Constructing the tourist destination: A socio-material description

This thesis explores the tourist destination as a relational, heterogeneous and socio-material actor-network. It is argued that the destination may be seen as a construct taking and making place in the simultaneous workings of purification and heterogeneous ordering. In this process, a multiplicity of human and non-human actors are engaged, either working to support and strengthen or to challenge and negotiate the destination network. Apart from describing the ongoing destination assembling and its effects, the thesis also shows how the destination is enacted as multiple (Mol 2002). In applying a radical ontology to the field - or rather network – of study, the destination is seen as enacted, as constructed by both absences and presences, muting and excluding some practices, voices and knowledges rather than others. Through a number of destination descriptions informed by fieldwork conducted in the mountain town and tourist destination of Zakopane located in the Tatra Mountains of Southern Poland, The thesis describes how this work of constructing and ordering the destination is done through a variety of practices, discourses, artefacts and technologies.

The thesis begins with a presentation in chapter 2 of ways in which the tourist destination has commonly been studied within tourism research. It is argued that these approaches are grounded in an understanding of the destination either as a product in itself or a container of other such products or as a socio-culturally constructed landscape, a backdrop for human interaction. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is subsequently introduced as a way to transcend these understandings through its relational and symmetrical ontology in which both humans and non-humans are accorded the capacity of acting upon the world. It is shown how ANT does not see the destination, or characteristics commonly associated to it such as cultural conflict, as a priori categories of analysis or as something inherent to the destination. Rather, the differences or identities traced at the destination are seen as effects produced in and by the workings of the destination actor-network.

In chapter 3, the methodological consequences of this relational approach are further unfolded as it is demonstrated how it affects the understanding of the field of study as well as the creation of knowledge. This is illustrated through a local newspaper article on my research in which different entities are assembled, hence constructing the field as one to be studied and one to be known. It is argued that our way of studying, knowing and hence enacting the world takes place through processes and performances of intermediary arrangements through the assemblage of methods (Law 2004). Drawing from Haraway (1991), it is argued that what emerges through these intermediary arrangements is partial knowledge, knowledge which is not, and never can be, coherent. Understanding things as both relational and heterogeneous means accepting how things are never fully coherent. However, it is not in spite of this incoherence, but rather because of it, that entities are held together and are able to work. It is argued that a way to include this ontology into the research work is through the allegory (Law 2000), as this does not imply a one-on-one relationship between a neatly delimited object ‘out there’ and its description.

The present study of the destination is in itself a performance and an intermediary arrangement. Also, it is one which is connected to and (hopefully) challenges its research context, its hinterland. This hinterland is enacted in chapter 4 through yet another method assemblage where different field of research relating to the tourist destination are critically addressed, namely tourism research, cultural tourism research, destination branding and intercultural communication in tourism. I argue first that tourism research is not to be seen as a two divided fields of business and socio-culture. Rather, it is a fractionally coherent network (Law 2000) in which highly diverse knowledges and ways of knowing engage in a collective and socio-material assembling of tourism research and of its objects of study. Moving on, I argue that the study of culture within tourism often implies the understanding of culture as difference and potentially leading to conflict. As opposed to seeing these as inherent to tourism and to the destination, I propose seeing them as effects produced in and through the workings of the destination. Hence, culture becomes not something which is, but something which is done and which acts and works at the destination. A similar approach is proposed in addressing the third part of the ‘hinterland’, namely destination branding. I argue that place branding is based on an attempt to spatially demarcate and freeze specific qualities and identities. As an alternative, I suggest that place should be seen as a constantly created, negotiated and contested turf (Modan 2006) and the identities connected to them as constantly created through process of ordering. Hence, the identity of place appears not as a fix point of departure but as an ongoing, performative and negotiated part of the process of constructing destination. A last point is raised against the study of intercultural communication in tourism in which I ask how difference in culture, as opposed to e.g. social or economic inequality, came to be identified as a basis to address cultural communication in tourism. Similarly to the understanding elaborated in the previous sections, I argue that the differences identified within the study of tourism cultures and place must be addressed not as a starting point but as an effect of the workings of the destination actor-network.

Based on this introduction to the relational and socio-material approach to the destination and of the hinterland, which it seeks to challenge, I move on to the destination analysis in the chapters 5 to 9. Well-known themes in tourism research such as identity, place, difference and authenticity are addressed. However and contrary to seeing these notions as a priori essences or as springing from cultural incompatibility between destination stakeholders (hosts and tourists, residents and tourist developers), differences are here perceived as effects or outcomes of the destination workings.

This is first discussed in chapter 5, in which differences are seen as outcomes of the work continuously performed in and through the destination network. In this perspective, differences and conflicts are not immutable or natural substances, but rather appear as strategic tools for constructing and structuring the destination and as actors in their own, productive rights. In the analysis I first show how difference is appointed by many informants at the destination in terms of difference in culture (the business man vs. the village) or in agency (tourism development vs. preservation). Secondly, I show how difference is constructed and deployed as a strategic tool. This is done by designating Górale, the local Highland ethnic population and identity, as decisive in creating and identified a difference. Hence, this in many ways emblematic ethnic group related to Zakopane is both seen as creating difference, but is also used as a way to identify the destination as something different.

In chapter 6, it is argued that place is another result or effect of the workings of the destination actor-network. Opposing the understanding of space as a container or backdrop for human or social activity to that of relational place, it is discussed how the destination is socio-materially constructed by a multiplicity of actors. Hence, the destination is neither fully hegemonic, nor purely free. Rather, it is constantly produced and contested by and through many actors, some stronger and more visible than others. This is exemplified through the modest example of graffiti on a fence showing how the destination (at least potentially) may be enacted in many different versions.

This idea of multiple enactment is elaborated in chapter 7 in which the oscypek, a smoked sheep cheese is introduced as a somehow unusual and unexpected destination actor. The cheese is followed as it travels from the shepherd’s hut on the mountain pastures on to the busy Krupówki Street in Zakopane, to traditional farmhouses, laboratories and offices of government or EU officials or even further to international food fairs. Along this journey, the cheese is connected to new practices, new sets of requirements and regulations, is told through new stories and asked a set of shifting questions: ‘is it safe’, ‘is it authentic’, ‘is it local’ etc.? All these new connections, it is argued, enacts different cheeses. They are produces, controlled and prices differently, are made of different ingredients and connected to different people, practices and places. Through this description of the oscypek, the chapter shows how objects and the discourses and practices connected to them are part of enacting the tourist destination. Hence, objects are also actors in the destination network.

This idea of objects that act is also addressed in chapter 8 which addresses the emblematic Górale houses and the land on which they are built. By showing how houses and land are accorded with a major role in assigning and understanding Górale identity, it is firstly argued that tourism development is not entirely grasped if solely focusing on its economic or business aspects. However, by introducing the hostel and connected actors and practices as a new way of doing house at the destination, it is also shown that the position and role of the house and the land are not strictly cultural, nor purely economic, but rather strategic, flexible and negotiable. Hence land, articulated as ‘not for sale’ by many informants, is also available to tourism development. However, as shown in the last part of the chapter, some networks do stay cut (Strathern 1996) in regards to the house and land, some objects, practices and people remain absent or unreachable. All in all, the chapter challenges the common understanding of entrepreneurial tourism agency in displaying how house and land are active partakers in opening possibilities, and creating boundaries for actions, spaces, objects and people at the destination.

In the last analytical chapter 9 the notions of difference, place, objects and agency advanced in the above chapters are reintroduced in asking what it is that acts, works and defines the destination by creating differences – or presences. This is done by focusing on the notion and identity of Górale and its role at the tourist destination. Like the first analytical chapter on difference, this chapter addresses Górale not as a stable identity or group, but as a relational effect. I demonstrate how ways of doing Górale are negotiated through a variety of objects, practices and connections in the specific setting of the Górale restaurant. Although informants oppose the restaurant to another, the ‘place of culture’ enacted purely cultural space, I argue once again that economy and culture are not separable in any of those two places. Rather, they engage along with many other heterogeneous actors in strategically appointing and rejecting who and what are authentic or not. The notions of identity and authenticity are rejected as stable entities ‘out there’, as they are instead perceived as strategic tools to enrol and define what is in and what is out, what is difference and what is sameness.

In the final chapter 10, I discuss the insights which emerge from a relational and socio-material approach to the study of the destination. The insights stemming from this approach were divided into two: specific insight on the destination of Zakopane and general insight into how a tourist destination may be studied and understood. First, the material from Zakopane showed how Górale and notions of difference, identity and authenticity worked to construct and negotiate the destination. However, it also showed that these notions are not pure and do not work alone, but must constantly connect to other actors. Hence, the destination was constructed and enacted through a continual process of purification and heterogeneous ordering. This draws the attention to a general understanding of the heterogeneous, relational and socio-material character of the destination construct. In this construct, it is not only human actors or organisations that act. Neither is it purely economical logics or structures. In order to work, the destination must necessarily connect to various actors. Although not everything can be made present at the destination, its construct always requires a fractional coherence between multiple actors. I end the thesis by arguing that although tourism marketing, management and other destination actors may seek to streamline the tourist destination image, its construct is always based on the heterogenic practices of its socio-material actors. It is in and through the work of the actors that the destination is constructed and enacted.