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Hosts and guests revisited: tourism issues of the 21st century

2002; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 39; Issue: 08 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5860/choice.39-4654

1943-5975

Valene L. Smith, Maryann Brent,

Culinary Culture and Tourism

PrefaceThe creation of Hosts and Guests Revisited: Tourism Issues of the 21st has been a challenging experience. A review of the published tourism literature since 1974 was the minimum requisite, which only served to point up the many differences between the study of tourism then and now. In 1964, when I proposed study of the impacts of tourism on the Inuit of Kotzebue Sound as a dissertation topic, the doctoral committee denied the request because there was no tourism literature. In 1974, when the first national tourism symposium convened at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Mexico City, there were a scant dozen individuals in the United States interested in the phenomenon of tourism and no academic departments (other than those affiliated with Schools of Business, and Hotel and Restaurant Management).The request to edit the papers from that meeting, as Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism (1977), left virtually no literature to cite. For principles to organize the text, I looked within -- to a background that included 15 years as owner/manager of a travel agency, 20 years of experience as a tour escort on six continents, a Ph.D. in anthropology, and 12 years teaching tourism courses at the local community college.The classification of tourists, from elite to mass, the interests of tourists as ethnic or environmental, and discussion of the role and extent of tourist impacts all derived from that pool of observer-participant data.Twenty-five years later there are more than 415 universities and colleges providing training for employment in the world's largest industry, more than 1200 individual researchers, and more than a dozen scholarly journals that publish academic research in tourism.The present volume benefits from the participation of co-editor Maryann Brent, who, as a 1997 Ph.D. in geography and tourism, is a product of the recent important scholarly interest in the leisured and sustainable use of planet Earth and the space beyond. Her expert editing and graphic skills are evident throughout this book. Together we have read, sifted, distilled, and discussed the many facets of tourism. Our goal is to bring together into one volume the breadth of tourism issues in contrast to the single-topic volumes that dominate the literature.We have read widely but, by virtue of space limitations and philosophy, citations are minimal and the narrative is almost jargon free. The case studies, all of which were invited, were selected to illustrate what we believe to be the central issues of tourism, and in the future.The book is intended as an introductory text of value and interest to students coming into the field of tourism, to provide an understanding of the role of tourism in human lives. The World Tourism Organization conference, Human Capital in the Tourism Industry of the 21st Century (WTO, 1997b) set the tone. Those authors all spoke to the need to move beyond the present fragmentation of departments, to develop the tourismification of the (Jafari, 1997a, p. 210). Everyone engaged in tourism, as scholar or employee, needs exposure to the big picture, to understand the significance of globalism as the dynamic economic and political process that has propelled tourism into front rank as the world's leading industry. The 21st century seems destined to enlarge the global network for travel, to include tourists who are more knowledgeable about world destinations, and to increase the competition soliciting tourism and tourist revenues.Before radio and television widened our vision, National Geographic Magazine brought photos and narratives of the faraway places and amazing discoveries into millions of homes and offices around the world. Their appointment of a senior editor at National Geographic magazine to cover the burgeoning field of sustainable tourism for the Traveler (Tourtellot, 1999,p. 98) is heartening, and indicative of the growing public interest and knowledge about tourism. Jenkins (1997) suggests that our challenge is to use our knowledge base to devise education and training programs that are relevant to the 21st century and which equip people to work effectively and efficiently in these areas ... so that industry entrants are not taking a job but rather the first step on a career ladder (p. 220).The orientation in this volume is cross-cultural and eclectic, especially in the identification of tourism among preindustrial societies, in its statement of the economic and political threads that historically shaped the development of tourism in the last half-century, and in its projection into the next millenium. Much of the data may be not be new to professional colleagues but the integrative interpretation is different from the traditional tourism text.The text is not intended to be inclusive but rather to suggest topics that could be further elaborated with additional references, for which the lengthy bibliography is supplied.The case studies have broad theoretical links to many aspects of tourism, in addition to the chapter with which they have been identified, again to promote discussion and further reading. We have also chosen to follow Weaver (1998) in the use of descriptive terms that allude to the process of development, with the more developed countries (MDCs) referring to Western Europe and Russia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US. The less developed countries (LDCs) include all of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and former Soviet republics such Uzbekistan and Tajikstan.We are indebted to our many colleagues for their assistance in the preparation of this volume, and beg forbearance for our sins of omission. Many excellent articles and fine scholars whose work has influenced our thinking simply could not be credited due to space limitations. I spoke of tourism as then, with no literature to cite; the now is too many.