance their visits.
Guidebooks tend to focus on historical phenomena and neglect the enriching
insights and understanding that a semiotic approach to tourism brings, though
in recent years many guidebooks have become interested in discussion social
and political matters..
For am example of Barthes’ methods, let us consider his analysis of
Japanese food in his chapter “Food Decentered.” His discussion of Sukiyaki
focuses on rawness in Japanese food. He writes (1982:20):
Rawness, we know, is the tutelary divinity of Japanese food: OT it
everything is dedicated, and if Japanese cooking is always performed
in front of the eventual diner (a fundamental feature of this cuisine),
this is probably because it is so important to consecrate by spectacle
the death of what is being honored…Japanese rawness is essentially
visual: it denoted a certain colored state of the flesh or vegetable
substance (it being understood that color is never exhausted by a
catalogue of tints, but refers to a whole tactility of substance; thus
sashimi exhibits not so much colors as resistances: those which vary
the flesh of raw fish causing it to pass, from one end of the tray to the
other, through the stations of the soggy, the fibrous, the elastic, the
compact, the rough, the slippery).
This excerpt offers a taste, we may say, of the way Barthes is able to read
important insights into Japanese cuisine and culture. Barthes analysis of
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 9
Japanese culture leads us to another aspect of differentiation—our search for
the exotic.
The Tourist Search for the Exotic
If tourism is based on the desire for difference—for the experience of
different landscapes, different foods, different styles clothing, different ways
of living—then we can say there are two kinds of differentiation: strong and
weak or “the different” and “the exotic.” An American, living in San
Francisco, would experience Paris, for example, as different. But not greatly
different from his life in San Francisco. On the other hand, a San Franciscan
who visits Japan or Bali or India finds differences of a whole order of
magnitude—what I call the exotic. In Japan, we have variations of
differentiation. Some parts of Japan are similar to what people in San
Francisco are familiar with, but others aren’t.
In his book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, Daniel
J. Boorstin discusses what he describes as our “newly exaggerated
expectations” about travel. What he says about Americans I would argue can
be said about tourists from most countries. He writes (1975:78):
One of the most ancient motives for travel, when men had any choice
about it, was to see the unfamiliar. Man’s incurable desire to go
someplace else is a testimony of his incurable optimism and
insatiable curiosity. We always expect things to be different over
there. ‘Traveling,’ Descartes wrote in the early seventeenth century,
“is almost like conversing with men of other centuries.’ Men who
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 10
move because they are starved or frightened or oppressed expect to be
safer, better, and more free in the new place. Men who live in a
secure, rich, and decent society travel to escape boredom , to elude
the familiar, and to discover the exotic.
The best way to understand the exotic is to contrast it with its opposite,
everyday life.
The chart below is from my book Deconstructing Travel: Cultural
Perspectives on Tourism, which offers, among other things, a semiotic
approach to understanding tourism.
Everyday Life The Exotic
Near Distant
The Present The Past
Familiar Strange
Modern Ancient, Traditional
The skyscraper The Hut
The Supermarket The Souk
Cathedrals Hindu Temples, Mosques
Euro-American Cuisine Ethnic Cuisines
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 11
Electronic Mechanical
Suits, Dresses Turbans, Robes, Costumes
The Exotic and the Everyday Compared
What many international tourists are seeking, I would maintain, is to escape
from everyday life for a while and experience the exotic—that which is
greatly different from their routines. There is a strong anthropological
dimension to tourism, as people seek out strange lands to visit—based on the
markers they have read and a desire for new experiences that will enrich them
and recharge their depleted batteries, so to speak.
As I explained in Deconstructing Travel (2004:34):
The erotic comes in different forms but generally it involves some
combination of that which is strange to us, distant in time and place
from us, and traditional rather than modern, as these phenomena
apply to such things as landscape, architecture, dress, food, language,
and cuisines.
I should have added sexual partners to this list. There are, in fact, many
different kinds of international tourism, such as sexual tourism, gourmet
tourism, adventure tourism and cultural tourism. Tourism is, I should point
out, the largest industry in the world.
Boorstin attacks tourism, as practiced by Americans, as being a
pernicious kind of activity filled with what he calls pseudo-events.
Americans, he says, expect to have (1975: 80) “a lifetime of adventure in two
weeks” and believe that (1975:80) “the exotic and the familiar can be made to
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 12
order..” He distinguishes between travelers (good) and tourists (bad) as
follows. What Boorstin says about American tourists can be understood to
apply, let me re[eat, to all tourists in this age of mass tourism. The chart
below was elicited from his comments in his book about travelers and
tourists.:
Travelers Tourists
Travail Pleasure
Active Passive spectator
Working at something Sight-Seeing
Undertaking Commodity
Boorstin points out that the word tourist is derived from the Latin word
tornos, which means “circle,” and sees the development of package tours as
basic to the development of mass tourism.
I would suggest that Boorstin’s indictment of mass tourism is based
on an elitist point of view and is simplistic and inaccurate. (The first edition
of his book came out in 1961, when its subtitle was “What Happened to the
American Dream.” We have to recognize that this book came out 45 years
ago.) International tourism is generally hard work, often involving long
flights. And not all tourists take package tours of the kind Boorstin
lampoons. But his comments reflect of one of the great ironies of tourism:
tourists want to go to wonderful places where there aren’t other tourists. That
is becoming increasingly difficult to do, for it doesn’t take long, in the
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 13
Internet age, for undiscovered places, where there are few tourists, to become
discovered.
Tourism and the Search for the Authentic
My analysis of the matter of authenticity is what leads to my
suggestion that tourism is a postmodern activity. Most theorists of tourism
point out that tourists are in search of authenticity and wish to avoid the fake,
the inauthentic, the manufactured pseudo-authentic. As Dean MacCannell
explains, early in The Tourist (1976:3):
The concern of moderns for “naturalness,” their nostalgia and their
search for authenticity are not merely casual and somewhat decadent,
though harmless, attachments to the souvenirs of destroyed cultures
and dead epochs. They are components of the conquering spirit of
modernity—the grounds for its unifying consciousness.
Boorstin argues that American tourists do not like the authentic because they
are incapable of appreciating or understanding it, preferring, instead,
imitations, such as French singers singing in English with a French accent
rather than singing in French. In Japan, tourists search not for what is
Japanese but which is “Japanesey.” American (and all) tourists are suckers, it
is argued, for that which is fake, inauthentic, but more easily digested.
Boorstin’s condemnation of American tourism (and I would suggest
tourism in general) goes as follows (1976:107):
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 14
Wherever in the world the American tourist goes, then, he is prepared
to be ruled by the law of pseudo-events, by which the image, the
well-contrived imitation, outshines the original.
It is here, with this matter of authenticity and pseudo-events and pseudo-
authenticity, that postmodern theory can be used to help us understand
tourism in the contemporary world.
Postmodernism and Tourism
One of the main ideas found in postmodern thought is that we now
have lost faith in metanarratives. As Jean-François Lyotard explained
(1984:xxiv) “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity
toward metanarratives.” What he means by that we no longer have faith in
the grand, over-arching systems of philosophical, religious, political and
moral thought that sustained us in the past. Instead, we have competing
narratives which has led to a crisis in legitimation, because we’re not sure
which narratives are correct. That may be one reason for travel. We become
tourists to explore the way other cultures organize life in a search for finding
a way to enrich our lives by adapting what we can.
Another idea connected with this aspect of postmodern thought,
Lyotard suggests, involves the matter of eclecticism. As he writes (1984:76)
Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one
listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch
and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and
“retro” clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games.
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 15
It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. By becoming kitsch, art
panders to the confusions which reigns in the “taste” of patrons.
Artists, gallery owners, critics and the public wallow together in the
“anything goes,” and the epoch is one of slackening.
Lyotard describing a culture in which tourism has shaped our lifestyles.
We’ve been to many foreign lands and taken from them what we want.
From this we create an eclectic lifestyle—a mixture of the foreign (in France
or other countries, McDonald’s) and the native (local cuisine). What unifies
our many eclectic lifestyles, is, he asserts, the Euro or the almighty dollar or
whatever currency in used one’s country or the countries we visit. Notice,
Lyotard mentions a number of important tourism destinations: Paris, Hong
Kong and Tokyo. In the final analysis, Lyotard argues, is it money that offers
the basic unifying aspect behind the eclecticism of contemporary postmodern
societies.
We must recognize, then, that postmodern societies are consumer societies,
where people lead eclectic lifestyles that are tied to their ability to purchase
things and experiences they desire.
There is one other aspect of postmodern thought that is of importance
and that involves Baudrillard’s theory of simulations and hyperreality. As he
writes in Simulations (1983:148):
It is reality itself that is hyperrealist. Surrealism’s secret was that the
most banal reality could become surreal, but only in certain
privileged moments that are still nevertheless connected with art and
the imaginary. Today it is quotidian reality in its entirety—political,
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 16
social, historical and economic—that from now on incorporates the
simulating dimension of hyperrealism. We live everywhere already
in an “aesthetic” hallucination of reality.
Reality has become replaced, he asserts, by hyperreality and images are now
more important than the reality they capture.
Baudrillard has suggested that there are certain phases of the
development of a world dominated by simulations. These are:
1. images reflect reality.
2. images mask and pervert reality.
3. images mask the absence of reality.
4. images bear no relation to reality in any way.
It is at stage four that the image and simulation have “replaced” reality and
are more important than reality. He makes a distinction between
representation and simulation. In representation the signs are tied to
something real. In the postmodern world of simulation, signs have no
connection with reality.
We can contrast the modern and the postmodern, when it comes to
international tourism, as follows:
Modernity Postmodernity
authenticity amusement
natural artificial
reality hyperreality
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 17
Postmodern thought is, we have seen, not terribly interested in authenticity
since it posits a world based on simulations. The implication of this
perspective is that authenticity is no longer a major concern of tourists in
postmodern societies—nor is the natural or “reality,” whatever it may be.
Sociologist Ning Wang discusses this matter in his book Tourism and
Modernity. He writes (2000:55):
Implied in the approaches of postmodernism is justification
of the contrived, the copy, and the imitation. One of the most
interesting responses to this postmodern cultural condition is Cohen’s
recent justification of contrived attractions in tourism. According to
him, postmodern tourists have become less concerned with the
authenticity of the original…Two reasons can be identified. First, if
the cultural sanction of the modern tourist has been the “quest for
authenticity,” then that of the postmodernist tourist is a “playful
search for enjoyment” or an “aesthetic enjoyment of surfaces.”
Secondly, the postmodern tourist becomes more sensitive to the
impact of tourism upon fragile host communities or tourist sights.
Staged authenticity thus helps project a fragile toured culture and
community from disturbance by acting as a substitute for the original
and keeping tourists away from it.
Wang’s argues that postmodern tourists—which, nowadays, generally means
contemporary tourists--are not worried about authenticity the way modernist
tourists were, but more interested in being entertained and amused and having
fun. This means that “staged” authenticity (or simulations) are perfectly
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 18
acceptable to them. In addition, as Wang points out, these simulated
attractions have a benefit for people living in places visited by tourists--they
help fragile tourist sites maintain themselves.
When Boorstin argued that American tourists were suckers for
pseudo-events, he didn’t realize it but he was actually making a case for the
postmodern perspective on tourism. He wrote his book in 1961, just when
postmodernism was beginning to assert itself in our culture. He wrote that
(1961:103):
Tourist attractions serve their purpose best when they are pseudo-
events. To be repeatable at will they must be factitious. Emphasis
on the artificial comes from the ruthless truthfulness of tourist agents.
What they can really guarantee you are not spontaneous cultural
products but only those made especially for tourist consumption, for
foreign cash customers…earnest honest natives embellish their
ancient rites, change, enlarge, and spectacularize their festivals, so
that tourists will not be disappointed. In order to satisfy the
exaggerated expectations of tour agents and tourists, people
everywhere obligingly become dishonest mimics of themselves.
He is writing as a modernist and his arguments have no cogency for
postmodernist tourists who, postmodern theory suggests, want to be amused
and entertained and don’t care that much about authenticity. In a postmodern
world of simulations and hyperrealities, the term “authenticity” doesn’t have
much meaning. We might even say that Boorstin’s ideas anticipate the
arguments that postmodernists make.
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 19
Tourism and Consumer Cultures
Many scholars link postmodernism with the growth of consumer
cultures. Tourism, whatever else it might be, is a form of consumption.
Tourist purchase airplane tickets, book cruises, stay in hotels, eat in
restaurants, take cabs and trains, and so on. Tourists have to decide where to
go and what to do when they are abroad. The question that arises is—how
do they make their choices. The British social anthropologist Mary Douglas
has offered a typology that helps us understand how tourists make their
choices.
She writes, in her article “In Defence of Shopping” (1997:17)
We have to make a radical shift away from thinking about
consumption as a manifestation of individual choice. Culture itself is
the result of myriads of individual choices, not primarily between
commodities but between kinds of relationships. The basic choice
that a rational individual has to make is the choice about what kind of
society to live in. According to that choice, the rest follows.
Artefacts are selected to demonstrate the choice. Food is eaten,
clothes are worn, cinema, books, music, holidays, all the rest are
choices that conform with the initial choice for a form of society.
Douglas argues that there are four ways of organizing cultures, or four
lifestyles, all of which are in conflict with one another. And that there are
only four to be found in any society.
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 20
These four groups are based on whether group boundaries are weak
or strong and whether there are many or few rules and prescriptions that have
to be followed. The chart that follows is based on her descriptions of each of
these lifestyles.
1. Individualist
competitive, wide-flung, open network, sporty, arty, risky styles of
entertainment, freedom to change commitments
2. Hierarchical
adhere to established traditions, established institutions
defined network of old friends, formal
3. Egalitarian
rejects formality, pomp, authoritarian institutions
prefers simplicity, frankness, intimate friendships
4. Isolates (also known as Fatalists)
withdrawn, unpredictable lifestyles, alienated
These four lifestyles are all in conflict with one another, Douglas argues, and
it these lifestyles, the cultural alignments that people make, which are basic in
determining their consumer choices. As she writes (1997:23) “cultural
alignment is the strongest predictor of preferences in a wide variety of fields.”
We may make decisions about where to go as tourists but these decisions are
based not on individual psychological desires but on cultural imperatives
from our lifestyle group. One of the main activities of tourists, let me add, is
shopping, so Douglas’ “defense” of shopping has relevance not only to
tourism but our whole ethos of consumption.
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 21
She concludes her article with a passage that is very similar to what
Saussure said about concepts. She writes (1997:30):
Shopping is agonistic, a struggle to define not what one is, but what
one is not. When we include not one cultural bias, but four, and
when we allow that each is bringing a critique against the others, and
when we see that the shopper is adopting postures of cultural
defiance, then it all makes sense. [My italics.]
If we accept the typology that Douglas offers us, we find, then, that there are
four kinds of tourists and their decisions about their travels are based on their
desire to avoid the three other kinds of tourists to the degree that this is
possible.
Conclusions
In this exploration of tourism as a postmodern semiotic activity, I
have done a number of things. First, I characterized tourism as an activity
based on choice and pursued for pleasure and personal enrichment. There
seems to have been a movement towards spending money for experiences
since many people are loaded up with goods. Second, I discussed the
semiotic nature of tourism, arguing that tourism can be seen, without being
too reductionistic, as sign seeing, a semiotic form of sight-seeing. I quoted
from Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist, which was one of the earliest books to
suggest the important of tourism and deal with it from a semiotic perspective.
I also discussed Roland Barthes’ Empire of Signs, whose title make the
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 22
semiotic argument. This book, I suggest, is a paradigmatic exemplar of the
semiotic analysis of foreign cultures.
I used Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Image to deal with the way that
tourism can be considered a postmodern activity as well as a semiotic one.
Boorstin’s discussion of authenticity and so-called “pseudo-events” provided
a means to consider postmodernist attitudes toward tourism, which reject
authenticity as important and focus, instead, on being amused and
entertained. Postmodernism rejects the notion of authenticity as important
and the modernist distinctions between elite culture and popular culture,
originals and fakes, and various other ideas associated with modernism. It is
Jean Baudrillard’s ideas on simulations and hyperreality that explain the
attitudes and desires of postmodern tourists.
I also dealt with the relationship between postmodernism and
consumer cultures in discussing the ideas of the British social anthropologist
Mary Douglas, who argues that there are four lifestyles or consumer cultures
found in modern societies, each of which is in conflict with all the others.
Cultural alignments, she argues, not individual psychology, shape our
preferences when it comes to consumption and shopping—and by implication
our tourism—is a means of differentiating ourselves from the other cultures.
While cultural alignments may shape our preferences when it comes
to choosing where to go, as international tourists, there are psychological
benefits we gain from our travels. As an example of this, let me cite a
passage from sociologist Mark Gottdiener, whose pathbreaking book
Postmodern Semiotics opened the way for a materialist postmodern semiotic
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 23
analysis of culture. In another of his book, The Theming of American:
Dreams, Visions and Commercial Spaces, he discusses a trip he took to
Brazil. In his description of his stay in Rio de Janeiro, where his hosts had
rented an apartment for him to use, we find him feeling excited and having
typical tourist experiences of not being able to do things that are not
problematic in America. He discusses his difficulties in buying a loaf of
bread in a bakery in which, after much confusion, he finally is able to
purchase the bread. What his exploits in the bakery demonstrate is the way
foreign travel can heighten our sense of being alive by providing various
kinds of challenges, generally of minor import. His conclusions about
foreign travel are of interest. He writes (1997:131):
In many ways, visits to foreign lands provide the best examples of the
basic work required by all of us in every successful interaction…The
tourist must, above all else, learn the methods of negotiating
everyday environments. At home these techniques have long since
passed into the unconscious, including being programmed into our
bodies so that our ways of moving, walking and talking all seem
“natural.” Only when we visit a foreign environment do these “taken
for granted” gestures become problematic. They then require
reexamination as appropriate. Hence we dredge them up from our
unconscious and deploy them as a set of repertoires in the negotiation
of the new, foreign space. The work of tourism becomes this
reexamination, relearning, and creative improvisation of methods for
successful interactions. The tourist negotiation of the environment is
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 24
only an illustration of the kind of work we all must do that is taken
for granted in our daily lives.
This passage captures one of the important benefits and gratifications of
foreign tourism—a need to employ one’s mental resources in dealing with all
kinds of interactions and a sense of fulfillment and pleasure in doing so. We
travel to escape from our everyday lives, which are based on familiarity and
recurrences.
There is a kind of joyousness and high spirited feeling found in
Gottdiener’s description of his experience at the Brazilian bakery, and as he
tells the story, the woman who sold him the bread was “beaming” when he
finally figured out how to buy it. And then, shortly after buying the bread,
Gottdiener tells us “I was back in my room drinking coffee and eating the
very nice, freshly baked bread.” His adventure in the bakery is similar in
nature to the adventures innumerable tourists have all over the world, who
venture out of their hotel rooms or short-stay apartment rentals to find a nice
bakery and whose triumphs and disappointments add zest and excitement to
their lives.
What tourism will be like in the post-postmodern world, which some
cultural theorist suggests is where we now are (since postmodernism is, they
argue, “passé”) remains to be seen. But whether we travel in a modernist,
postmodernist, or post-postmodernist world, getting a loaf of freshly baked
bread and having it with a good cup of coffee in one’s hotel room or
apartment in a foreign land (and in one’s native country, as well) is always a
great pleasure.
Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 25
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