The Construction of the Instruments of Mass Tourism in the Form of Mass Transit - Essay Example

Tourism: Changing Worldviews Tourism: Changing Worldviews Without the advances of the industrial revolution, much of the organization of mass tourism that took place in the mid-nineteenth century would not have been possible. At the same time, much of the mass tourism that took place had the effect of imposing a largely European ideal upon those lands most traveled to. As Rana Kabbani wrote, the primary function of travel was to impose power over the lands and peoples to which one traveled. In order to gain the riches and benefits brought in by the travel industry, many countries found it necessary to allow the construction of the instruments of mass tourism in the form of mass transit. Mass tourism depended upon easier and faster modes of travel as well as the emerging concept of ‘leisure’ time, the creation of disposable income through the urban factories and the media possibilities of advertising and widespread distribution of literature. During the Victorian era, a period filled with the concept of colonization, society was encountering many new cultures and ways of life as a result of increasingly available forms of reliable transportation. Rather than appreciating them for what they offered – differing perspectives, alternate means of solving common societal issues or a way of life that eliminated some of the more common social ills experienced in the newly industrialized societies – colonizing nations sought to overcome these ‘others’ and force them into a worldview in keeping with their own. When this wasn’t possible, as in dealing with faraway nations in the Orient, inventions were made of the bits and pieces of information that came back that defined entire sections of the world according to what was imagined about them rather than on true accounts of them. In doing so, comparisons were made between the ‘other’ and the self, meaning the dominant culture of the colonizing nation which is, in this case, predominantly England, that placed the self at an aggrandized level and the ‘other’ at a level quite inferior. In other words, in encountering the ‘other’, the colonizing nation reacted in a way that demonized them, reduced them to second-class humans and thereby contained them within a less-threatening context while boosting the self to new levels of superiority. It is perhaps most educative to look first to the work of philosopher Edward Said for an explanation of the ‘other’ as he places it within the context of Orientalism, a term he used to define the way in which the English-speaking world sought to contain images of the Eastern nations within a single, non-threatening image. In his book entitled Orientalism, Said illustrates how the Western world devised a conception of the Orient that rendered it innocuous to their way of living. Everything was made to seem backward, simple and non-threatening by placing it in the context of a passive action. For example, the silks and fine fabrics that originated there were not due to greater technological skill, but rather were the result of a rare creature accidentally found in that region that the soft, simple people living there took advantage of in order to make delicate clothing in keeping with their delicate way of life. A people who must wear soft silks as a means of not chafing their delicate skin is not a threatening people to the Western nations. However, when people actually started traveling to the Orient, they found not a simple backward mono-cultured people, but instead a wide variety of ‘orientals’ with vast differences in lifestyles from one region to another that were sometimes not so different from their own and at other times much more advanced. These advancements were surprising because up to this point, Westerners had only thought and read about the Orient as a backwards nation, soft and weak compared with their own. Said argues that the concept of the Orient was purposefully established within the public discourse as a means of bringing this region under the control of the empire, virtually subduing it by subduing its voices and belittling its achievements. This conversation highlights the treatment of the other that can be found within the literature of the Victorian period specifically as it applies to those of other nationalities, not necessarily just of the Orient and not necessarily regarding individuals or societies that existed far away. Bruce Bawer (2002) illustrates how the concept of the ‘other’ existed within the general culture as it concerned those who lived within it as well as those who lived without it. To illustrate his point, he discusses the life of Edward Said, the philosopher who helped break open the concept of the other and bring it to worldwide attention with the publication of Orientalism. Although Said was instrumental in bringing the concept of the ‘other’ into philosophical discussion, this was done from the context of a Westerner attempting to understand or relate to the idea of people who lived far away, in other countries where social differences were easy to see between the two nations. Bawer brings the context of the conversation back down to the individual level by pointing out how Edward Said’s life as an Oriental living in the Western world reflected the concepts of the other that he’d written about. At the same time, Bawer helps to pull out some important points about this concept from Said’s books and other writings. “Ultimately, Said’s thesis [in Orientalism] amounts to a truism: that people look at the ‘other’ through their own eyes, and tend to judge alien cultures by their own culture’s standards” (621). Throughout his criticism of Said’s work, Bawer continues to illustrate how the concept of the ‘other’ that is brought up by Said has worked to suppress and demonize cultures that are somehow different from that of the Western nations with the distinction that these ‘outside’ cultures do not necessarily have to exist in some geographically distant region, but can instead exist within and between the spaces of the Western world, such as in areas where numerous people of a particular nationality or belief system live – areas populated predominantly by Jews, Africans, Chinese or any other group that can be named as such. While the impact of industrialization may not have been immediately understood in these terms, the idea of the other, already having been established through the age of expansion, was ideally suited to addressing the issues that arose in this period of urbanization. Anne McClintock (1995) argues in her book that imperialism invented the concept of the other as a necessary means of self-definition. “The invention of race in the urban metropoles … became central not only to the self-definition of the middle class but also to the policing of the ‘dangerous classes’: the working class, the Irish, Jews, prostitutes, feminists, gays and lesbians, criminals, the militant crowd and so on” (5). To help struggle against this rising tide of the ‘other’ as it became increasingly understood to apply to a wide variety of individuals who had been previously thought to be merely a part of the crowded self, it was necessary to combat definitions of other with more flattering and concrete definitions of the self. “The cult of domesticity was not simply a trivial and fleeting irrelevance, belonging properly in the private, ‘natural’ realm of the family. Rather, I argue that the cult of domesticity was a crucial, if concealed, dimension of male as well as female identities – shifting and unstable as these were” (5). While many in the postmodern society have taken to identifying the other in terms of race, gender and class, McClintock argues that these “are not distinct realms of experience, existing in splendid isolation from each other; nor can they be simply yoked together retrospectively like armatures of Lego. Rather, they come into existence in and through relation to each other – if in contradictory and conflictual ways” (5). In other words, the concept of the other cannot exist without there first being a concept of the self. It is further not something that can be defined in clear-cut, definite structures but is rather a shifting, amorphous thing that only becomes revealed as it interacts and chafes against concepts of self. The other is, therefore, found in anything that differs from the norm as it is understood by the individual at any particular moment in time. The primary concept behind bringing mass transit into some of these ‘other’ regions may have originally been focused on trade and wealth, but they were very soon recognized as a means of seizing power over the nation and its peoples. One of the major means of obtaining power over a region was the necessary development of a railroad system as a means of encouraging both trade and tourism. With the railroad, “a given spatial distance, traditionally covered in a fixed amount of travel time, could suddenly be dealt with in a fraction of that time … this meant a shrinking of space” (Schivelbusch, 1986: 33). The concept of the suburb was born with the birth of the railway as it suddenly became convenient for individuals to live with their families in the more spacious homes of the country and still make it into town in time to open their shops in the early morning and return home for dinner. In addition to opening up the economic frontier, these new technologies also made other new concepts available. “A hugely important development in the history of travel took place when the journey ceased to be regarded as an uncomfortable and possibly dangerous means to an end, and was appreciated instead as an expression of personal freedom and a route to re-definition of the self” (Jarvis, 2004: 84). The introduction of steam ships and railways meant that travel between countries was more available to a wider proportion of the population on both sides of the channel. As the tourism industry grew, making travel between countries easier, individuals given the luxury of movement represented in the automobile gained even freer movement as they were suddenly able to determine for themselves start and stop times without sacrificing much of the speed of railway travel. Other innovations, such as the bicycle, led to the development of specialist tourism clubs. However, in bringing the railway to the various places and spaces of the country and the world, the individual identities of these spaces were subjected to the industrialized ‘factory system’ beginning with the need to standardize practice. Because each area had its own unique conception of time, it eventually became necessary for the railways to institute a ‘standard’ time that continues to exist today in such concepts as Greenwich Standard Time and the various time zones existent in the United States. While these time zones were originally considered to be used for railway purposes alone, they were eventually adopted throughout these regions (Schivelbusch, 1986: 43-44). In order to take best advantage of these available, more comfortable and faster modes of transportation, the tourist also had to schedule itineraries to meet with the demands of the passenger trains, sometimes being forced to rise very early in the morning in order to catch the appropriate train or boat to get to the next destination. These were sentiments that were reflected in the increasingly objective tone of the guidebooks that fostered tourism. “Compared with the previous generation, these guidebooks systematically concentrated on practical information and eliminated all personal feelings about the country described” (Tissot, 1995: 26). In addition to this shift, the focus of the guidebooks also changed from one concerned with the various people encountered to one detailing the various monuments or geographical features to be enjoyed as they were understood from the European rather than the local point of view. To be ‘modern’ in the nineteenth century meant understanding the duplicitous nature of the technological beast. For example, the introduction of the steam engine was seen by some to be a divorce between the human animal and the natural world. This is particularly evident in De Quincey’s description of the mail train as compared to the old mail-coaches: “This speed was incarnated in the visible contagion amongst brutes of some impulse, that, radiating into their natures, had yet its center and beginning in man … But now, on the new system of traveling, iron tubes and boilers have disconnected man’s heart from the ministers of his locomotion” (De Quincey cited in Jarvis, 2004: 79). There is a sense of being out of control, entirely removed from the equation of motion previously incorporated between man and beast. At the same time, the railway served as a sort of heart beat for the country, connecting it in much more intimate ways than had been possible in the past and bringing the nation into cohesion like some vast organism thus enforcing a more unified ideological understanding across the nation and the world. From this sense of confusion and disorientation introduced by new technology, tourism offered a form of ‘escape’ from the mob, a chance for the individual to relax away from the rapidly changing world and gain a new insight into their own changing inner selves even as it served to shape who this ‘inner self’ might be. Modernity as a concept is often described as a collection of studies into the social processes that order the world we live in while remaining in a constant state of flux. If one is speaking with Marshall Berman, modernity is described as “a mode of vital experience—experience of space and time, of the self and others, of life’s possibilities and perils—that is shared by men and women all over the world today. I will call this body of experience ‘modernity’” (Berman, 1982). It encompasses the social changes that are constantly taking shape, the way in which these changes are experienced and the reflection of these experiences in various circles. It is a world of definition and ambiguity, a world of static definitions and constant change. For Marshall Berman, the contradictions of modernity are characterized by a tendency to order space and time while simultaneously promoting their ruination and failure. In describing the modern human, Berman says “they are moved at once by a will to change – to transform both themselves and their world – and by a terror of disorientation and disintegration, of life falling apart” (Berman, 1982). Through this statement, it is easy to see the conflicting emotions of an individual undergoing change of any kind. Relating it to everyday life, an individual might strive to pursue a dream career by quitting their job and launching a business of their own, but at the same time be paralyzed by the fear of this new venture failing, or worse, succeeding. Either way, it represents a change in the way things have been. “To be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction. It is to be overpowered by the immense bureaucratic organizations that have the power to control and often to destroy all communities, values, lives; and yet to be undeterred in our determination to face these forces, to fight to change their world and make it our own. It is to be both revolutionary and conservative: alive to new possibilities for experience and adventure, frightened by the nihilistic depths to which so many modern adventures lead” (Berman, 1982). This concept can also be seen in the way in which we order time. With our shift into the cities and the factory, we perceived ourselves as being free of the constraints of time we’d known in rural settings. No longer were our days forcibly ended by the setting of the sun or started with its rising, we moved into a society in which our days are compartmentalized into working and non-work times. Broken down into hours and minutes, the modern world seeks to define when we work and when we play, when we rest and when we socialize. However, this world is constantly moving, constantly changing. Instead of being ordered by daytime and nighttime, we are now ordered by day shift, night shift and graveyard shift. Within the office space, even time to work is sometimes set aside as time to socialize, as in the morning breaks around the water cooler. The time it used to take us to send a message to a colleague has also been shrinking in the modern world thanks to innovations in technology such as mobile phones, instant messaging, email and phone. It now often depends heavily on whether the message was sent via courier, fax or internet as to whether we should expect a response in moments, hours or days. More often than not, though, we expect it immediately. This immediacy placed on everything has the effect of giving time an almost nonexistent quality even while maintaining its importance in the structuring of the everyday life. Thus, modernity is defined by a contradictory set of ideas that constantly shifts and changes even while remaining the same. As people are learning to interact within this modern environment, these contradictions are so ingrained that they are not apparent. Therefore, as Berman said, “To be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction” (Berman, 1982). There is reason to believe that part of the fascination with travel that emerged in conjunction with the greater spread of steam was as a means of equalizing the social classes and thus reduce some of the contradictions with which people were struggling. By creating a homogenous society throughout the world, everyone would have the same expectations, understandings and ways of being, reducing surprise and enabling the individual to continue forward without difficulty. “Supporters of the new mobility would agree that steam, as George Rose put it … was ‘a great leveler, not only of roads, but of social rank’” (Buzard, 1993: 45). In writing about tourism, Thomas Cook suggested that there was no reasonable means by which specific places, those offering the most beautiful scenery for instance, could be reserved to be enjoyed solely by the elite few. “God’s earth, with all its fullness and beauty, is for the people; and railways and steamboats are the results of the common light of science and are for the people also” (cited in Buzard, 1993: 45). This seems to have been at the heart of his tourism materials as Cook continuously works to present travel as the equalizer of the classes. As can be seen in his handbooks (Cook, 1991), arrangements made for steamship travel are praised for the willingness to make both deck and cabin available to all passengers on the tour. Changes taking place within the workplace had also contributed to a new sense of leisure as automated factories and regulated hours of work began to introduce concepts such as holidays or days off. “With the Industrial Revolution, which had truly taken hold, many workers were no longer tied to the land, so they were free to get away sometimes” (Feifer, 1986: 166). Part of Thomas Cook’s impetus for promoting the concept of tourism was an effort to offer individuals of the working classes another alternative to filling their free time other than drinking. As an active member of the Temperance League, this could be said to have been his driving goal while the auxiliary benefits of carving out a new career for himself, the wealth and notoriety this brought for him, were perks that continued and focused his interest. Cook and other writers such as Murray and Baedeker sought to provide tourists with “an educational course – a system of practical teaching of the highest value” (cited in Buzard, 1993: 45) that encouraged greater knowledge of the areas visited and helped to redefine tourism as an activity equally open to all classes. According to Feifer (1986), there were many more women traveling in the various tours offered by Cook than men. “For the Victorian woman, deeply imbued with a sense of duty and of her proper station in life, a trip abroad was a bold step: upwards, by means of cultural self-improvement, and outwards, into realms of danger and freedom, one of the most liberating things she could do” (169). By placing all the information that the tourist would need to know for the entire success of the trip – from the train rides and fares to the necessary steamboat passages and times to the specific information regarding points of interest both along the way and at the final destination (Cook, 1999) – these writers began to define tourism as something independently done by anyone under the leadership of an alleged ‘expert’. With the Industrial Revolution, the characteristics of travel changed dramatically from previous conceptions as did our concepts of ourselves and our place in the world as individuals. Where before travel had been a long, arduous journey through large open spaces interspersed with occasional and welcome small towns and villages along the way at which one could stop and enjoy for a short space of time, the railway introduced the concept of point A and point B as being the only important destinations. “They were no longer travelers – rather, as Ruskin puts it, they were human parcels who dispatched themselves to their destinations by means of the railway, arriving as they left, untouched by the space traversed” (Schivelbusch, 1986: 39). Tourists were so easily satirized because of the nature of the goals of tourism. Rather than acquiring a true appreciation for the locations to which they traveled, understanding the place, getting to know the people and taking part in the activities of the community, tourism generally held itself as a passive activity. Tourists were characterized as wandering aimlessly through fields and country sides with a foolish expression and a notebook or flitting about like aimless butterflies. As Wordsworth put it, “instead of travelers proceeding, with leisure to observe and feel’, one would find ‘pilgrims of fashion hurried along in their carriages, not a few of them perhaps discussing the merits of ‘the last new novel’, or poring over their Guide-books, or fast asleep” (cited in Buzard, 1993: 29). As they flitted through the various tourism destinations, tourists managed to gain only a superficial impression of the area as well as fundamentally change it by introducing those elements that would make touring easier, such as the macadam covered roads. At the same time, mass transit systems, in the interest of keeping the schedule running smoothly, imposed changes on the local environment, physically in the form of required technologies and mentally in the form of time zones and modes of expected behavior, that were also in keeping with the imperial viewpoint. References Bawer, Bruce. (Winter 2002). “Edward W. Said, Intellectual.” The Hudson Review. Vol. 5, N. 4, pp. 620-634. Berman, Marshall. (1982). All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Penguin Books. Buzard, James. (1993). The beaten track: European tourism, literature, and ways to culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 18-79. Cook, Thomas. (1999; 1845). A hand book of the trip from Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby to Liverpool and the coast of North Wales. London: Routledge: iii-13; 37-54. Feifer, Maxine. (1986). ‘The Victorian’ in Tourism in history: From Imperial Rome to the present. New York: Stein and Day: 163- 200. Jarvis, Robin. (2004). “The Glory of Motion: De Quincey, Travel and Romanticism.” The Yearbook of English Studies. Vol. 34, Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing: 74-87. McClintock, Anne. (1995). Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context. New York and London: Routledge. Said, Edward. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. (1986). “Railroad Space and Railroad Time.” The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press: 33-44. Tissot, Laurent. (1995). “How did the British conquer Switzerland? Guidebooks, railways, travel agencies, 1850-1914.” Journal of Transport History. Vol. 16, No. 1. Read More