Page 538 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Tour sm and the Sell ng of Cultures | 1

on Postwar tourisM
I am assured by the Swedish anthropologist Victor Alneng, who knows these things, that
Lonely Planet impresario Tony Wheeler had his eyes set on Afghanistan for some time. As
evidence, Victor translated from a Swedish newspaper interview in September 2002 the fol-
lowing insights into the wheeler-dealer’s thinking: Wheeler: “When a place has been closed
there is always a group of people that want to come there first. After them come the large
hordes of travelers.” Reporter: “So what destinations will be the next big thing, after East
Timor?” Wheeler: “Angola and Afghanistan will come eventually. Maybe also Iraq. We were
on the verge of sending one of our writers to Afghanistan as early as last summer, but it
proved to still be very difficult to travel outside Kabul. Information ages quickly, so we chose
to wait a little” (Translation by Victor Alneng, Swedish text available at http://www.dn.se/
DNet/road/Classic/article/0/jsp/print.jsp?&a=56544).

and “complex” world still leaves commodification intact. A grinning fascination
with the curio and knowing awareness of the predicaments of exoticization does
not in actuality undo any of the structures of inequality that such “post-tourists”
would wish to avoid. What kind of self-deception is this that extends tourist
purchase to the most esoteric of objects at the same time as it can buy up the
mundane? I have seen tourists purchase gaudy plastic tap handles for their
metropolitan bathroom fittings, or plastic models of the Taj Mahal, with flashing
lights, as a tongue-in-cheek, high-kitsch souvenir. Arguably, post-tourist irony
here does not break with trinketization at all, but rather confirms the process,
and extends it exponentially.

TrinkETizaTion

The word trinketization will stand for the process of downgrading the mate-
rial cultures of the world into a grand compendium of trash. The anthropolo-
gist Claude Lévi-Strauss famously lamented this when he saw the detritus of
the West thrown back into the face of humanity; this trash culture has now
become the detritus of all our lives, and we revel in it. Does this not suggest
the need for a political diagnosis of tourism as rampant exploitation? The ar-
gument here is not for an end to tourism; it is thoroughly unlikely that could
even be considered and the planetary consequences are obscure; but might we
look towards the remote possibility of a still better tourism, an ethical and even
revolutionary tourism? What of those travelers who expressly seek out meet-
ings with the Maoists in Nepal, who march in hope of a meeting with the reds
of the Himalaya, or those who travel to learn from the Ogoni in Nigeria of their
struggle against the multinationals? There are travelers who go to seek sun and
friendship, and this seems worthy, but others go further and seek out local au-
thors, artists, performers: a cultural exchange program is not a forlorn idea.
I have seen a travel group barter performances with street musicians in a way
that was only possible on the basis of the same commercial exchange that the
critic of tourism in me deplores. Mass tourism is destructive, but there are those