A Socio-Cultural Explanation Of Tourism
This essay provides a review of literature that demonstrates the extent to which tourism phenomenon and its cultural impacts can be explained with the field of sociology. It discusses tourists’ typology, relationship between host and tourist, the social-cultural impacts of tourism and cultural dichotomies in a globalizing society.
Tourism as a Sociological Phenomenon
The first forms of tourism can be traced to the Roman Antiquity with the travels of the aristocracy for visiting Egyptian monuments while the classic concept of tourism occurred in the 17th century with the European British Tours, practiced by nobles. The modern concept of tourism developed during the Industrial Revolution. Tourism was initially understood to be a leisure time activity. Over time, it became a more and more complex phenomenon, a sociologic one. Tourism is a mass phenomenon due to its wide spread all over the world and all social classes. It is a cultural phenomenon for the masses. Through tourism, culture becomes accessible to everybody, by visiting different locations and cultural sites.
According to Yasumura (2007), tourism is a social phenomenon, which has different and serious social-cultural impacts, and is therefore a sociological object that should be undertaken positively. Constructing sociology of tourism is an urgent task in respect of both the theory and practice of general sociology. Tourism, in many cases, has been defined as an individual activity. By this definition, tourism is regarded as a type of leisure activities. Such tourism is a form of recreational activity, including traveling as a part or the whole of its content. Such a concept of tourism sometimes includes commercial and private business trips. In recent studies, concepts of ‘tourism’ have been gradually enlarging from the level of an individual activity to that of social relations. Tourism has begun to be considered as social relation, partly because social-cultural impacts of tourism cannot be ignored against the background of mass tourism. According to one of the Smith’s definition, tourism is the social interaction between tourists as ‘guests’ and residents in the tourist destination as ‘hosts. ’ Tourism phenomena can be described in all levels of a sociological space (actors, social interaction, social system and the modern world system). According to the levels of a sociological space, pioneering works of sociology on tourism can be classified into four subjects on sociology of tourism: tourists types, hosts and guests relations, social-cultural impacts, and international mass tourism.
Tourists Typology
The level of ‘tourists’ types’ in tourism research corresponds to that of ‘actors’ in a sociological space. As for research on tourists, the attention is focused on tourism typology. In the case of sociological investigations, they are formulated from the perspective of a social-cultural context. Tourism typologies in sociology of tourism can be divided into substantial and relational perspectives. The substantial typology is based mainly on the social attributes of tourists such as their sex, age, status, and desire to travel while the relational perspectives depends upon the sociocultural context of tourism activities. Cohen (1979) distinguishes four types of tourists in order of familiarity as: drifter, explorer, individual mass tourist and organized mass tourist.
Smith (1989) proposed a typology of tourists by considering the impacts of tourism based on three factors: the number of tourists, their goals, and their adaptation to local norms. As the number of tourist increases, adaptation to local norms reduces. Smith identified seven types of tourists: explorers, elite tourists, off-beat tourists, unusual tourists, incipient mass tourism, mass tourism, and charter tourists. Both Cohen and Smith typologies would reflect the sociological characteristics of tourists in modern tourism. Cohen postulates that tourists would tend to polarize into the institutionalized and non-institutionalized types. Smith (1989) has also argued that tourist development might have different degrees of impact upon host communities according to the level of each type.
Hosts and Guests in Tourism
The level of ‘hosts and guests’ in tourism research correspond to that of ‘social interaction’ in a sociological space. Interaction can be divided into static and dynamic features. De Kadt (1979) and UNESCO (1976) present examples of static interaction. De Kadt presents three situations of interaction between hosts and guests: interchanges involving trade of services and goods, surface interaction and encounters in the places of recreation, and interaction involving mutual-understanding and information exchanges. UNESCO characterizes the hosts and guests relationship into four: its transitory nature, temporal and spatial constraints, lack of spontaneity, and unequal and unbalanced experience.
Doxey (1976) and Butler (1975) present examples of the dynamic features of hosts and guests relations. Doxey postulates that tourism development would gradually cause stresses in the host community population as it destroys their value systems and causes them to lose their identities. Butler pointed out the complexity that depends on two determinant factors: social attributes of visitors (the length of stay; their racial and economical backgrounds) and the carrying capacity of the local community (the level of economic development; the spatial distributions of economic and other activities). And that these factors might give rise to four types of attitudinal and behavioral responses in the destination areas: aggressive promotion and support, slight acceptance and support, silent acceptance but opposition, and aggressive opposition. In destination areas, these four types of hosts’ responses might interweave, causing much more complex situations to appear.
