Ferry Tales: Mobility, Place and Time on Canada's West Coast
2012; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2151-4178
Autores Tópico(s)Arctic and Russian Policy Studies
ResumoPhillip Vannini, Ferry Tales: Mobility, Place and Time on Canada's West Coast. New York: Routledge, 2012 (246 pp.), ISBN 978-0-203-13610-2, US$29.95.Just when cultural imagings of tourism are regaining strength in appliedresearch, the project of Phillip Vannini invites readers to imagine the world of ferry transportation and its impact on the small island communities of Canada's West Coast. While conducting the field work for this participant-observation study, Vannini made 250 trips on British Columbia ferries and interviewed nearly 400 passengers and local inhabitants. The result is an ethnography that reveals not only how ferries condition life and the impact of tourism on the islands, but it also describes the great dependency on local populations generated by the tourism and hospitality industries. To convey how ferry arrivals and departures evoke emotions and structure the experiences of travelers and island populations alike, the author makes use of Victor Turner's well-known concept of the liminoid phase in pilgrimage rites. This book aims to demonstrate the importance of ethnography for decoding the deep connections between culture and technology. For, as Vannini shows, the study of technology is more than a straightforward recounting of tools, techniques, and technicians. The ethnographer must delve deep into the meaning of technology and uncover how human experiences and performances are constructed through this cultural medium.Unlike most other forms of transportation, ferries offer their passengers a nexus of time and space where play predominates over practical activities. The slow rhythms of displacement that characterize ferry travel facilitate an unusual sense of social cohesion among the travelers on board. In contrast, other forms of transport- such as cars, airplanes, and trains-create impersonality, alienation, and distrust. Because of this, security is of paramount importance to reduce the anxieties of the passengers in these other forms of transport. What the British Columbia ferry system means to the islanders is a complex matter. It has created connections with the wider urban-based society that have sometimes been beneficial to island communities in the short term but threatening to them in the long term.The islanders and their customs stand in sharp contrast with urban-based culture. Islander values are opposed to the hierarchal order that characterizes populated cities. The islanders prioritize the social cohesion and trust that prevail in their communities over and against the commercialized alienation of social relations in mega-cities. …
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