Aldo Canestrini. Schiessen Sie nicht auf den Touristen. Zürich and Berlin: Diaphanes Verlag, 2006. 175 pp. EUR 14.90 (paper), ISBN 978-3-935300-74-2.
Reviewed by Ignacio Farías (Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt University of Berlin/Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical University of Berlin)
Published on H-Travel (May, 2007)
Dystopia or Redemption: Which Do You Prefer?
Let me start with my vacations plans for last summer. The very same day that the first Israeli soldier was kidnapped by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, I made the great decision to buy a plane ticket--for a quite cheap fare--to Tel Aviv, Israel. I was counting on the political crisis being only temporary and lasting for no longer than a week or two. Even if the crisis happened to continue, I reasoned, and traveling around the southwestern part of Israel became too dangerous, I could spend my two weeks of well-earned vacation around the much safer northern part of the country, in the area next to Haifa and Lebanon. Or, I could simply stay longer with my friend, an Argentinean musician, in Tel Aviv. A week later, two new Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by the Hezbollah army and Israel responded with massive air strikes and artillery fire on the Lebanese civilian infrastructure, triggering a military conflict that lasted for six weeks. The decision I had to make at this point--if and how to travel to and around a country at war--exemplifies very well the core preoccupation of Canestrini's book: "Was wird nur aus unserem Urlaub, wenn der Krieg gegen irgendeinen Schurkenherrscher von der Achse des Bösen wirklich keine Grenzen mehr kennen sollte?" (p. 10); "Werden wir freier reisen oder immer mehr unter Aufsicht stehen? Verreisen wir als erwachsene und verantwortliche Personen oder als behütete und jeder Verantwortung enthobene Kinder?" (p. 9).
Structured around these questions, Canestrini pursues a double agenda. His first aim is to investigate the tourism's possible futures. In this regard, he offers an especially critical analysis of the future delineated by contemporary trends of global transformation: the political reconfiguration and militarization of the world order after September 11, the growing obsession with security at different levels (homes, hotels, resorts, neighborhoods, city centers, metropolitan areas, states, and whole regions), and the proliferation of technologies of genetic identification and surveillance, etc. All these trends, argues Canestrini, seriously threaten to end the possibility of a democratic use of the infrastructures of international mobility, new forms of cosmopolitanism and, particularly, more responsible forms of tourism.
More concretely, Canestrini presents at least three images of how tomorrow's tourism might look, if these trends were to continue. First, Canestrini imagines a tourist-military operation called Enduring Holydays launched to assure the right to vacations all around the world; a right that would be increasingly understood as "ebenso unverhandelbar wie es der Lebenstil der westlichen Länder ist [and that would imply] Tourismus mit Schutzschild. Urlaub um jeden Preis" (p. 10). Second, he suggests that in the near future national or international law could authorize customs officials to carry out immediate DNA analyses to prove the identity of incoming passengers selected randomly (or not randomly). In the latter case, the future would demand changing the old saying, "Sag mir woher du kommst, und ich sage dir, wer du bist" as follows "Sag mir, wer du bist, und ich sage dir, ob du eintreten darfst" (p. 98). Third, he forsees the global spread of gated tourist destinations, or "environmental bubbles" as Erik Cohen called them (i.e., bounded territories used exclusively for leisure and recreation), located all over the world, even in crisis areas, where local populations suffer the effects of war or poverty. However, thanks to multiple security systems that control all kinds of exchange (smells, food, bullets, persons, etc.) within the local environment, these bubbles would (and already do) remain completely safe. As my little summer vacation dilemma (if and how to travel to and around Israel) clearly shows, the possible future of tourism symbolized by these three images is well rooted in the present and cannot be dismissed as a product of the author's paranoid sensibility or a particularly searing criticism of contemporary global developments.
The second part of Canestrini's agenda is a plea for a different form of travel, a new ethic of tourism based on more conscious and open ways of dealing with hosts and destinations; a form of tourism based on a humanistic world view that prioritizes encounters with persons living at the destinations over the standardized tourist services and attractions. Such new tourism, Canestrini argues, could be integrated into the everyday life of both hosts and guests, into "our" everyday life when "they" visit "us" and into "their" everyday life when "we" are tourists. The author compares the intercultural permeability that such a form of travel would produce with the process of osmosis--the fusion of two liquids through a semi-permeable membrane.
Ethical positions, such as Canestrini presents here, are based mostly on intuitive ideas of what is right and wrong and what is desirable and what is not. However, in order to enforce ethical positions, these assertions must be supported by arguments that clearly explain why they are better or more desirable. And this is exactly what Canestrini engages in at different points in his book. Indeed, apart from appealing to the common sense of the reader with statements about how it is good to have a humanistic worldview, he also provides at least three main reasons in favor of his proposal for traveling in a more open and permeable way. The first one appeals to what the author considers to be the real nature of travel. Quoting Italo Calvino, Canestrini notes, "Die wahre Reise, verstanden als Introjektion eines‚ 'Außen' … impliziert eine totale Veränderung der Ernährungsweise, ein Verschlingen des besuchten Landes in seiner Fauna und Flora und seiner Kultur ... Dies ist die einzige Art zu reisen, die heutzutage noch einen Sinn hat" (p. 162). Canestrini argues that the most central value of travel is comprehending, which he defines as "etwas in sich zu fassen" (p. 161). Elevating comprehension as the major touristic virtue, he continues, would necessarily lead to a correct form of relationship with the others, i.e., to an integrative, open, and "naked" form of tourism. Also from a deontological perspective, Canestrini suggests that community-based tourism is possible since there is an unwritten universal law of hospitality, which prevails across cultural differences. Unfortunately Canestrini's argument for how this universal law can aid in making tourism more humane is a circular one. The universal human predisposition to hospitality, he asserts, needs to be aroused in tourists by transforming their practices into a deeper commitment to the people and cultures they visit.
From a consequentialist position, the author argues that such forms of tourism would lead to a decrease in terrorist attacks against tourists, tourist places and infrastructures, since it would improve the understanding between peoples and cultures. The real causes of terrorism, he argues, are the radicalization of the social and cultural inequalities between different groups of the population and the fact that these inequalities are increasingly visible to those large parts of the world population that live in miserable and precarious circumstances. "Wenn er von diesen Honigtopf nichts haben kann, wird er früher oder später versuchen, ihn zu verschlagen oder den Inhalt zu vergiften" (p. 163). Moreover, a more humane way of traveling would lead to less hatred, violence, and terrorism. This would be quite simple: "In den Saloons des Wilden Westens hatte das Schild 'Schießen Sie nicht auf den Pianisten' eine ganz präzise Bedeutung: der Pianist tut sein Bestes und macht Musik für die Allgemeinheit. Wenn wir heutzutage nicht wollen, dass man auf den Touristen schießt, dann wird es wohl nötig sein, dass seine Person ebenso nutzbringend und sympathisch wird" (p. 167).
At a crossroad between prospective and even prophetical statements about the future of tourism, on the one hand, and the defense of an ethical and even moralizing position, on the other, Canestrini's book exhibits attributes that are not exactly welcomed in academic texts. In fact, the agenda pursued by Canestrini supports only an essayistic style, which is precisely how this book is written. However, he seeks to offer more than predictions about the future of tourism and rules about how to practice it. He also provides a scholarly, informed perspective about the historical and contemporary entanglement of tourism, security, and international politics. Indeed, the main body of the book seeks to present historical and ethnographic analyses of the intricate relation between these three levels. The thesis of the book, or rather, its main assumption, is that from its beginnings and in its nature, travel has been tightly linked with issues of security and international politics. Focusing on this thesis, which is never explicit but can be read between lines, several analytical threads can be identified, which focus on the past and present of this relationship. I will comment on two central axes of Canestrini's analysis: the relation between tourism, anti-tourism and terrorism (chapters 2 and 3), and the contemporary obsession with security (chapters 5 and 6).
Canestrini argues that tourists and the tourism industry are often perceived as an invasion, as a form of imperialism. He points to the example of many autonomy movements that are based on radical anti-touristic positions and confront tourists with the slogan "Tourists go home." Canestrini sees such reactions as a consequence of the fact that tourism reproduces similar relations to those of imperialism: "Dieselben Voraussetzungen, dieselben Kräfterverhältnisse, dieselben Konsequenzen. In den Ländern der tropischen Breiten, suchte der Kolonialismus Holz, Elöfenbein, Gewürze und Gold. In genau denselben Ländern sucht der Tourismus von heute Sonne, Meer, Sex und Natur" (p. 54). Apart from this, he argues that tourists are perceived as intrinsically connected with political national identities. Tourists are seen as delegates and representatives of their respective nations, and therefore "ob er es will oder nicht, der Tourist wird sowohl für die Innere als auch für die Außenpolitik seines Heimatlandes in die Verantwortung genommen" (p. 40). The fact that "Embassador" is a very common name for hotels is the kind of empirical proof Canestrini offers for this connection. In any case, as heralds of societies of abundance, the tourists become "moving money-bags" or "golden geese" and as one sarcastic sticker put it, "If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot at them?" (p. 45). Given this, it should not be a surprise that global forms of mobility, and particularly tourism, are nowadays increasingly threatened by terrorism. Relying mostly on journalistic sources and emblematic cases, Canestrini shows how at least since the 1980s tourism has become a major arena in which terrorist groups have tried to influence national and international politics. In this context, he argues, tourists have become a sort of exchange value and a means for the production of terror. By kidnapping tourists and exploiting hotels and resorts, terrorist groups sabotage the tourism industry and by extension the whole state, which profits from tourism.
Even though at one point in the book Canestrini argues that it is necessary to distinguish between anti-tourism and terrorism, and treat them as two differentiated phenomena, when he comes to the analysis of both phenomena, they are presented as differentiated by a question of degree, and not by a difference of principle. In fact, the reasons he gives to understand both phenomena are practically the same. This becomes particularly clear when he analyzes the underlying causes of terrorism. He suggests that the way the tourism industry is being organized all over the world, radicalizing the differences between rich and poor, and the way tourists practice tourism, radically self-orientated and insensitive to local differences, encourage terrorist organizations to take revenge against the mighty Occident and its powerful oppressors. He even suggests that one of the main reasons why tourists are attacked is because Western tourists travel like children--naïve and arrogant--believing that their economic means, their money, must assure a friendly welcome. In my view, even if Canestrini might be right to connect the causes of terrorism with global economic inequalities, tourism--even in its most ethnocentric, childish, and pedantic variations--is certainly far from being the trigger of terrorist attacks.
Such suggested continuity between anti-touristic hostility and terrorist attacks against tourists can also be observed in the common historical genealogy which Canestrini outlines as part of an attempt to understand these phenomena. Canestrini goes back to the primordial anxieties and fears of travel at work in Western societies. He elaborates on the cultural pervasiveness of the image of a traveler being haunted, trapped, and finally cooked by exotic cannibals. Ending up in a big cooking pot as the meal of some primitive barbaric people, argues Canestrini, is an Ur-Angst spread throughout European culture. "Die Unsicherheit des Touristen besteht, analog zu jener der kühnen Reisenden der Vergangenheit, nicht allein in seinem Unbehagen oder besser gesagt seiner Angst gegenüber dem Anderen. Es ist die Unsicherheit unserer Kultur … welche wir in unserer Eigenschaft als westliche Touristen fröhlich in der Welt präsentieren" (p. 26). The victimization of the tourist is thus directly connected with the inability of Western culture to deal with strangers and this primordial fear of ending up served as meal. Such negative, or at least ambivalent, connotations of travel can also be observed in the etymological origins of the most important words of tourism. "Travel" was originally sort of pleasure or leisure. It is also not a coincidence that the (now largely archaic) English verb "to fare" (as in "to journey") shares a common root with the verb "to fear." The "host" is not just welcomed as a friend (hospes), but also feared as an enemy (hostis). When it first emerged in early modern Europe, Canestrini stresses, tourism was an adventure for the brave and courageous, for those who were daring to take all kind of risks, as long as they could reach a site, as this travel narrative of 1645 dramatically shows: "'Im Torre del Greco am Fuße des Vesuv wurden die Schweden von sechzehn Banditen überfallen, entkleidet, ausgeraubt und halbtot geschlagen … Bemerkenswert ist die Tatsache, daß sie trotz derartiger Erlebnisse bereits tags darauf aufbrachen, um den Lago di Agnano, die Solfatara un Puzzuoli zu besuchen, Orte, die zum touristischen Pflichtprogramm der Gegen um Neapel gehörten'" (p. 29). Canestrini suggests that something of this remains present in contemporary tourism and that a travel culture based on a basic fear of the Other is simultaneously a travel culture in which both sides, the traveler and the host, are radically opposed to each other and mutually put in danger. The fear of being eaten leads travelers to a radical closure against the Others, which, in turn, arouses anti-tourist feelings among these Others. Thus, contemporary terrorist attacks against tourists, even though new in their violence, are understood as a (radical) extension of an older principle.
In my view, a description of the connection of tourism and terrorism must be very precise and must be careful to distinguish the latter from any forms of anti-touristic feelings that tourism may inspire. First, it is important to reconsider anti-tourism as part of tourism, not a mere external reaction to it. Like tourism, which relies on emotion to impart a feeling of seeing and experiencing authenticity, anti-tourism is frequently an emotional claim to preserve or to restore what some perceive as genuine or authentic. "Tourists go home" does not mean "Foreigners out!" Such slogans are better understood as an indirect pleading for a certain type of tourism. Terrorist attacks, by contrast, are certainly not a pleading for any form of tourism. Nor are they a direct reaction to tourism. The relationship between tourism and terrorism is better understood as a form of structural coupling. Talking about structural coupling assumes understanding both tourism and terrorism as self-referential systems, which operate on a global scale, and which are ordered and reproduced by radically different logics and principles. This leads to an essential incommensurability of both systems, as the faces of incredulity among tourist victims of terrorist attacks and their families clearly express. The news stories recounted by Canestrini actually show that the connection between tourism and terrorism is limited to particular events, to certain moments and places. Terrorist attacks on tourists should therefore be understood as events of momentary inter-systemic coupling during which one system makes use of the structures of a second system in order to further reproduce itself. Terrorist communication, which unfortunately reproduces itself by means of attacks, kidnappings, and extortion, may be reproduced by means of touristic targets as well as other targets. Terrorism is thus coupled with tourism contingently and not by principle.
A second key topic of the book refers to issues of security, surveillance, and control, which go even further beyond the ambit of tourism and global mobility and constitute a widespread phenomenon in contemporary society. Canestrini uses the metaphor of an "airbag culture" to describe the contemporary obsession with individual security and collective protection, which in his view only leads to a "society of prevention" that gives no value to the unknown and to all that appears to be uncontrollable: "Unserem Lebensstil zu verteidigen ist zu unserem Lebensstil geworden" (p. 63). Apart from gated communities and pedestrian surveillance systems that are spread throughout the urban landscape, the contemporary security grip increasingly affects the infrastructural, legal, and bio-technological conditions of global human mobility. In that context, he argues, tourism becomes a social space that serves to amplify the pre-existing structures of surveillance. Canestrini certainly makes a valid point when he argues that although there is currently an increasingly Orwellian expansion of security measures for people on the move, to be suspicious of the stranger and to confront mobility as a problem and as a possible threat for the public order is not a recent invention. One example of this is the laws against vagabonding that have, since the end of the fifteenth century, de factocriminalized people without permanent residence. In the United States, for example, such regulations were not abolished until 1970. Canestrini views the recent introduction in the European Union of an electronic passport, which contains a microchip with a photograph and fingerprints of the traveler, as just another phase in the history of bodily control and identification. It goes back to the history of anthropometry, a fortunately abandoned science, which by the turn of the twentieth century was being used to identify psychological, social, and cultural types by measuring their bodily proportions. Common targets for anthropometric identification were suspected delinquent types, who supposedly showed signs of atavism and other evolutionary regressions. The anthropometry of yesterday, argues Canestrini, is the biometry of today and it is increasingly being used in security systems of all sorts. The physical body is becoming a passepartout, the defining key of personal identity. Facial and eye recognition systems are not just something from the futuristic techno-thriller Minority Report (2002); they are a reality.
One of the parts of the book I liked the most deals with what the author calls an "anthropology of bodies in transit," and includes Canestrini's analysis of "magnetic and touching moments" (pp. 81-109). Perhaps one of the reasons this section of the book appealed to me so much was because I read it right before and after experiencing such "magnetic and touching moments" at the U.S. Consulate Office in Berlin, where I was applying for a tourist visa. Canestrini is right. The magnetic detector does remind one of Magritte's surreal flying doors; doors that are not really doors, but rather frames, thresholds, or gates that introduce a small difference in the physical space, but a radical transformation in the symbolic one. Thus, while for tourists the magnetic detector is an Arc de Triumph, for migrants it is a burden, a burden that constitutes an irreversible transformation. Going through the magnetic detector can thus be understood as a critical moment in a larger rite of passage and transformation that requires a pure body going through a threshold. During such moments even having a nail clipper becomes a capital sin. A second constitutive moment is the body check. Touching the body of the traveler is certainly an invasion in his or her intimacy--something which is not diminished by the fact that a person of the same gender carries out the search. As a rite, the body check recalls a priest's gesture of absolution: ego te absolvo, I absolve you. You can go through. Since the body cannot lie, it has been turned to the very center of contemporary rites of passage. Personally, I have been fortunate. Thus far, no one has attempted to check my pulse to prove whether or not I am nervous. If Canestrini is right, the day of that ultimate outrage will come sooner than later.
Two final critical remarks on Canestrini's book: (1) Dystopia or redemption, which do you prefer? The alternative presented by the book is somehow too simplistic. The dichotomous approach Canestrini employs to reflect on the phenomenon of world tourism and its future hinders recognition of the complex and multidimensional processes which are transforming it. Moreover, the consequences of these ongoing changes are far from univocal. In that sense the scenarios described by Canestrini resemble thought experiments more than sociological realities. Such thought experiments are also based on a romanticization of the figure of the traveler as opposed to the tourist. (2) Sorry, Canestrini, but I am not one of you. The book is written from the perspective of and addressed to a Western male tourist. Throughout the work, Canestrini systematically uses the masculine pronoun to refer to the tourist. He likewise employs the first-person plural "we" as a rhetorical strategy to engage with the reader. (Although I read the work in its German translation, it seems safe to assume that the translator stayed true to the masculine gendered subject and the first-person plural used in the Italian original.) In this sense, Canestrini's book reproduces the stereotypes endemic to the type of tourism of which he is critical.
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Citation:
Ignacio Farías. Review of Canestrini, Aldo, Schiessen Sie nicht auf den Touristen.
H-Travel, H-Net Reviews.
May, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13161
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