2 Have mouse will travel

Box 2.2 Have mouse will travel

Dawn is breaking in the Costa Rica rainforest. Above me, a white hawk flits silently through the treetops. A pale-billed woodpecker alights softly on the side of a soaring trunk. The branches are swathed in mosses, ferns and orchids, and hung with a triangle of vines and lianas. The Braulio Carrillo National Park is less than an hour from the capital, San José, but it could be in another world.

Gazing up through the forest, I can make out in the distance the rows of small houses, running up and down the steeply sloping hills of Tegucigalpa. Looking down, the wide blue waters of Montego Bay stretch out invitingly 13111

from the Jamaican shoreline, with the luxurious ‘cottages’ of the Sandals Hotel perched on the edge of their private beach. It is an inviting prospect, but one which, for the moment, I decide to pass on.

Yes, sad to say, it’s not for real, it’s the Internet – that sprawling worldwide computer network. Armchair travel has a whole new meaning when, with a laptop on your lap and

a modem by your side, you can skip across the globe on the World Wide Web from Abidjan to Zanzibar, alighting on everything from the Eurostar timetable to the latest malaria alerts for East Africa.

In some ways, it’s the ultimate in eco-tourism, dropping in on distant lands without ripping holes in the ozone layer.

Source: Wright (1996)

exaggerated example but it underlines the way in which places are increasingly drawn into (or excluded from) a global system. The telecommunications revolution allows teleworkers and computer users to take advantage of the global information ‘super- highway’, via email, bulletin boards, virtual conferences and the worldwide web (the web or www). The Appendix lists some of the travel-related bulletin boards and websites that can be accessed over the internet (pp. 308–9). It is the stated objective of the telecommunications industry to provide access to the technology for all the population – a laudable aim. In practice, however, the promotion of its widespread use may serve to extend the uneven and unequal nature of access to information. In this respect, it may mirror the effects of access to travel. Furthermore, it is feasible that increasing regulation of the networks will serve to concentrate power in the hands of those who can afford it.

The need to accelerate the circulation of capital has necessitated an economic tran- sition, or qualitative shift, and Harvey seeks to explain this in terms of the regime of capital accumulation, a central tenet of Marxist enquiry. The key, and perennial, ques- tion is how best to deal with the over-accumulation of capital and how it can be ‘expressed, absorbed or managed’ (Harvey, 1989b: 131). Reflecting the post-Fordist debates discussed above, Harvey contends that in terms of production the problems encountered in achieving satisfactory productivity increase and the intense competition faced from, for example, ‘newly industrialising countries’, has forced the transition (in the First World) to a more flexible mode of accumulation in the post-1970 period, a ‘new dynamic phase of capitalism’ as he terms it (1989b: vi). At the heart of this change lies flexibility. As Figure 2.3 demonstrates, a capitalist system based upon a Fordist

11111 mode of production has given way to more flexible modes of capital accumulation, a

24 • Globalisation, sustainability, development

POST- representation

Mode of

LATE

CRISIS OF

TIME–SPACE COMPRESSION

Regime of

CRISIS OF

Flexible accumulation

Figure 2.3 Transition in late twentieth-century capitalism Source: Adapted from Gregory (1994: 412)

regime labelled ‘flexible accumulation’. We will return to this diagram a little later. As Harvey argues, this comes into ‘direct confrontation’ with the rigidities characteristic of Fordism. Flexibility is introduced in a range of respects including labour markets and processes, products (new and different forms of tourism) and patterns of consumption (such as new tourism).

Harvey’s discussion of capital circulation and the acceleration in the pace of our everyday lives has clear reflections in the rapid expansion of tourism in the Third World. It is not only capital that is circulated at an accelerated rate, but places too, as destina- tions come in and out of fashion and tourism moves on elsewhere. Indeed, the growth and development of Third World tourism may be another manifestation of time–space compression with the logic of capital accumulation driving tourism to the four corners of the earth. Equally, however, it is factors such as natural disasters, political instability, the environment and so on (and how these are represented and perceived in the First World) which play a significant part in governing the ebb and flow of Third World destinations on and off the global tourism map. And it is to one of these other factors, sustaining culture and lifestyles, that we turn next.

Sustaining culture and lifestyles

The dramatic economic restructuring that has occurred under the latest and extremely intense phase of globalisation is, some argue, closely related to far-reaching cultural changes (Harvey, 1989b; Jameson, 1984). Figure 2.3 suggests that the fierce round of time–space compression reflected in an accumulation crisis and the emergence of ‘flexible accumulation’ are equally reflected in a crisis of cultural representation (our ability to make sense of a rapidly changing world). So, while Harvey’s ideas are under- pinned by economics, he also stresses the importance of cultural change within global restructuring:

While simultaneity in the shifting dimensions of time and space is no proof of necessary or causal connection, strong a priori grounds can be adduced for the proposition that there is some kind of necessary relation between the rise of

Globalisation, sustainability, development • 25

postmodernist cultural forms, the emergence of more flexible modes of capital accumulation, and a new round of ‘time–space compression’ in the organisa- tion of capitalism.

(1989b: vii) This argument provides some potential insights into how and why Third World tourism

has become so popular. In other words, it is with changes in the First World, and with the factors that produce new forms of holidays and tourists, that analysis must focus first. Returning to Figure 2.3 for a moment, it will be noticed that the predicted outcome of the crisis of representation is postmodernism, and Harvey refers to ‘postmodernist cultural forms’ (1989b). Very broadly, postmodernism refers to the emergence of new cultural styles (in art, architecture, music and the objects and experiences we buy and

13111 consume), and postmodernity to the idea that we now live in a new social epoch that has superseded modernity.

Postmodernism is a widely used and debated idea, though it is not our intention to provide a lengthy rendition on what postmodernism is and is not, or to provide an in- depth guide to protagonists’ arguments. Rather, it is to accept that, like post-Fordism, this idea helps encapsulate the profound cultural changes that have been slowly emerging, particularly since the 1970s (Featherstone, 1991; Huyssen, 1984). Practically, the changes we are experiencing, are rooted in our everyday lives and ‘can no longer

be ignored’ (Harvey, 1989b). Moreover, postmodernism also helps to draw our atten- tion to the important relationships between First World consumption habits and the capi- talist imperative of increasing the turnover time of capital.

Of the many developments in the arena of consumption, two stand out as being of particular importance. The mobilisation of fashion in mass markets provided

a means to accelerate the pace of consumption not only in clothing, ornament, and decoration but also across a wide swathe of lifestyles and recreational activities (leisure and sporting habits, pop music styles, video and children’s games . . . ). A second trend was a shift away from the consumption of goods and into the consumption of services . . . The ‘lifetime’ of such services (a visit to a museum, going to a rock concert or movie, attending lectures or health clubs), though hard to estimate, is far shorter than that of an automobile or washing machine. If there are limits to the accumulation and turnover of phys- ical goods . . . then it makes sense for capitalists to turn to the provision of very ephemeral services in consumption.

(Harvey, 1989b: 285) It is clear that, for most people, contemporary lifestyles involve a dramatic increase in

the number of services consumed. (You may wish to consider how the shift to services is related to the growth of tourism (a service) and how the circulation of fashion perhaps relates to popularity of holiday destinations over time.) Box 2.3 summarises the shifts in contemporary tourism predicted by this broader analysis.

But part of the postmodernism argument tends to lead to the conclusion that, just as an increasingly globalised world has resulted in a global economy, so too there is an inevitability that the same processes have resulted in the emergence of a global culture characterised by Big Macs, Coke and the web. Such predictions (or forebodings) have led to a succession of tourism commentators bemoaning the inability of Third World communities to sustain their traditional lifestyles in the face of an imposition of western values and beliefs, and the consequent erosion of cultural difference and authenticity.

11111 Morrow, for example, refers to tourism as a ‘radioactive cloud of banalizing sameness’

26 • Globalisation, sustainability, development