Paper short abstract:

Tourism at the Kenyan coast mainly happens at the beautiful beaches and inside the resorts but tourists are striving for a sense of authenticity which they suspect to find in the villages. In my paper, I will look behind the scenes and show how people resist the commodification of everyday life.

Paper long abstract:

While tourists are offered a round-the-clock entertainment, sports and catering program in the hotels, many travellers wish to gain an insight into the everyday life of the population and to be able to gather authentic experiences in exchange with the locals. This demand is met by so-called bush or village tours, which take visitors on a guided tour from orphanage to school to marketplace and the medicine man, before they are brought back to the hotel buffet, where they can tell other visitors about their authentic look behind the scenes. What they don't know is that this tour has been a performance, because the tourist's gaze means an obvious intrusion into people's lives. The people observed and the local tourism entrepreneurs construct artificial settings, which they present like reality and thus can be called 'staged authenticity'. A stage that pretends not to be one, but to be backstage.

It is not uncommon for beach workers to give tourists this behind-the-scenes glimpse, and they decide which secrets will be revealed and which will remain secret. In my paper, I want to address the commercialization and touristification of the everyday life and practices of resistance against it, and show how Kenyan beach workers have created a protected space for themselves using the example of palm wine pubs. To do so I will use data that I collected during field research in Kenya.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the two faces of the “tourismification” in the coastal area of Petite Côte (Senegal) and discusses how the local tourist guides reinterpret their present and carve out their imagined futures elsewhere by focusing on narratives and daily interactions with foreign European tourists.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2005 while most of the littoral towns of Senegal became the points of departure of thousands of Western Africans who set off for the Canary Islands – the so-called “boat migrations” –, the coastal area of the Petite Côte, stretching south of Dakar for approximately 150 kilometres, has increasingly become one of the main areas of destination for cultural and seaside tourism of Europeans. Over the last two decades the progressive “tourismification” (Wang 2000; Salazar 2009) of this coastline has brought attention on its great societal as well as environmental impact in shaping the forms of consumption, perception as well as daily experiences of the spaces, not only among tourists.

Drawing from the ethnographic fieldwork in the towns of M’bour and Saly, the paper examines the relationship between tourists and local guides and aims at shedding light on how the touristic experience does not only become a liminal space to reframe the social perception of the places where locals live, but it informs the social construction of their desire of being elsewhere. Narrowing down the attention to the narratives and daily interactions with the Europeans, the paper discusses how through the touristic processes the local guides reinterpret their present and carve out their imagined futures elsewhere. The paper discusses the relationship between migration, tourism and imagination, showing how the imagined futures elsewhere are often cultural rather than geographical experiences of mobility.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the backstages of cultural or ethnic tourism taking place in southwestern Ethiopia. It explores the work chains by which urban professionals provide tours thourough the politically marginalized Omo valley agro-pastoralists intended for the gaze of the international travelers.

Paper long abstract:

As Meles Zenawi put up plans for the economic development of Ethiopia in the 2000 decade, the distant and peripheral administrative district of South Omo became a major site for cultural tourism, with international travelers as a target.

While the plans of the developmental state benefitted flourishing national tour companies operating from the capital, it also created jobs locally. In Jinka, South Omo regional capital, state-produced "guide associations" aimed at promoting job creation for young (male) urban dwellers. They did not include pioneering guides who were already in the business and tended to be critical, side-workers and intermediaries (drivers, brokers, interpreters), nor suppliers (in fuel, food and accomodation). More than this, state-led plans had hardly included visited socities, agro-pastoral mobile communities inhabiting the lower Omo valley. Today their English-speaking members are at best relegated to a lower status, limited by the cultural identity they represent, as local guide who deal with jobs sub-contracted by town guides.

Based on a nine-month ethnography in southwestern Ethiopia, I will offer a detailed account of the work chains and the stakes of inclusion and exclusion (in terms of gender, ethnicity and Ethiopian identity) by which international tourism happens in South Omo.

Documenting the backstage of tours intended for the tourist gaze (Urry 1990), I will draw on Anne Doquet's notion of the touristic scene as an "arena" involving distincts parties. Debord's thoughts on the "Society of the Spectacle" (1967) will provide additional clues in order to grap Ethiopians' response and adaptation to consumption societies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the connection between invested consumption and partner search of Malagasy women in touristic settings.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to discuss the existing literature on the mobility patterns of Malagasy women seeking foreign partners as a part of the global political economy of sex. Specifically, it focuses on how societal imaginaries about sexuality, desire, and monetization shape the strategies of these women in their search for potential partners. This contribution will examine how these women navigate the risks associated with such investments and how their search may fall into the grey area of prostitution and conventional dating opportunities. The overall goal is to understand the anthropological aspects of sexual consumption, tourism, and the interactions between Malagasy women and European men in touristic hotspots in Madagascar.

Paper short abstract:

Tourism is central in modern life, where tourism discourse creates imaginaries. While it is a joyful experience for many, there is a dark side to it, captured in the term tourination. The paper discusses the possibility of less ruinous tourism in Africa as implied in eudaimonic tourism discourse.

Paper long abstract:

Tourism is a central aspect of modern life (MacCannell 2013). Tourism discourse, i.e., “language and communication in tourism as global cultural industry” (Thurlow & Jaworski 2011: 222), contributes to the creation of imaginaries around tourism, i.e., “[t]he creative use of and seductive [and] restrictive imaginaries about peoples and places” (Salazar 2012: 863). At the same time as tourism is an important and joyful experience for many, there is a dark side to modern, especially mass, tourism, which has been captured in the term tourination (Storch & Mietzner 2021), emphasizing its ruinous effects. Indeed, we know that much modern tourism is anything but sustainable, neither environmentally nor socially. Yet, tourism is increasing again after the COVID-19 pandemic and it seems inevitable that people will continue to travel.

This paper discusses the possibility of less ruinous tourism types in Africa that are implied in some tourism discourses. The data stem from discourses engaging with eudaimonia, a concept coined by Aristotle and referring to the realization of human potential, meaningful actions, and psychological well-being (Smith 2023). This is exemplified in a community of practice centering around inspirational quotes in the digital tourist space of Zanzibar, a sustainability campaign implemented by an NGO and advertised on social media, and advertisements of yoga retreats online. Ultimately, the paper aims at looking into whether the eudaimonic tendency present in contemporary tourism discourse in parts of Africa is indicative of a changing, more sustainable tourist industry, or remains performative.