A mobilities approach to tourism from emerging world regions

Abstract

Increasing numbers of people from the emerging world regions, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East engage in tourism practices at domestic, intra-regional and long-haul international scales. In this article we deploy an innovative application of the mobilities approach, which we argue moves beyond the Eurocentrism implicit in modernist tourism studies, in a comparative analysis of tourism in and from these regions and those in the 'West'. Our analysis opens up the systematic study of tourism in emerging world regions in terms of the mobilities paradigm, and concludes: one, travel had a multiplicity of origins in societies in the emerging regions, but most did not possess an equivalent emic term to 'tourism.' Two, tourism at domestic and intraregional levels tends to be entangled with other discretionary mobilities, whereas the long-haul level is more differentiated. Three, the development of domestic discretionary travel in emerging regions can be represented by four overlapping 'mobility constellations'. Four, there are significant historical differences between the regions in their long-haul mobility constellations, although their kinetic hierarchies are all still steep. Five, forms of movement and associated practices of discretionary travellers from the emerging regions and Western countries became increasingly similar under the impact of socio-technological, economic and cultural globalisation. Six, differences between the emerging regions, particularly Asia, and the West are most salient on the emic level of representations of international travel: the specific cultural motive forces for tourism do not centre on authenticity-seeking, but are instead bound up with prestige and markers of modernity.

Subversive mobilities

“…As a general background to the following discussion, it should be noted that current representations of "smuggling" or "trafficking" suffer from an inherently Eurocentric or Occidentalocentric bias, like much of the terminology in the domain of travel (Cohen and Cohen 2015). Modern states, particularly in the West, but increasingly also in Asia, have established mobility regimes, which criminalized as "smuggling" the movements of certain goods (cocaine, rhino horn), or the transportation of disempowered people, as "trafficking", though such activities could have been legally permissible even in the West in the not too distant past.…”

“…We deploy a slightly modified version of Cresswell's (2010) approach to individual mobility, as an entanglement of movement, representations and practice, which we have slightly adopted in a previous work (Cohen and Cohen 2015); particularly we view representations as an interpretation or meaning ascribed to movement, but assume that different parties might interpret a movement in contrasting terms. Representations are hence contestable: mobilities, considered as subversive by a given mobility regime, may be represented as legitimate in the culture of their perpetrators.…”

Introduction to the Special Issue: Emerging Tourisms and Tourism Studies in Southeast Asia

“…Multi-disciplinary studies have been and continue to be criticized for perceived weaknesses in conceptualization and in methodology (King 2006;2014). In this regard, perhaps the field of tourism studies and its rationale should be questioned (see, for example, Cohen and Cohen 2012a;2014a;2014b;2015a;2015b).…”

Introduction to the Special Issue: Emerging Tourisms and Tourism Studies in Southeast Asia

“…Multi-disciplinary studies have been and continue to be criticized for perceived weaknesses in conceptualization and in methodology (King 2006(King , 2014. In this regard, perhaps the field of tourism studies and its rationale should be questioned (see, for example, Cohen and Cohen 2012a, 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b.…”