Cultural Dichotomies In A Globalizing Society
The level of ‘social-cultural impacts’ in tourism research corresponds to that of ‘social system’ in a sociological space. Such tourism research is intended to evaluate impacts of tourism development upon social system of a tourist destination area or nation. One social-cultural impacts of particular note is the ‘demonstration effect’ which explain the unbalanced relation of ‘rich’ guests and ‘poor’ hosts especially in international tourism; residents (particularly young people) in destination areas are likely to copy fashions, personal effects and behavioral patterns of foreign tourists. Such demonstration effects could cause structural changes in the social system of the destinations; such changes include modernization and commodification. As secondary consequences of the demonstration effects, negative social-cultural effects could emerge. Some researchers have reported the occurrence of ‘social problems’ such as prostitution, crime, congestion, litter and ‘acculturation’. Such impacts of international tourism upon social system of a destination area or nation are reflective of globally serious problems, especially the Western and non Western dichotomy problem of the ‘modern world system. ’ Thus the social-cultural impacts of tourism are connected to the ‘modern world system’ through international tourism.
Typically, cultural dichotomies have been formulated as contrasts between Western and non-Western cultures or selves. The Western self is egocentric while the self of other cultures is sociocentric. The phenomenon of hybridization can be seen as a major result of cultural connection, and it further undermines the idea of cultures as internally homogeneous and externally distinctive. Hybrid phenomena result from the transformation of existing cultural practices into new ones. The processes of interconnection and hybridization offer new ways for cultural practices to become fused and new forms for the development of cultural identities. The greater the connection is across cultures, the more these cultures begin to interweave so that complex mixtures and new genres are created.
In discussing globalization theories, Featherstone and Lash (1995) noted that there were two main contestants: homogenizers, for whom globalization is to be seen as a consequence of modernity, and heterogenizers, who consider globalization as characterizing postmodernity. In an attempt to articulate the relationship between the global and the local, Robertson (1995) objected to the widespread tendency to regard the global-local issue as a polarity consisting of mutually excluding components. Rather than considering globalization as a process that overrides locality, Robertson dealt with the global in its local manifestations, which he described using the composite term glocalization. The existence of a world system and the phenomenon of glocalization present a particular problem for the notion of cultural dichotomies. If one takes the process of glocalization seriously, there is an impact of the global on the local cultural level that is not recognized by cultural dichotomies and thereby neglected in mainstream academic, cultural research. In an attempt to account for the dynamics of cultural interconnectedness, Clifford (1997) expanded on his earlier ideas by taking "travel" as a metaphor for capturing the relationship between cultures. Travel decentralizes the notion of culture, in that cultural action and the making and remaking of identities take place in the contact zones along the intercultural frontiers of nations, peoples, and locales. The metaphor of travel leads to an increased interest in diasporas, borderland, immigration, migration, tourism, museums, exhibitions, pilgrimage, and exile. From the metaphor of travel, a familiar term like acculturation becomes complicated because it assumes an overly linear path from one culture to another. Contact zones, instead, permit a two-way intensification of contact and are, moreover, open to forms of communication that run across the boundaries of many groups and cultures simultaneously.
Cultural flows fragment existing homogeneities of localized groups. A frequently cited example in the literature of global system theory is Appadurai's (1990) distinction between five categories of global landscapes: ethnoscapes (for example, immigrants, tourists, refugees, guest workers, exiles, and other moving groups), technoscapes (that is, global configuration of technology, both mechanical and informational), mediascapes (for example, newspapers, television stations, film production studios), finanscapes (for example, currency markets, stock exchanges, commodity speculations), and ideoscapes (for example, ideology of states and counter ideologies of movements, ideas about freedom, rights, welfare).
