Leisure & Tourism

From the book: Pastimes, 4th edition, by Ruth Russell, 2009, Sagamore Publishing

After reading Box 5.3 on pp. 113-114. Answer questions 1 and 2 on p. 114.

1 - Which perspective do you think best portrays the effect of tourism in the Khumbu? Has it been good or bad? Why?

Two opinions are explained in the box about Khumbu, Tibet. Interestingly, Khumbu and its people sounds strikingly similar to the community described in the book Lost Horizon by James Hilton (written in 1933, later made into a movie by Frank Capra in 1939), where the story is about finding a group of people in the mountains of Tibet that have been so removed from the global society's evolution that they have retained their innocence and youth eternally. The story unfolds with an explorer falling in love with a woman who had lived in that society for many years and him wanting to take her back with him to his world. But when she leaves the environment which had kept her young, she ages and dies. (I didn't want to give away the ironies of the story, so I left out some juicy details.) This excellent novel is a reflection of the answers to both of the questions posed here.

Two perspectives are presented in the box narrative about Khumbu: the first perspective intimates that the "tourists" who want to explore and climb the mountains is good because it brings economic benefits to the inhabitants of employment and money. The men of the society have become cooks, guides, and porters, serving the needs of the tourists, or outsiders. Whereas in the past the people had to rely on the environment for survival, including farming the land for vegetables and following the herds of yaks for food and clothing, the people could work for money and buy survival staples such as modern clothing. They also could afford to become better educated academically.

The second perspective suggests that tourism is destroying the native culture by overly influencing the host culture. The tourists have become consumers of the native culture, because it is "on sale," thus distorting many of the traditions that are based on Buddhism and survivalism. By making the imagery and symbolism of the culture a commodity, it makes the way of life an industry and cheapens the traditions.

2 - Is the torrent of tourists in the Khumbu an example of the mechanisms of diffusion or acculturation? Has it meant cultural loss? Why or why not?

Diffusion is when customs spread from one culture to the next. Acculturation occurs when two cultures are in contact over a long period of time. Clearly the diffusion and acculturation predominantly is moving from the tourist culture to the Khumbu culture. While the tourists may experience the culture while visiting there, and they may take trinkets or artifacts back with them to their original culture, it seems that the tourists are leaving more of a psychological mark and an economic mark on the Khumbu culture.

The term "cultural loss" is a value judgment which implies something bad is happening. While a degraded farming environment resulting from increased garbage, massive deforestation and soil erosion is obviously not good, these are not effects that cannot be remedied with honest confrontation and vigilant, intelligent activity. Is it fair to leave these people leading a primitive life when they can live an easier life? Who should make that decision? When external groups pass judgment and decide for an indigenous people what may be good or bad, that is equivalent and tantamount to the attitude of the imperialists and anti-imperialists of the 19th century. Wouldn't it be better to better educate the people, beyond their foundation philosophy with the history of the results of imperialism and influx of capitalism and let the group make their own decision?

Americans and South Americans have already made mistakes in this area when it comes to aboriginal peoples. The South Americans chose cultural and physical integration, resulting in the mestizos or homogeneity of the people resident there, especially in Brazil. In North America, there was much more segregation, such as when Native Americans were separated and discriminated against sometimes even worse than freed slaves, both in the US and Cuba, to name a few "countries." Cultural purity, after people are introduced to new ideas, is almost an impossibility in 21st century, with television and the Internet and air travel. Nowhere is this more evident than in the emergence of a global economy which is now the primary force in influencing culture globally. Isn't it better to preserve the good aspects of a culture by discerning those aspects through education and intelligent choice?

From the book: Pastimes, 4th edition, by Ruth Russell, 2009, Sagamore Publishing

After reading Box 6.6 on p. 143. Answer questions 1 and 3 on p. 144.

1 - What is your initial reaction to Sorkin's critique? Can you think of any places near you that might fit his description of "city as theme park"?

Initially, Disney World was introduced in the book as the "utopia of leisure," (p. 143) giving a false fantasy of pleasure. It's important to understand that the motivation for this paradigm is economic or monetary in nature - to keep the people in a park or place so that they spend their money there. That is why Disney has the hotels in the park as well, along with internal modes of transportation. Enclosed shopping malls, as Sorkin states, are "benign public places" that are "hermetically sealed" controlling the behavior of people, especially their spending habits.

Six Flags in NJ is very much a closed, controlled "pleasure park" as well. Besides Six Flags Great Adventure, I remember being on a business trip over a decade ago to Hong Kong where I went to Pacific Place, near Citibank where I worked, a "four-level mall home to over 130 shops and boutiques, two major department stores, three five-star hotels - one of which was my hotel where I was staying, a boutique hotel, three Grade-A office towers - including the Citibank building - and 270 five-star serviced apartments." Half of this mall was underground, and it was so large, it was confusing, causing me to feel somewhat out of control and lost - a kind of underground vertigo. I just wanted to get out and see the sky and figure out my directional bearings.

Another place that was a gigantic underground indoor mall that I went to was Toronto. Whereas NYC has numerous stores at street level, the stores in Toronto are all underground, accessible only by stairs similar to NYC subway stairs. The difference between Toronto and