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Utopia on Earth?: Sustainability, White Tourism, and Neocolonial Desire

2024; Penn State University Press; Volume: 35; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/utopianstudies.35.1.0226

2154-9648

R. Fraser,

Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research

Several scholars, and even a few journalists,1 have written about the figure of the international tourist who uses South Asia as a canvas upon which one can create and recreate the self. Perhaps the most discernable example in the pop culture imagination is Elizabeth Gilbert's trip to an ashram in India, documented in Eat Pray Love (2006), which inspired a problematic succession of travelers who followed her footsteps to communities that simply could not accommodate the traffic. International travel and tourism from the Global North to places like India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka frequently represent a form of neocolonialism wherein destinations and the people who live there are imagined not as places with a complex history inhabited by humans with their own subjectivity, but as mirrors the traveler can hold up as part of their search for a personal identity.2 This imagining is perpetuated through imagery from film and literature (like Eat Pray Love), in tourism advertisements, on social media, and in spaces like yoga studios. These texts often objectify South Asian people as they beckon the middle-class Western traveler to the subcontinent to embark on their own process of self-actualization and self-discovery. Specific to India, Rumya Putcha and Sangeeta Ballabhan explain the phenomenon in detail:Whether the focus is a yoga retreat in India or a backpacking trip in Nepal, one need only look at a handful of online travel blogs to encounter these themes.One peculiar version of Western imaginings of South Asia is found in places like Auroville, a settler colonial utopia or intentional community near Pondichery in south India. In his 2021 book, Better to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia, Akash Kapur estimated that thousands of these utopian experiments were set up in the 1960s and 1970s.4 Focusing on the relationships and power dynamics inside Auroville, which still exists today, Kapur presents us with many reasons to question its idealism. But as a utopian experiment, Auroville continues to be praised as a model for sustainable living.5 Its site is protected by UNESCO and it receives funding from the Indian government. Auroville also receives aid from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and cash donations from individual donors, and supports itself through product sales and tourism. Photographs on their website highlight the 372 acres of farmland6 established at Auroville over the last fifty years as well as the community's commitment to "green practices."7 One cannot help but wonder how much of their success in reforesting land and sustainable living is a direct result of their economic resources alone.The enduring idea that South Asia is a space where utopia can be realized, experienced, or built has its roots in the era of European colonization of the subcontinent. In her analysis, Jessica Namakkal reminds us that Auroville was founded in the direct shadow of colonialism, twenty years after British Imperial rule ended and a mere six years after the end of French colonial rule over Pondichery.8 Its opening ceremony was attended by an international cast of interested people, mostly from the Global North and West. A sizeable area for viewing the ceremony was reserved for people from the surrounding villages of Tamil Nadu, but with a barrier separating them from the rest of the crowd.9 Not exactly a great beginning for a place that was designated a cradle for a better humanity, or, as Aurovillians put it, "the city the Earth needs."10For its part, Auroville addresses the issue of neocolonialism directly and succinctly in a section of its website for frequently asked questions,11 How might we unpack the above statement? First, the frequency of such an accusation ("being neocolonialist") is difficult to determine, and the response of "very rarely" may be more a function of who is best positioned to make this accusation and whether residents of Auroville listen. Second, the answer challenges our grasp of history. It further distracts us from the fact that the question asks not about the colonial era but about neocolonialism. The two are not the same. Neocolonialism involves the re-imposition of imperial control to maintain the relation of dependency and avenues for exploitation, many (but not all) of which were established during colonial rule. This reimposition occurs on ideological, economic, political, and social levels. Neocolonialism can also be understood as the legacy effects and remnant features of imperialism in a postcolonial society. While the nation state was a fundamental source of power for colonial rule, neocolonial power is more diffuse and includes non-state actors like multinational corporations, international nonprofits, and NGOs.Neocolonialism is different from colonialism but it benefits from legacies of Empire and colonial history. These are the sticky colonial residues, or what Homi Bhabha calls palimpsestic phenomena, which we can understand as the layering of multiple events and histories onto the same surface, thereby leaving traces of a deep, complex past across that surface.12 Some of these traces are more easily identified than others. In this way, palimpsestic spaces are always haunted by the past and by the tensions that hang among its various layers. What pieces of the past haunt places like Tamil Nadu where Auroville sits today? I can think of a few, but will focus on one here: white supremacy.South Asia can be viewed as a utopian destination for white imagination and white self-actualization precisely because of the white supremacy that was spread and intensified during the European colonial era. For the white tourist or white commune-dweller, whiteness operates as a protective barrier in many parts of the world. This protection affords white travelers and migrants an ability to utilize global mobility in search of adventure and self-discovery, behaving often as they would in their own home country, to their own benefit and with little or no consequence. Images abound of visitors from places like the United States in yoga clothing, performing poses in front of places like the Taj Mahal or in front of a scene they find "inspiring" (read: depicting poverty).13Paradoxically, a certain level of idealization or romanticization of people who live and work in rural South Asia is necessary to achieve the white utopian vision. This romanticization often engages a vernacular of "spirituality" or "spiritual discovery." Take, for example, the governance section of the Auroville website, which displays the following 1972 quote from their founder, who is affectionately called "The Mother": "This fact is so obvious that a simple and ignorant peasant here is, in his heart, closer to the Divine than the intellectuals of Europe. All those who want to become Aurovillians must know this and behave accordingly; otherwise they are unworthy of being Aurovillians."14In her ethnographic study of white utopian festivals (e.g., Burning Man), Amanda Lucia found participants engaged in religious exoticism to emphasize the spirituality and authenticity of the experience.15 Authenticity claims by white participants who identified as "spiritual but not religious" deterred nonwhite adherents from joining these festivals. At the same time, participants in white utopian festivals were earnestly seeking spirituality as an alternative to the very real alienation they experience under neoliberal capitalism.16 As Lucia puts it,It might follow, then, that utopian sustainable communities like Auroville are a type of response to the overwhelming existential threats of climate change and global capitalism. If the scholarship of sustainability is any indication, then we are living in a moment when the dual ideals of sustainability and spirituality are increasingly viewed as mutually constituted.18 An early illustration of this occurred in 2002, when the journal Conservation Biology dedicated its December issue to the role of spirituality in sustainability, including David Orr's essay on "The Four Challenges to Sustainability."19 The fourth and most difficult challenge, Orr argued, is to transcend current ways of thinking about the world toward "a higher level of spiritual awareness."20 This level of spirituality would help us overcome several blockages to sustainability, the most important of which is our fear of mortality which, Orr says, leads us to deny our role in environmental destruction.For many, spirituality invokes notions of stewardship and connections to forces much larger and much older than human existence. If we feel helpless against looming climate disasters, perhaps spirituality can ease our anxiety and provide a framework for knowing what to do next. To be sure, the solution lies in nothing short of a revolution in thought and behavior on the part of the most privileged citizens on Earth. However, the social and economic revolutions necessary to end our predicament cannot occur if our utopias are racially homogenous and spirituality is leveraged on the exoticization and exclusion of others.I first began traveling to Bangladesh for research thirteen years ago. My trips have lasted anywhere from three weeks to nine months, with the longer trips taking place earlier, when I was a student with more time. On these trips, I frequently find myself as a white-presenting person in rural Bangladesh where few other white people go. The ones who do arrive tend to be men, and they tend to be medical researchers with large grants from wealthy governments.21 They arrive by speedboat, tour the area, and depart within days, leaving their data extraction in the capable hands of local researchers.Gender matters tremendously in rural Bangladesh, and I am reminded with significant regularity that my personal gendered experiences are racialized through my whiteness. It is not simply that my skin color marks me as a visitor; my skin is a palimpsestic surface etched upon by colonialism. Over the years, on countless occasions, I have been pulled from a crowd and given a seat of honor at the front of a train or bus. I have been taken to VIP areas to watch parades and festivals. I have had my bags carried, my feet rubbed with turmeric, and my photo taken with a bride and groom whom I do not know (usually because I am the guest of a second-cousin or someone's parents). I have been offered police escort and given permission to drive on the wrong side of the road in order to cut through traffic. I have been dressed up like a doll, decorated with mehndi, asked to try on jewelry, and asked to try on shoes. I have had entire dances performed just for me—an audience of one. And I have seen the rules bent or broken on my account numerous times. This special treatment occurs over and over and brings about conflicting feelings. To decline the privileges offered would be rude and ungrateful, while accepting these privileges makes me uncomfortable. They are the privileges of being a white visitor in a place that was twice colonized and is still occupied in many ways.Upon returning home one August, an acquaintance asked me, "So how was your Eat Pray Love trip?" I am rarely at a loss for words, but this did it. Why was her question so astonishing to me? I am not proud to admit this, but I was offended that the question seemed to minimize what I was doing as a researcher. The implication hinges on a comparison of the journey to find oneself in an ashram with the efforts of studying the labor conditions of women in poverty-stricken communities. Watching someone die of cholera is not a part of self-actualization. The tropes of Eat Pray Love do not apply.Unlike with India or Nepal, Westerners tend to regard Bangladesh as dangerous and dirty, and poverty-stricken but not in a way that is useful for self-discovery. When the global press is interested in Bangladesh, which is rare, it tends to highlight exceedingly horrible events. The Economist regularly ranks the capital, Dhaka, as among the worst places in the world to live, alongside cities like Lagos and Tehran.22 This reputation has been intensified by incidents over the past decade. In April 2013, a five-story building that housed garment factories collapsed, killing over 1,100 individuals, most of them factory workers making clothes for Western consumers.23 On July 1, 2016, twenty-four people were killed in a terrorist attack and hostage incident at the Holey Artisan Bakery, which was a favorite café among visitors from other countries. Six months later, BBC News ran the following headline: "Bangladesh Terror Café Reopens in New Location."24 I can only imagine how the owners of the Holey Artisan feel about the title "Bangladesh Terror Café."All of this seems to underscore the importance of a particular kind of spirituality in how the Western mind constructs our utopias. The racialization of Islam25 in the West means that a Muslim-majority country like Bangladesh cannot deliver the kind of spiritual experience that white, Western tourists desire. As the eastern portion of Bengal, once part of the unified Bengal region, Bangladesh may be similar to eastern India in many ways, but without the ashrams and yogis, it is not seen as fit for the spiritual journey of white tourists. It matters not that India has experienced more terror attacks than Bangladesh26; what matters is that India is perceived as non-Muslim and as deeply (yet vaguely) spiritual. As was the case for Amanda Lucia's interlocutors,27 the right kind of spirituality is one that can be easily appropriated as white. Although Islam can be considered a non-Western religion, it may be too far from whiteness to be fodder for a spiritual journey. Instead, non-Western religions like Buddhism and Hinduism get imagined as vessels though which white Westerners can experience spirituality.Even without the spiritual mystique, our relationship with Bangladesh is transactional and extractive. Low wages in Bangladesh enable international brands like The Gap, H&M, Walmart, and American Eagle to extract enormous profits while passing along low piece prices to consumers. Second only to China in terms of global garment exports, the Bangladesh readymade garment (RMG) industry supplies most of its RMG product to the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Eighty-five percent of Bangladesh's export economy relies on our consumption of fast fashion in the West.28 I have written elsewhere about the power our clothing brands have over the RMG supply chain.29 What is worth considering here, relative to that power, are the consequences of Western demands for sustainable production. When a brand like Marks & Spencer declares that they will go carbon neutral, it means they are imposing sustainability demands on their suppliers. This sounds wonderful to consumers who desire feel-good consumption, but the reality is international brands make these demands while refusing to pay more for sustainably produced goods. As one factory owner told me, "They [Western consumers and brands] want more green factories, green buildings, and a green setup, but there is no funding for this. They won't pay. Do they understand that climate change is not free?" In essence, we have been asking some of the poorest nations and most exploited workers to bear the cost and consequences of a climate crisis they did not create. When we think about Bangladesh, perhaps we should reflect on the ways that we are complicit in the poverty and pollution that make it one of the most difficult places on Earth to live.When considering certain sustainable utopias through the lens of neocolonialism, it becomes apparent how imperialism persists both domestically and abroad. Analogous to the white festival attendee pursuing spirituality, the white tourist in search of self-fulfillment, and the white commune resident aspiring to foster a more environmentally sustainable community, the white nationalist embodies an unmistakable imperialism. In The Nutmeg's Curse, Amitav Ghosh30 demonstrates how the cultural imagination of utopias and colonial racial hierarchies emerged together around the world as Western powers expanded conquest across the Indian Ocean and throughout the New World. In this way, he argues, racism was embedded in processes that produced the climate crisis from the very beginning.31Climate change is now upon us, affecting us every day, perhaps in ways we may not yet know or understand. Climate denial has become increasingly untenable even among individuals deeply entrenched in far-right political ideologies. What has emerged is an amalgamation of white nationalism and climate activism, sometimes referred to as eco-nationalism.32 The eco-nationalist movement is not a fringe element of American politics. In fact, some of its discursive tactics, like linking environmental degradation to over-population, are present across the political continuum in the United States.In April of 2021, the attorney general of Arizona filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and several senior officials involved with border protection and immigration enforcement.33 The lawsuit surprised many on the political left because the suit invoked the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) in its claim that immigration was contributing to climate change, and the federal government was not doing its part to protect the environment against the influx of people from outside the United States. The State of Arizona contended that discontinuing the Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" policy, and halting border wall construction without first completing an environmental impact analysis, constituted noncompliance with NEPA rules. Specifically, the suit cites language from NEPA that focuses on human population growth as having profound effects on the environment.34 The case ultimately failed, but its appeals rose to the level of the U.S. Supreme Court before being sent back to the lower court. As the United States continues to litigate its way through the climate crisis, it would behoove us to keep this example of eco-nationalism in mind.Like Lucia's analysis of utopian festivals, the case of Auroville serves as a cautionary tale for how easily even the most well-intended projects generate exclusivity and inequality. I hope it is by now obvious that genuine sustainability efforts should embrace diverse perspectives and involve local communities in shaping environmental policies and practices. The fusion of spirituality and sustainability has practical implications for addressing global climate change. While acknowledging the capacity of spirituality to motivate environmental stewardship is commendable, it is imperative to refrain from utilizing it as a tool to delineate an insider group from an outsider group. The same goes for weaponizing climate action as a tool to promote nationalism.David Orr may be correct that our greatest challenge in the climate crisis today is our spirituality. By this, I think, he means our unwillingness to accept that we are mortal and vulnerable creatures. Just as white tourists can remain in a cultural bubble of their own making while traveling abroad, white North Americans have the ability to remain in a state of denial regarding the realities of mass extinction and our own role in the climate crisis. I do not know whether there is enough time for us to change before there is a profound, negative shift in our way of life. But I believe we must move beyond the recalcitrance of our current state of environmental politics and join, without dominating, the rest of the world in facing this challenge.