Tourist Aesthetics in the Global Flow: Orientalism and “Warrior Theatre” on the Swahili Coast

Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield

doi:10.1080/089460490468171

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…As Kasfir (2004) argues, the warrior becomes a representation, a simulacrum of the pastoralism life that is not readily visible to the tourist at the coast, and the boundaries between 'performance' and 'material culture' become vague. Similar encounters take place between female tourists and 'beach boys', as well as between male tourists and local women.…”

Section: Tourism In Kenyamentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The hunting safari for wealthy 'tourists' was gradually developed into an East Africa camera safari package, which has a wide range of comforts, luxuries and prices. The dominant narrative of safari Downloaded by [134.117.10.200] tourism relates to 'primeval, untamed landscape dominated by wild animals, played out in the broad savannas of the Great Rift in Kenya and Tanzania', coupled with a nostalgia of the Masai and Samburu, the warrior-herdsmen (Kasfir 2004). Western travellers on East African safaris are often whisked away from the airport on private buses and taken directly to maintained environments (game reserves) where they can consume African 'nature' without exposure to certain elements (such as urban life in Nairobi or Dar Es Salaam) that might disrupt or undermine this constructed narrative.…”

Section: Tourism In Kenyamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The country has a coastline of 536 km on the Indian Ocean (stretching from the border with Somalia in the north to the 'quieter' division with Tanzania in the south), and tourists are predominantly attracted by natural attributes: white sandy beaches, blue skies, warm water and coral reefs. Despite a recent tendency to diversify the country's tourism product (Ondimu 2002), foreign tour operators have tended to emphasize the country's wildlife and beach settings at the expense of cultural tourism, such as the Swahili urban and historical environments -stone towns, archaeological sites and material culture (Irandu 2004;Kasfir 2004). Thus, the dominant travel narratives and discourses are still of a presentation of an exoticized Africa where people travel to see and consume both 'nature' and the 'native' (Dunn 2004).…”

Section: Tourism In Kenyamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fort Jesus: Guiding the Past and Contesting the Present in Kenya

Sarmento

2010

Tourism Geographies

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This paper focuses on the interpretation of Fort Jesus, Kenya, a late sixteenth century Portuguese-built fort, and attempts to discuss its significance in the region and in the country, and its role within the context of recent tourism development in Kenya. By exploring the ways in which a sample of local tourist guides engage with tourists and with the heritage and memory that Fort Jesus represents in this coastal region, some of the challenges facing tourism development in post-colonial Kenya are analysed. While the study reveals that the guides are not a homogeneous group, one of the shared positions is their resentfulness towards the inability of the coastal region to control and benefit from tourism. At the same time, despite some of the guides revealing to be skilful cultural mediators, the vast majority construct their mediation upon a predominantly colonial knowledge of the Fort. Résumé: Fort Jésus: interprétation du passé et contestation du présent au KenyaCet article se concentre sur l'interprétation de Fort Jésus, au Kenya, un fort construit par les portugais au seizième siècle, pour discuter de sa signification dans la région et dans le pays, ainsi que de son rôle dans le contexte du développement récent du tourisme au Kenya. En explorant la façon dont unéchantillon de guides touristiques locaux se conduit vis-à-vis des touristes et par rapport au patrimoine et la mémoire que Fort Jésus représente pour cette zone côtière, j'analyse les problèmes auxquels le développement du tourisme dans un Kenya post colonial doit faire face. Bien que l'étude révèle que les guides ne sont pas un groupe homogène, l'incapacité de la région côtière de contrôler et de bénéficier du tourisme les contrarie tous. En même temps, bien que les guides se soient révélés des interprètes culturels habiles, la majorité construit ses interprétations d'après une connaissance du fort essentiellement coloniale. Diese Studie konzentriert sich auf die Interpretation von Fort Jesus in Kenia, einem portugiesischen Fort aus dem späten sechzehnten Jahrhundert, und strebt an, seine Bedeutung für die Region und das Land sowie seine Rolle im Zusammenhang mit den jüngsten Tourismusentwicklungen in Kenia zu diskutieren. Indem die Art und Weise untersucht wird, mit der eine Auswahl von lokalen Reiseführern sich mit Touristen sowie mit dem Kulturerbe und den Erinnerungen, welches Fort Jesus für diese Küstenregion darstellt, auseinandersetzt, analysiere ich einige der Herausforderungen, die der Tourismusentwicklung im postkolonialen Kenia gegenüberstehen. Während die Untersuchung zeigt, dass Reiseführer keine einheitliche Gruppe darstellen, so ist doch eine der gemeinsamen Positionen ihr Aufgebrachtseinüber die Unfähigkeit der Küstenregion den Tourismus zu kontrollieren und von ihm zu profitieren. Zur gleichen Zeit, und obwohl einige der Reiseführer sich als gekonnte Kulturvermittler hervortun, basiert die Wissensvermittlung für dieüberwiegende Mehrheit hauptsächlich auf kolonialem Wissenüber das Fort.

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Section: Tourism In Kenyamentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Tourism In Kenyamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tourism In Kenyamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fort Jesus: Guiding the Past and Contesting the Present in Kenya

Sarmento

2010

Tourism Geographies

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“…But it is in the discussion of “third order simulacra” that Baudrillard forges ground that has proven so productive for scholars of (auto‐)Orientalist tourist markets (e.g. Kasfir ; Steiner ; Tan ), as this category no longer refers to reproductions of the ostensibly “real,” overt or concealed, but a shift wherein representation, drawing on a cultural imaginary, itself produces realities. In Baudrillard's words, “the territory no longer precedes the map… [it is] the map that precedes the territory” (1994, 1).…”

Section: Orientalizing the Orientmentioning

confidence: 99%

Either Here or There: Short‐Term Study Abroad and the Discourse of Going

Barkin

2018

Anthropology & Edu Quarterly

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This article examines practices surrounding short-term study abroad, focusing on how its outsourcing to professional agencies can shape student encounters abroad. Through ethnographic work in Southeast Asia, I explore the "exposure model" of intercultural learning relied on by many programs. I argue that for-profit providers, catering to administrative and neoliberal exigencies in higher education, have fostered an uncritical "discourse of going," which subordinates consideration of pedagogical goals and outcomes to the imperative of increasing participation. [Experiential education; intercultural learning; short-term study abroad; Southeast Asia; study abroad] Over the past fifteen years, study abroad at American institutions of higher education has shifted dramatically away from semester-long programs that are commonly connected with overseas universities, and toward short-term programs (Institute of International Education and Farrugia 2018), which demonstrate much greater variability of pedagogical approach and practice (Mercer 2015; Tarrant, Rubin, and Stoner 2014; Willis and Beyene 2018). This change has been wrapped in a narrative of progress and accomplishment that originates both from scholars and practitioners (e.g. Bellamy and Weinberg 2006;Chieffo and Griffiths 2004;DeLoach et al. 2003), many of whom are themselves involved in directing short-term programs, or who have taken on the objective of "internationalization" for their campuses (Fischer 2008;Kreber 2009). This project takes as foundational the belief that getting students out of the country-as part of an academic agenda, broadly construed-should be the primary goal of internationalization advocates at American colleges and universities, and that the nature of that academic agenda is at best a secondary consideration. In this article, I argue that the rise of this "discourse of going" is best understood as another dimension of the shift toward a discursively corporate lens and the neoliberal model of higher education that Readings (1996) termed the "university in ruins." Unlike practices generally opposed by faculty, such as the market-based ranking of scholars or increasing reliance on adjunct instructors, that are commonly associated with Readings' discussion (Vora 2015), this shift depends on a less visible penetration of the market via the promotion and "provision" of short-term faculty-led study abroad (hereafter STFLSA), which is often endorsed and celebrated by faculty as part of an undifferentiated advocacy for international education. This shift toward short-term programs depends on a powerful lacuna in the oversight of pedagogy abroad (Lemmons 2013) which not only transpires in a literal and figurative "overseas" space, but trades on the unrevised conception of travel as inherently educational and conferring of status. This conflation travel with global citizenship and experiential learning (Bennett 2012;Brodsky-Porges 1981;Robalik 2006) mirrors what La Brack and Bathurst term the "contact hypothesis" (2012, 208). In this article, I f...

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“…As noted by Kasfir (2004), political history and discomfort are effaced by ubiquitous paintings of idyllic tribal village life, wildlife, and apparently "authentic" sculpture of native tribe people in souvenir shops and markets. The journey through Kenya is soothed by the aesthetics of safari style, colonial chic, and the selfconsciously primitivist décor of the restaurants, bars, and hotels where tourists mix.…”

Section: Memory Work and Disruptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spacing Forgetting: The Birth of the Museum at Fort Jesus, Mombasa, and the Legacies of the Colonization of Memory in Kenya

Linehan

Sarmento

2011

Cultural Memories

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As the cornerstone of colonial expansion into East Africa, and, consequently, as one of the most important public buildings on the continent, Fort Jesus in Mombasa, Kenya, presents many opportunities to investigate the intersection of colonialism, memory, and power. The fort was built in 1594 by the Portuguese to help secure their foothold in East Africa and to provision and protect their expansive trading network in the Indian Ocean. With its caramel-colored rampart of hewn coral looming over the old-town district (Fig. 1) and its modern role as a hub of cultural activity and tourism in the city, the fort is listed by UNESCO as a potential world heritage site. It has a violent past and is shaped by multiple layers of history and memory. Over time it fell under and out of Portuguese control and operated for 300 years as the command center of the Omani Sultanate and, later, the Sultan of Zanzibar (Hinaway, 1970). It also functioned as a prison under the British from the late nineteenth century until a period in the 1950s that paralleled the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya, at which time the fort was converted into a museum. This conversion was funded with the assistance of the Portuguese government, which grasped the opportunity to restore the fort as part of that country's public commemoration of Prince Henry the Navigator, a paramount figure in Portuguese national and imperial identity. This chapter focuses on the transformation of the fort from a prison into a museum, a remarkable moment of colonial authority and anticolonial struggle that involved key figures of the Kenyan anticolonial movement, notably the trade unionist and nationalist politician Tom Mboya, and the leader of the East African Goan League, journalist Pio Gama Pinto.

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Tourist Aesthetics in the Global Flow: Orientalism and “Warrior Theatre” on the Swahili Coast

Cited by 12 publications

References 5 publications

Fort Jesus: Guiding the Past and Contesting the Present in Kenya

Fort Jesus: Guiding the Past and Contesting the Present in Kenya

Either Here or There: Short‐Term Study Abroad and the Discourse of Going

Spacing Forgetting: The Birth of the Museum at Fort Jesus, Mombasa, and the Legacies of the Colonization of Memory in Kenya

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