Description
The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of cultural misconceptions through the
lens of actor-network theory (ANT).
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Beyond hosts and guests: translating the concept of cultural misconception
Carina Ren
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Carina Ren, (2010),"Beyond hosts and guests: translating the concept of cultural misconception", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism
and Hospitality Research, Vol. 4 Iss 4 pp. 287 - 298
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Special section paper
Beyond hosts and guests: translating the
concept of cultural misconception
Carina Ren
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of cultural misconceptions through the
lens of actor-network theory (ANT).
Design/methodology/approach – The article discusses how cultural misconceptions may be
encompassed at the tourist destination. Rather than seeing cultural misconceptions as clashes between
incommensurable cultures or as con?icts between opposing strategies, a third approach is introduced
in which cultural misconceptions are studied as effects of the socio-material workings within the
destination network. This is elucidated through a ?eldwork presentation showing how a wide range of
human and nonhuman actors point to and enact cultural and strategic differences.
Findings – Misconceptions may be seen as created through the ongoing doings and workings of the
destination network and its actors. Misconceptions are enacted through objects, places, performances
and discourses as they are assembled and translated, constantly constructing and challenging opinions
of what should be part of the destination network.
Originality/value – The article encourages an understanding of cultural misconceptions as products of
the work of the heterogeneous destination. This approach elucidates the intricate relations between
cultural practices, human action and material culture at the tourist destination.
Keywords Tourism development, Best practice, Cross-cultural studies, Individual perception,
National cultures
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
To researchers in the ?eld of tourism it comes as no surprise that a large amount and wide
variety of stakeholders are involved in the making of the tourismdestination. These groups of
stakeholders cover tourists, locals and people otherwise engaged in tourism marketing,
management, selling, servicing and research. Experiences from mass tourism destinations
reveal that between these groups of stakeholders the development of tourism spaces and
places easily results in what is often identi?ed and explained as ‘‘cultural clashes’’ (Lew and
Kennedy, 2002) or, as thematised in this special edition, in cultural misconceptions. A search
conducted in July of 2009 on www.scholar.google.com provides over 20.000 hits on the
three-word combination of ‘‘culture’’, ‘‘clash,’’ and ‘‘tourism’’, demonstrating that the seminal
work Hosts and Guest edited by Valene Smith (1977) on the cultural consequences of
tourism was not written in vain. The question is therefore not whether culture clashes or
misconceptions exist, but rather howwe as researchers and practitioners may learn to better
identify and deal with these, both on a conceptual, analytical and practical level.
This article critically examines the idea of cultural misconception and its underlying notions
of cultures and human action. What does it mean to misconceive culture? What notions of
DOI 10.1108/17506181011081479 VOL. 4 NO. 4 2010, pp. 287-298, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182
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PAGE 287
Carina Ren is based at the
University of Southern
Denmark, Esbjerg,
Denmark
Received: July 2009
Revised: November 2009
Accepted: December 2009.
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culture are assumed in order for them to be inconceivable? How do misconceptions arise,
what cause and generate them? How can they be studied, described and conceptualized?
These are some of the questions that need to be considered – and answered – in order to
avoid a priori or taken-for-granted presumptions about the properties and features of culture,
human action and the possibilities and conditions of cultural misconception.
The article introduced and discusses two common approaches respectively seeing
misconceptions as a result of tourism encounters and development. The ?rst sees cultural
misconceptions as a predictable result of the contact of con?icting cultures, classically
typi?ed in the meeting between host and guest cultures. In this case, cultures are seen as
unique and mutually incompatible. The second approach accounts for cultural
misconceptions as a result of differing tourism related strategies. Explaining these
differing strategies ?rst of all presuppose a discrepancy in development between cultures,
hereby also assuming cultures as hierarchically positioned. This is typically described
through the use of classic dichotomies such as global/ local and modern/pre-modern (Cole,
2007). Second, this position sees development as generated by people, hence identifying
human action as the driver behind development and cultural misconceptions. After
presenting their grounding in cultural and social theory, both of these perspectives will be
empirically anchored using examples from a ?eldwork conducted in Zakopane, a ski town
and resort in Southern Poland.
The cultural and action-based explanations to cultural misconceptions are challenged by
introducing actor-network theory (ANT) and the metaphor of the network as an analytical and
methodological tool to rediscover the phenomenon of cultural misconception. In this
approach, the reader is invited to consider the destination as a constantly negotiated and
constructed socio-material network (Latour, 2004). In this perspective, cultural
misconceptions are not seen as a product of con?icts of difference or generated by
intentional human action, but rather as constant network negotiations and translations
resulting in an on-going absorption and exclusions of artifacts, techniques or performances.
Summarizing, the article suggests, that a network approach provides an alternative
perspective on cultural misconception in diverting its focus away from structural or
action-based differences to network related doings at the destination. Hence,
misconceptions are no longer ascribable to the one part in a binary relation of difference,
but are rather part of a continuously negotiatedandassembledrelational destination network.
2. Cultural misconceptions as clashes between incommensurable cultures
In tourism studies, researchers regard the destination as a privileged tourism space
(Bærenholdt et al., 2004; Jo´ hannesson, 2005). The destination is a starting point for
observing and researching tourism through its organizing, measuring, conceptualisation,
rebranding, planning, or modelling (see Jenkins, 1999; Dahles, 1998; Gallarza et al., 2002;
Dredge, 1999). It is conceived as a place where tourismis acted out, where tourists, industry
workers and planners as well as locals are physically present and – at least potentially –
interacting. The description of the destination as cultural meeting grounds is often
conceptually categorized as a ?eld of con?ict. In?uential tourism studies investigate tourism
related con?icts and issues of communication (Jaworski and Pritchard, 2005),
commodi?cation (Cohen, 2001; MacLeod, 2006), loss of authenticity (MacCannell, 1976;
Taylor, 2001) and cultural heritage (Hewison, 1987) to name but a few.
The basis for the description and understanding of the destination as a site of spatially
demarcated con?ict is a view of culture as difference. Although many ways of travelling are
arguably based on motivations such as play (Urry, 1990) or the search for different kinds of
authenticity (Wang, 1999; Reisinger and Steiner, 2006), one might say that the very idea of
travelling bases itself on the search for otherness or the encounter of ‘‘the Other’’ (Cohen,
1972). This understanding of culture is supported, reproduced and reinforced in tourism
brochures, travel books, and other destination promotion material in which the destination
culture is thematized as exotic and like nowhere else. The identi?cation and localization of
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cultural difference is set in a spatial frame, where distantly located cultures are also
perceived as more distant in a cultural sense.
This othering or differentiating of cultures is based on a cultural relativismaccording to which
different cultures are bound to remain exactly that: different. As an intellectual tradition,
cultural relativism demonstrates, how ‘‘there are different cultures, that cultural diversity
should be understood in terms of a plurality of life worlds, each displaying its proper
meaning and coherence. In this sense cultural relativism is not a certain benevolent attitude
towards cultures, but rather a discursive construct, transforming the disorder of cultural
diversity into a well-ordered plurality of collective systems of values, that is ‘culture’’’
(Christensen, 1996). Cultures are incommensurable, can not be transcended or integrated
and cultural communication may therefore easily result in serious con?icts.
The understanding of cultures as mutually other, incommensurable and rooted in
ethnicity-based communities is ?rst identi?ed as an ideology of diversity in the writings of
German philosopher Johan Herder (Knudsen, 1998). His ideas of cultural particularism and
Volkgeist, the spirit of the people, can be seen as a protest against the universalistic ideals of
the Enlightenment. In universalism, culture is seen not as a multitude, but rather as one
uni?ed Culture. According to the project of the Enlightenment, humanity must jointly strive
towards a common civilization in a ?ght against prejudice and ignorance. In particularism,
this ?ght is substituted by a search and longing for authenticity, a project and concomitant
rhetoric easily detected in today’s tourism promotion and consumption (Lo¨ fgren, 1999).
The conceptual establishment of cultural differences does not belong solely to Herders
particularist project. Thinkers of the Enlightenment were already greatly interested in
differences, resulting among other things in a number of popular travel books and accounts.
The interest in and worshiping of diversity inspired by Herder must therefore be seen as a
logic extension of the establishment of human unity provided by the Enlightenment
(Knudsen, 1998). In that sense, the ideas of universalismand particularismare not only each
others opposites, but also a relational and interconnected pair. This connecting will be
further elaborated in the third part of the article.
So far we have established that the concept of cultural misconception can be seen as a
clash between cultures and demonstrated how this perspective is ultimately based on an
understanding of cultures as different and incommensurable. In the following, another
account for the origin and occurrence of cultural misconception at the destination will be
presented, namely as opposing strategies faced with tourism development.
3. Cultural misconceptions as opposing strategies
A different but somewhat complimentary step in the scrutinizing of the concept of cultural
misconception is the perception of this concept as rooted in antagonistic social and cultural
strategies in regards to tourism development and growth at the destination. In this
perspective, potential or actual con?icts on the destination are rooted not in cultural
differences inherent to groups, but rather attributed to social behavior and human action. As
the former perspective, this one can also be retrieved in tourism research writings, in which
tourism development projects are seen as creating con?icts between different groups.
These are considered and investigated as juxtaposed (De Kadt, 1979).
This understanding of opposing strategies as the basis of cultural misconceptions is
connected to the aforementioned cultural ideology of the Enlightenment where culture is
perceived as a universal project of progress and change. The history of man is seen as
driven by internal dynamics of development and necessary progress (Knudsen, 1998). In
this evolutionistic image, cultural differences are also identi?ed, but in another way than with
the particularist approach. Different societies are positioned in relation to a scale of value
based on criteria of difference going from simple to complex. It is the different positions in
scale of development, not the cultural difference in itself that is seen as the source of
misconceptions.
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Another distinction conceptually separates the two approaches to cultural misconceptions.
Whereas the former understanding is based on structures of culture, that is how one or
several cultures could be seen as structuring or determining a destination, the
strategy-approach is based on human or social action. The destination is created,
changing and developing according to actions carried out by people or groups actively,
re?exively and knowingly employing various – or in this case con?icting – strategies to their
advantage. People promote, move and create based on their respective agendas.
Cultural misconceptions may, as we have seen, be conceptualized as rooted in
incommensurable cultural differences or in differing cultural strategies. Based on
?eldwork for my doctoral theses (Ren, 2009), I demonstrate in the following how these two
approaches are empirically traceable in the discourse of various tourism stakeholders. Both
perspectives can be identi?ed in how the destination and its culture(s) are perceived and
identi?ed by local stakeholders at the destination. Examples are provided to demonstrate
how the discourses of difference and strategy are deployed by tourism stakeholders to
conceive and explain cultural misconceptions at the destination. This is succeeded by a
discussion of the consequences in transferring this perspective onto a research agenda,
?nally suggesting how a network perspective may be applied as a tool to transcend an
understanding of cultural misconceptions as either based on cultural structures or human
action.
4. Destination culture(s) in the eyes of the tourism stakeholders
Zakopane is a small town of 30,000 residents located in the Tatra Mountains in the South of
Poland. In tourism marketing the area is portrayed as the ‘‘capital’’ of the thriving culture of
the Go´ rale, Polish highlanders, still preserving a distinct dialect and tradition. Also the
stunning nature of the surrounding mountains is promoted along with skiing, hiking and other
outdoor activities. Since the dawn of tourism in late nineteenth century and the development
of mass tourism during socialism, Go´ rale and newcomers ?nd employment in the tourism
industry providing accommodation, food and guiding services for visitors. Today
approximately three million primarily Polish, but increasingly also international tourists,
visit Zakopane every year. This intense level of tourism gives rise to re?ections and
discussions in different areas of local society regarding how local culture is and should be
coping with foreign impact and in?uence. In the examples below, the business man is
discursively used to demonstrate how cultural misconceptions are comprehended as a
cultural clash assuming cultures as distinct and incompatible. As a contrast, the idea of the
village is used as a means to specify and accentuate a local distinction and uniqueness.
Many local inhabitants show concern facing an increase in business men onto the local
tourism market, which has until now been comparatively dominated by locally owned travel
agencies, hotels, restaurants and ski lifts. As a local architect, musician and advocate of
Go´ rale culture says:
There’s a lot of foreign in?uence in the region [. . .]. I don’t mean the tourists – the tourists have
always been here, they are a blessing for us in a way. What I mean is a growing group of
businessmen, who buy land and build apartments to sell away to strangers. The prices of land
and ?ats are so high here, that you can easily become rich by doing so. And they do it [. . .]. I say
that it’s like selling our homeland piece by piece. It’s a tragedy, which puts all the most beautiful
places at risk [. . .] It’s the Russians, the Italians, some people who deal with illegal business. They
don’t do it because they like it here; they do it, because they know that the prices of land will grow
fast. This is a threat.
In this statement the business man is presented as a foreign element. The business man is
opposed to the tourist that in many ways is a blessing. The clash is not identi?ed between
local and foreign, but rather between people with a genuine interest in the local and people
chasing pro?t. A local guide also comments on the recent land purchases and how it is used
to set up private pensions and hotels:
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Especially these last years, more people from the middle of Poland have come. They build
pensions with good accommodation. Everything is for rent here. They come here 100% for
business, to make money.
Not only land ownership, but also the alien overtaking of local restaurants is considered a
treat, as stated by a local restaurant and gallery owner:
These businessmen have no idea what real folklore is. They try to make restaurants or pubs in this
highlander style, but truly speaking, mostly they have nothing really to do with the Highlander
style. You see the waitresses, they look ugly! Because they don’t know how to wear the dress.
They have no idea how to wear it.
In these interview extracts the business men along with non-local buyers and staff, and not
necessarily tourists, are identi?ed as a threat to local culture. Considering the common
dichotomy usually seen guest as the opposition to local, it is surprisingly not foreign tourists,
but rather Poles fromlarge cities, which are identi?ed as the main threat. Their apparent hunt
for pro?t and disregard of Go´ rale tradition is set up as a contrast to the local, identi?ed or
symbolized by the village. As the mayor says: ‘‘Zakopane is in its nature a big village. We
have over a thousand farmers here, people who have their ?elds, their farms. It’s really like a
big village. I’m sure that the folklore will survive here.’’ The architect and cultural advocate
agrees:
Zakopane itself was never a city – it was always a village and it still remains a village. We’re right
in the city centre. This house is one of the oldest ones around – built in 1897. We used to have
cows and other animals here only a few years ago, when my father-in-law was still alive. We used
to have a proper farm with ?elds, and we ran the farm in the Go´ rale manner directly in the city
centre. [. . .] Zakopane isn’t a city in the minds of the people. Zakopane is something different.
From a perspective focusing on difference, these statements clearly highlight the culture of
Zakopane as unique by connecting it to tradition, farming and folklore, hereby setting up a
contrast to the pro?t-oriented business men. By referring to its ‘‘village nature’’ (and hence its
culture and people), destination culture, cultural differences as well as cultural
misconceptions are perceived and explained as structurally embedded.
This discursive contrast between business men and locals, between people from elsewhere
in Poland and Zakopane villagers, is grounded in an idea of difference and con?ict between
cultures. A similar – or rather supplementary – discourse on cultural misconceptions
working to contrast groups involved in tourism relate to development strategies. Two
divergent positions are identi?ed and taken on by tourism stakeholders. One focuses on the
preservation of the unique local culture and nature against tourism, the other on active
tourism development. Both discourses relate to human action, in the way that people or
groups are identi?ed or identify themselves as actively engaging in either preservation or
development in regards to tourism. Also, the discourses are either grounded in the above
relativist idea of local culture as essentially different to others, or in the universalist idea that
local culture must evolve from its present (low) stage to a future higher one, often
encompassed as European or international.
During interviews, the positions are constructed through a process in which proponents of
the different strategies identify their own strengths, but also the lacks and weaknesses of
their opponents. This is seen with Leszcek, a young man working with advertisement sales
for a new English town map, when talking about the local business owners:
They must understand about advertisement. You know, mountains, beautiful views, it’s not
enough. Because if you want to have more tourist, more hotels, restaurants, more money, they
must have very good advertisement for the website, you know what I mean? But you must
understand the Go´ rale people are particular, inaccessible. It was hard to convince them that
opening up is necessary, especially here in Zakopane. Being open towards advertising, towards
the internet.
Sketching his ideas on the tourism future of Zakopane, a tourism developer from the local
municipality indirectly challenges the town’s village-status:
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Zakopane is something like a European town. Sometimes [containing] more things than in most
popular places in Europe. [Tourists] are thinking that Poland is villages, small villages,
hardworking people like in Eastern Europe 20 years ago. It’s our job to change that.
As a contrast to the development discourse, the mountain guide Jurek rejects the idea of
development and instead addresses a need for preservation:
The main idea is to save nature. We have to save nature; this is our treasure, the natural
environment. A lot of people would like to develop cable cars but I think we should save nature.
It’s very easy to destroy nature, but it’s dif?cult to recover. It’s fragile.
Jurek then goes on to contrast Zakopane to other places, such as the French Alps in which
he saw ‘‘concrete buildings and a lot of ugly settlements,’’ stating that ‘‘tourism
progressive’’ town counsel members should be careful in their eagerness to develop.
During the interview, Jurek brings out examples of ways of developing and perceiving
nature and local culture, discursively establishing differences between places, people and
development strategies.
5. Challenging the difference-approach to cultural misconceptions
Cultural misconceptions in tourism are commonly conceptualized through differences.
When talking of tourism-induced con?icts at the destination, local stakeholders appear to
identify and explain differences as an area of at least potential con?ict. Differences are
situated in or between cultures, between local and outside types of behavior, between
preservation and development, between strategies employed in regards tourism.
As cultural scholars, taking peoples opinions and statements seriously is a vital part of our
research and of our methodology. Through interviews, observations and other qualitative
research methods cultural researchers go beyond the descriptive ‘‘what’s’’ of tourism to
also afford answers or perspectives to more subjective and explorative ‘‘why’s’’ and
‘‘how’s’’. In the context of cultural misconceptions, the aim is therefore not just to pinpoint
and prove the existence of cultural misconceptions, but also, more importantly, to
understand why and how these are created and may be understood and hopefully
avoided. Based on this normative research agenda, how do we justify not using the
concept of difference as the starting point of analyses, when local stakeholders claim, that
differences are the cause and background for misconceptions? In this article, the aim is not
to reject the fact that differences do cause misconceptions, but rather to provide a different
and hopefully more fruitful analytical view on the phenomenon. The point is that seeking
explanations in culture and human differences may very easily, as has been illustrated in
the above, result in a freezing of juxtapositions between individuals or groups already
pointed out as incommensurable or imbalanced.
In the following, a new focus on doings rather than differences on the destination might help
analytically to transcend a binary opposition between them and us rooted in and explained
through cultural structures or human action. Instead, it is proposed to view these con?icts
and strategies as practices within a heterogeneous tourism network composed of human
and non-human actors alike. Hence, explaining cultural misconceptions is not a question of
pinpointing differences, but rather of how various objects and artifacts are used and
integrated in tourism practices and performances. Where the former difference-approach
based its classi?cation and interpretation of these things on inherent differences, ANT sees
them as an active part of a process of stabilization and destabilization of these differences.
Differences are from that perspective no longer conceived of as an inherent starting-point,
but rather as an on-going socio-material production. From this perspective, not only the
articulation and pointing out of things, people and performances are important but also
tracing how they are assembled and translated into a destination network. With this new
approach to the ?eld of research, cultural misconceptions take on a whole new meaning and
also, as we shall a see, a whole new role at the tourist destination.
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6. The destination as network
Studying cultural misconceptions ate the tourist destination ?rst of all means seeing the
destination not just as purely physical space or as an empty container to be ?lled with
attractions and facilities, cultural meaning or development strategies (Tinsley and Lynch,
2001). Rather the destination is to be understood as a heterogeneous network or
tourismscape (Van Der Duim, 2006) in which various human and non-human actors are
ordered, associated and accorded agency following a principle of general symmetry (Law,
1994, p. 9). This does not mean that things and people are ‘‘the same’’, but rather entails an
analytical leveling of humans and non-humans through a ‘‘bracketing of common-sense
categorization of the entities under investigation’’ (Bruun Jensen, 2003, p. 226). According
to Bruno Latour, agency can only be explained through a necessary composition of forces, in
which action is ‘‘not a property of humans but of an association of actants’’ (Latour, 1999, p.
182).
Following this line of thought, the destination is not related to or created by an agency or
culture based model of explanation, as a result of human action or as structured by tensions
between binary and opposing entities. Rather, it is thought of as the continuous workings of
things, people, technologies, money, information, images and brands (Sheller and Urry,
2004) materialized into the hybrid con?gurations (Callon and Law, 1997) making up the
destination network. The identi?cation and description of the destination as a heterogeneous
network emphasizes the different roles of objects, technologies and the material
environments in enabling tourism practices and performances (Haldrup and Larsen,
2006). Exactly through their net-work, the destination actors enable the constant production,
construction and negotiation of the destination. Hence, the wooden buildings, goat cheese,
folk music, hostels, mountain pastures and web pages of and about Zakopane all take part
in the simultaneous and constant construction and doing of this destination.
In performing an ANTanalysis the aimis to overcome the traditional social divisions between
the individual and the collective, humans and non-humans, action and structure, micro and
macro (Callon and Latour, 1981). By focusing on the relational character of these categories
otherwise conceived as pure (Barnes, 2005), ANTcancels out their separation and ability to
act single-handedly. There is nothing at the destination which is purely social, purely cultural
or purely physical and nothing which work on its own. By bringing the complex, embodied
materiality (Hayles, 2005) of the destination to the fore, this understanding reveals a more
chaotic and messy picture of a highly heterogenic destination. Actors are constantly busy
denominating, differentiating and contextualizing each other, forging durable connections
between cultures, practices, things and places at the destination. In the relational
understanding of the network, concepts such as local and foreign are effects, rather than the
pre-given basis of social relations. On that same note, the concept of cultural
misconceptions is not a bounded or a priori category, but rather a highly unstable
product of the ordering of and doing with things, people, materials and technologies in the
destination network.
Studying translations and misconceptions in the destination network
In an ANT analysis, empirical investigation of how the network is constructed is essential.
This is due to the fact that the analytical importance of categories, people, objects or actions
cannot be established prior to the examination of the network and its materiality (Henare and
Holbraad, 2006). It is through the empirical examination of the relations between different
actors that their importance and ability to speak, act, de?ne and represent can be
established. In this process characteristics or identities such as local, foreign, authentic or
commercial, work as the effects, rather than the pre-given basis of social relations.
Discerning cultural misconceptions requires speci?c focus to how humans, non-humans,
discourses and technologies are ordered and translated in the network.
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This discernment is performed by focusing on so-called translations; a trinity composed of
the translator, the translated and the translation media (Jo´ hannesson, 2005). According to
Rene´ Van Der Duim (2006, p. 966):
[. . .] translation refers to the process of negotiation, mobilization, representation, and
displacement among actors, entities, and places. It involves the rede?nition of these
phenomena so that they are persuaded to behave in accordance with the network
requirements, and these rede?nitions are frequently inscribed in the heterogeneous materials
that act to consolidate networks.
The process of translation also involves a synchronic continuity of transformation and
displacement of goals, interests, devices human beings and inscriptions (Callon, 1986;
Jo´ hannesson, 2005). In the on-going process of translation (Callon, 1991), actor-networks
are assembled by the connection and association of a broad variety of
entities-becoming-actors.
Detecting or tracing the translations, workings and effects of the destination network
involves looking at the way things, performances and practices are involved in the process
of creating the destination. According to Latour the objects of scienti?c results are at once
discursively constructed, socially produces and materially real (Latour, 1993; in Hayles,
2005). The destination is constructed in the same way, as imagined, planned, and built. On a
British internet web site about the city the result of this particular assemblage reads in the
following way:
Zakopane is a charming resort and winter sport centre. There is a fairytale atmosphere here, with
its ‘‘gingerbread’’ wooden cottages and many inhabitants still wear national dress.
This communication can be seen as an important part of the destination construction, as the
quote refers to and makes use of many entities and artifacts in conveying what Zakopane is.
We see how Zakopane is aligned with a battery of socio-material entities with which and in
which it is mediated and constructed. These are items such as clothes and buildings,
narratives such as the fairytale and representations such as the gingerbread house. Also a
more vague entity such as atmosphere is accentuated as well as the spatial categories of
Poland, capital, resort and the Tatra Mountains. Finally, the quote is itself conveyed through
the help of internet technology, allowing the destination to expand to a global audience.
This example of the translation and ordering of different human and non-human entities
shows that although culture (or other features about the destination) may possibly be the
way by which the destination is sought communicated and marketed, it is only by referring to
and deploying a whole ray of entities that culture is made communicable. Culture cannot act
alone, but requires a translation in and through various human and non-human actors in
order to be conveyed to us, in order to work. The joining of gingerbread cottages, national
dresses, and the practice of winter sports in to a internet narrative of Zakopane and its charm
is one attempt to perform and sustain the destination as durable. However, as seen next, the
process of translation centered around tourism does not stand unchallenged, as a quotation
from the previously mentioned architect illustrates:
They all think that since we’ve joined the EU we got ?ooded with foreign tourists. There were
always many foreign tourists here, always, and we’ve always had good contacts with foreign
countries. There are many Go´ rale abroad – in the USA, in Austria and many other countries.
There were always many foreign tourists here. During the communist times... All these people in
Denmark, they think that it’s been like in China here, like a closed area. It’s so untrue. We’ve had
many foreigners and we could go abroad, back in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. The ?rst Go´ rale band
played in the USA in 1966!
Talking to the interviewer, a Polish anthropology student who served as a translator during
my ?eldwork, the informant challenges what he sees as the Danish researcher view on
regarding immobility and isolation. He does this by introducing practices such as travel and
contact, and rejecting ideas of recent tourism ?ooding, hence discursively rejecting
in?uence from for example the EU as an important part of the destination network. In his
statement, the architect brings forward a variety of entities translating them into a whole,
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namely the destination, by referring to practices, performances, or skills such as playing
music, travelling or entering into contact with other people. Also material objects are brought
into his description of the town:
We’re right in the city centre – the Krupo´ wki Street. This house is one of the oldest ones around –
built in 1897. We used to have cows and other animals here only a few years ago, when my
father-in-law was still alive. We used to have a proper farm with ?elds, and we ran the farm in a
Go´ rale style directly in the city centre. Zakopane, like some villages in the Alps, has its own,
characteristic style - you have a big, fancy hotel, some shops, and right next to it a barn and a
heap of dung. Zakopane isn’t a city in the minds of the people. Zakopane is something different.
Other people’s attempt to transform the destination is criticized:
[The town] has been growing ever since the 1920’s, 1930’s. There have been some attempts
made to make it look like a regular city – take a look at Krupo´ wki Street [the main pedestrian
street, ed.]. It was a very bad idea; you can still see its echo here and there. It would have been
better to turn it into a garden-city, like Witkiewicz planned, with all the villas, houses and pensions
standing in gardens, parks, in the green, right? The communists came up with an idea of turning
Zakopane into a Communistic city, as they thought that it was a symbol of the pre-war Poland.
They built blocks. They brought in people to work. They turned it into something very weird, we
won’t live till the day when it’s all repaired.
In these descriptions of the city, town planning ideologies and practices from different
historical periods are challenged. Barns, hotels, streets, gardens, blocks are introduces,
evaluated, translated into the destination network or rejected as weird, as things – or people
– not belonging. It is in this process of translating the network that artifacts, people and
practices are either connected to or hooked off the network, discursively, socially, materially
and in practice. De?ning and performing the destination becomes an ongoing struggle and
process of contestation (Edensor, 2001).
The processes of translation are closely connected to power. Power is not to be seen as a
resource to be possessed or exerted, but rather as a relational capacity (Van Der Duim,
2006). This perspective is inspired by Michel Foucault and his work on the governance of
things and subjects in different time-spaces (Foucault, 1980, 1999). According to
Hollinshead, this insight must make researcher in tourism strive towards the registration of
how ‘ ‘tourism (often unsuspectingly) matters in the making dominant of some
inheritances/narratives/attractions and in the suppression or the denial of other
traditions/storylines/drawcards, and on another level how individual managers,
developers, researchers in tourism and travel quickly engage in small and large games of
cultural, social, environmental and historical, cleansing, as they promote and project some
socio-political universes and chastise or omit other possible contending worldviews’’
(Hollinshead, 1999, p. 7). It is these processes of exclusion and inclusion, omission and
suppression that according to this article ought to be more carefully addressed and traced
and to which the actor-network theory, or rather methodology and ontology provides a useful
tool. This means not assuming differences as the root to cultural misconceptions, but rather
as an on-going product of network translation.
7. Conclusion
This article shows how cultural misconceptions at the destination are usually articulated by
tourism stakeholders as difference inherent to culture or between strategies. Differences are
identi?ed between hosts and guests, developers and preservationists, locals and outsiders.
Also the article suggested that misconceptions where either explained as the workings of
immanent cultural structures or understood as the result of directed, intentional human
action. In an attempt to transcend this dichotomized ?eld, ANT was presented as a
socio-material and relational analytical tool to transcend the stare on difference blinding
other views and muting other interpretations on cultural misconceptions. Instead of
ontologically seeking for proofs and reasons for immanent differences or inherent strategic
mismatches between people and groups, ANT instead focuses on tracing how
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misconceptions are constantly and contingently created as effects through the powerful and
minutely workings of the destination network.
According to Bruner, scholars tend to retain an essentialist vocabulary of origins and
reproductions through their work of denomination. This risks establishing oppositions and a
judgmental bias, where one term becomes privileged at the expense of another (Bruner,
1994). When studying cultural misconceptions the risk of cultural judgments becomes both
higher and clearer. As researcher we need to face, address and question our more or less
implicit roles as judges of development or culture pronouncing our verdict of right and
wrong. The network approach in the study of cultural misconceptions is not an attempt to
ignore or deny the consequences of cultural misconception, but rather to open our eyes to
other explanations and other way to grasp our world. These explanations centre on the
relational, the processual and the socio-material character of tourism and also demonstrate
the heterogeneous and often subtle ways in which power and marginalization are exerted.
ANTchallenges more traditional ways of perceiving the workings of cultural tourism, and on a
more general level, social action and cultural expressions. It opens new possibilities and
offers great potential for new understandings. Looking at how much cultural teaching in
tourism curricula is based on functionalist theories assuming cultures as static and
incommensurable, this challenge is not only of an academic character, but also one that
addresses the teaching of future practitioners (Liburd and Ren, 2009). In this regard, a
relational and materially sensitive network approach may potentially provide richer, broader,
and hence culturally more sustainable notions of destination cultures, not only in research
but also in the communication, marketing and managing of destinations.
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Corresponding author
Carina Ren can be contacted at: [email protected]
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1. Peter Dirksmeier, Ilse Helbrecht. 2015. Resident Perceptions of New Urban Tourism: A Neglected Geography of Prejudice.
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doc_414049229.pdf
The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of cultural misconceptions through the
lens of actor-network theory (ANT).
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Beyond hosts and guests: translating the concept of cultural misconception
Carina Ren
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Special section paper
Beyond hosts and guests: translating the
concept of cultural misconception
Carina Ren
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of cultural misconceptions through the
lens of actor-network theory (ANT).
Design/methodology/approach – The article discusses how cultural misconceptions may be
encompassed at the tourist destination. Rather than seeing cultural misconceptions as clashes between
incommensurable cultures or as con?icts between opposing strategies, a third approach is introduced
in which cultural misconceptions are studied as effects of the socio-material workings within the
destination network. This is elucidated through a ?eldwork presentation showing how a wide range of
human and nonhuman actors point to and enact cultural and strategic differences.
Findings – Misconceptions may be seen as created through the ongoing doings and workings of the
destination network and its actors. Misconceptions are enacted through objects, places, performances
and discourses as they are assembled and translated, constantly constructing and challenging opinions
of what should be part of the destination network.
Originality/value – The article encourages an understanding of cultural misconceptions as products of
the work of the heterogeneous destination. This approach elucidates the intricate relations between
cultural practices, human action and material culture at the tourist destination.
Keywords Tourism development, Best practice, Cross-cultural studies, Individual perception,
National cultures
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
To researchers in the ?eld of tourism it comes as no surprise that a large amount and wide
variety of stakeholders are involved in the making of the tourismdestination. These groups of
stakeholders cover tourists, locals and people otherwise engaged in tourism marketing,
management, selling, servicing and research. Experiences from mass tourism destinations
reveal that between these groups of stakeholders the development of tourism spaces and
places easily results in what is often identi?ed and explained as ‘‘cultural clashes’’ (Lew and
Kennedy, 2002) or, as thematised in this special edition, in cultural misconceptions. A search
conducted in July of 2009 on www.scholar.google.com provides over 20.000 hits on the
three-word combination of ‘‘culture’’, ‘‘clash,’’ and ‘‘tourism’’, demonstrating that the seminal
work Hosts and Guest edited by Valene Smith (1977) on the cultural consequences of
tourism was not written in vain. The question is therefore not whether culture clashes or
misconceptions exist, but rather howwe as researchers and practitioners may learn to better
identify and deal with these, both on a conceptual, analytical and practical level.
This article critically examines the idea of cultural misconception and its underlying notions
of cultures and human action. What does it mean to misconceive culture? What notions of
DOI 10.1108/17506181011081479 VOL. 4 NO. 4 2010, pp. 287-298, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182
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Carina Ren is based at the
University of Southern
Denmark, Esbjerg,
Denmark
Received: July 2009
Revised: November 2009
Accepted: December 2009.
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culture are assumed in order for them to be inconceivable? How do misconceptions arise,
what cause and generate them? How can they be studied, described and conceptualized?
These are some of the questions that need to be considered – and answered – in order to
avoid a priori or taken-for-granted presumptions about the properties and features of culture,
human action and the possibilities and conditions of cultural misconception.
The article introduced and discusses two common approaches respectively seeing
misconceptions as a result of tourism encounters and development. The ?rst sees cultural
misconceptions as a predictable result of the contact of con?icting cultures, classically
typi?ed in the meeting between host and guest cultures. In this case, cultures are seen as
unique and mutually incompatible. The second approach accounts for cultural
misconceptions as a result of differing tourism related strategies. Explaining these
differing strategies ?rst of all presuppose a discrepancy in development between cultures,
hereby also assuming cultures as hierarchically positioned. This is typically described
through the use of classic dichotomies such as global/ local and modern/pre-modern (Cole,
2007). Second, this position sees development as generated by people, hence identifying
human action as the driver behind development and cultural misconceptions. After
presenting their grounding in cultural and social theory, both of these perspectives will be
empirically anchored using examples from a ?eldwork conducted in Zakopane, a ski town
and resort in Southern Poland.
The cultural and action-based explanations to cultural misconceptions are challenged by
introducing actor-network theory (ANT) and the metaphor of the network as an analytical and
methodological tool to rediscover the phenomenon of cultural misconception. In this
approach, the reader is invited to consider the destination as a constantly negotiated and
constructed socio-material network (Latour, 2004). In this perspective, cultural
misconceptions are not seen as a product of con?icts of difference or generated by
intentional human action, but rather as constant network negotiations and translations
resulting in an on-going absorption and exclusions of artifacts, techniques or performances.
Summarizing, the article suggests, that a network approach provides an alternative
perspective on cultural misconception in diverting its focus away from structural or
action-based differences to network related doings at the destination. Hence,
misconceptions are no longer ascribable to the one part in a binary relation of difference,
but are rather part of a continuously negotiatedandassembledrelational destination network.
2. Cultural misconceptions as clashes between incommensurable cultures
In tourism studies, researchers regard the destination as a privileged tourism space
(Bærenholdt et al., 2004; Jo´ hannesson, 2005). The destination is a starting point for
observing and researching tourism through its organizing, measuring, conceptualisation,
rebranding, planning, or modelling (see Jenkins, 1999; Dahles, 1998; Gallarza et al., 2002;
Dredge, 1999). It is conceived as a place where tourismis acted out, where tourists, industry
workers and planners as well as locals are physically present and – at least potentially –
interacting. The description of the destination as cultural meeting grounds is often
conceptually categorized as a ?eld of con?ict. In?uential tourism studies investigate tourism
related con?icts and issues of communication (Jaworski and Pritchard, 2005),
commodi?cation (Cohen, 2001; MacLeod, 2006), loss of authenticity (MacCannell, 1976;
Taylor, 2001) and cultural heritage (Hewison, 1987) to name but a few.
The basis for the description and understanding of the destination as a site of spatially
demarcated con?ict is a view of culture as difference. Although many ways of travelling are
arguably based on motivations such as play (Urry, 1990) or the search for different kinds of
authenticity (Wang, 1999; Reisinger and Steiner, 2006), one might say that the very idea of
travelling bases itself on the search for otherness or the encounter of ‘‘the Other’’ (Cohen,
1972). This understanding of culture is supported, reproduced and reinforced in tourism
brochures, travel books, and other destination promotion material in which the destination
culture is thematized as exotic and like nowhere else. The identi?cation and localization of
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cultural difference is set in a spatial frame, where distantly located cultures are also
perceived as more distant in a cultural sense.
This othering or differentiating of cultures is based on a cultural relativismaccording to which
different cultures are bound to remain exactly that: different. As an intellectual tradition,
cultural relativism demonstrates, how ‘‘there are different cultures, that cultural diversity
should be understood in terms of a plurality of life worlds, each displaying its proper
meaning and coherence. In this sense cultural relativism is not a certain benevolent attitude
towards cultures, but rather a discursive construct, transforming the disorder of cultural
diversity into a well-ordered plurality of collective systems of values, that is ‘culture’’’
(Christensen, 1996). Cultures are incommensurable, can not be transcended or integrated
and cultural communication may therefore easily result in serious con?icts.
The understanding of cultures as mutually other, incommensurable and rooted in
ethnicity-based communities is ?rst identi?ed as an ideology of diversity in the writings of
German philosopher Johan Herder (Knudsen, 1998). His ideas of cultural particularism and
Volkgeist, the spirit of the people, can be seen as a protest against the universalistic ideals of
the Enlightenment. In universalism, culture is seen not as a multitude, but rather as one
uni?ed Culture. According to the project of the Enlightenment, humanity must jointly strive
towards a common civilization in a ?ght against prejudice and ignorance. In particularism,
this ?ght is substituted by a search and longing for authenticity, a project and concomitant
rhetoric easily detected in today’s tourism promotion and consumption (Lo¨ fgren, 1999).
The conceptual establishment of cultural differences does not belong solely to Herders
particularist project. Thinkers of the Enlightenment were already greatly interested in
differences, resulting among other things in a number of popular travel books and accounts.
The interest in and worshiping of diversity inspired by Herder must therefore be seen as a
logic extension of the establishment of human unity provided by the Enlightenment
(Knudsen, 1998). In that sense, the ideas of universalismand particularismare not only each
others opposites, but also a relational and interconnected pair. This connecting will be
further elaborated in the third part of the article.
So far we have established that the concept of cultural misconception can be seen as a
clash between cultures and demonstrated how this perspective is ultimately based on an
understanding of cultures as different and incommensurable. In the following, another
account for the origin and occurrence of cultural misconception at the destination will be
presented, namely as opposing strategies faced with tourism development.
3. Cultural misconceptions as opposing strategies
A different but somewhat complimentary step in the scrutinizing of the concept of cultural
misconception is the perception of this concept as rooted in antagonistic social and cultural
strategies in regards to tourism development and growth at the destination. In this
perspective, potential or actual con?icts on the destination are rooted not in cultural
differences inherent to groups, but rather attributed to social behavior and human action. As
the former perspective, this one can also be retrieved in tourism research writings, in which
tourism development projects are seen as creating con?icts between different groups.
These are considered and investigated as juxtaposed (De Kadt, 1979).
This understanding of opposing strategies as the basis of cultural misconceptions is
connected to the aforementioned cultural ideology of the Enlightenment where culture is
perceived as a universal project of progress and change. The history of man is seen as
driven by internal dynamics of development and necessary progress (Knudsen, 1998). In
this evolutionistic image, cultural differences are also identi?ed, but in another way than with
the particularist approach. Different societies are positioned in relation to a scale of value
based on criteria of difference going from simple to complex. It is the different positions in
scale of development, not the cultural difference in itself that is seen as the source of
misconceptions.
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Another distinction conceptually separates the two approaches to cultural misconceptions.
Whereas the former understanding is based on structures of culture, that is how one or
several cultures could be seen as structuring or determining a destination, the
strategy-approach is based on human or social action. The destination is created,
changing and developing according to actions carried out by people or groups actively,
re?exively and knowingly employing various – or in this case con?icting – strategies to their
advantage. People promote, move and create based on their respective agendas.
Cultural misconceptions may, as we have seen, be conceptualized as rooted in
incommensurable cultural differences or in differing cultural strategies. Based on
?eldwork for my doctoral theses (Ren, 2009), I demonstrate in the following how these two
approaches are empirically traceable in the discourse of various tourism stakeholders. Both
perspectives can be identi?ed in how the destination and its culture(s) are perceived and
identi?ed by local stakeholders at the destination. Examples are provided to demonstrate
how the discourses of difference and strategy are deployed by tourism stakeholders to
conceive and explain cultural misconceptions at the destination. This is succeeded by a
discussion of the consequences in transferring this perspective onto a research agenda,
?nally suggesting how a network perspective may be applied as a tool to transcend an
understanding of cultural misconceptions as either based on cultural structures or human
action.
4. Destination culture(s) in the eyes of the tourism stakeholders
Zakopane is a small town of 30,000 residents located in the Tatra Mountains in the South of
Poland. In tourism marketing the area is portrayed as the ‘‘capital’’ of the thriving culture of
the Go´ rale, Polish highlanders, still preserving a distinct dialect and tradition. Also the
stunning nature of the surrounding mountains is promoted along with skiing, hiking and other
outdoor activities. Since the dawn of tourism in late nineteenth century and the development
of mass tourism during socialism, Go´ rale and newcomers ?nd employment in the tourism
industry providing accommodation, food and guiding services for visitors. Today
approximately three million primarily Polish, but increasingly also international tourists,
visit Zakopane every year. This intense level of tourism gives rise to re?ections and
discussions in different areas of local society regarding how local culture is and should be
coping with foreign impact and in?uence. In the examples below, the business man is
discursively used to demonstrate how cultural misconceptions are comprehended as a
cultural clash assuming cultures as distinct and incompatible. As a contrast, the idea of the
village is used as a means to specify and accentuate a local distinction and uniqueness.
Many local inhabitants show concern facing an increase in business men onto the local
tourism market, which has until now been comparatively dominated by locally owned travel
agencies, hotels, restaurants and ski lifts. As a local architect, musician and advocate of
Go´ rale culture says:
There’s a lot of foreign in?uence in the region [. . .]. I don’t mean the tourists – the tourists have
always been here, they are a blessing for us in a way. What I mean is a growing group of
businessmen, who buy land and build apartments to sell away to strangers. The prices of land
and ?ats are so high here, that you can easily become rich by doing so. And they do it [. . .]. I say
that it’s like selling our homeland piece by piece. It’s a tragedy, which puts all the most beautiful
places at risk [. . .] It’s the Russians, the Italians, some people who deal with illegal business. They
don’t do it because they like it here; they do it, because they know that the prices of land will grow
fast. This is a threat.
In this statement the business man is presented as a foreign element. The business man is
opposed to the tourist that in many ways is a blessing. The clash is not identi?ed between
local and foreign, but rather between people with a genuine interest in the local and people
chasing pro?t. A local guide also comments on the recent land purchases and how it is used
to set up private pensions and hotels:
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Especially these last years, more people from the middle of Poland have come. They build
pensions with good accommodation. Everything is for rent here. They come here 100% for
business, to make money.
Not only land ownership, but also the alien overtaking of local restaurants is considered a
treat, as stated by a local restaurant and gallery owner:
These businessmen have no idea what real folklore is. They try to make restaurants or pubs in this
highlander style, but truly speaking, mostly they have nothing really to do with the Highlander
style. You see the waitresses, they look ugly! Because they don’t know how to wear the dress.
They have no idea how to wear it.
In these interview extracts the business men along with non-local buyers and staff, and not
necessarily tourists, are identi?ed as a threat to local culture. Considering the common
dichotomy usually seen guest as the opposition to local, it is surprisingly not foreign tourists,
but rather Poles fromlarge cities, which are identi?ed as the main threat. Their apparent hunt
for pro?t and disregard of Go´ rale tradition is set up as a contrast to the local, identi?ed or
symbolized by the village. As the mayor says: ‘‘Zakopane is in its nature a big village. We
have over a thousand farmers here, people who have their ?elds, their farms. It’s really like a
big village. I’m sure that the folklore will survive here.’’ The architect and cultural advocate
agrees:
Zakopane itself was never a city – it was always a village and it still remains a village. We’re right
in the city centre. This house is one of the oldest ones around – built in 1897. We used to have
cows and other animals here only a few years ago, when my father-in-law was still alive. We used
to have a proper farm with ?elds, and we ran the farm in the Go´ rale manner directly in the city
centre. [. . .] Zakopane isn’t a city in the minds of the people. Zakopane is something different.
From a perspective focusing on difference, these statements clearly highlight the culture of
Zakopane as unique by connecting it to tradition, farming and folklore, hereby setting up a
contrast to the pro?t-oriented business men. By referring to its ‘‘village nature’’ (and hence its
culture and people), destination culture, cultural differences as well as cultural
misconceptions are perceived and explained as structurally embedded.
This discursive contrast between business men and locals, between people from elsewhere
in Poland and Zakopane villagers, is grounded in an idea of difference and con?ict between
cultures. A similar – or rather supplementary – discourse on cultural misconceptions
working to contrast groups involved in tourism relate to development strategies. Two
divergent positions are identi?ed and taken on by tourism stakeholders. One focuses on the
preservation of the unique local culture and nature against tourism, the other on active
tourism development. Both discourses relate to human action, in the way that people or
groups are identi?ed or identify themselves as actively engaging in either preservation or
development in regards to tourism. Also, the discourses are either grounded in the above
relativist idea of local culture as essentially different to others, or in the universalist idea that
local culture must evolve from its present (low) stage to a future higher one, often
encompassed as European or international.
During interviews, the positions are constructed through a process in which proponents of
the different strategies identify their own strengths, but also the lacks and weaknesses of
their opponents. This is seen with Leszcek, a young man working with advertisement sales
for a new English town map, when talking about the local business owners:
They must understand about advertisement. You know, mountains, beautiful views, it’s not
enough. Because if you want to have more tourist, more hotels, restaurants, more money, they
must have very good advertisement for the website, you know what I mean? But you must
understand the Go´ rale people are particular, inaccessible. It was hard to convince them that
opening up is necessary, especially here in Zakopane. Being open towards advertising, towards
the internet.
Sketching his ideas on the tourism future of Zakopane, a tourism developer from the local
municipality indirectly challenges the town’s village-status:
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Zakopane is something like a European town. Sometimes [containing] more things than in most
popular places in Europe. [Tourists] are thinking that Poland is villages, small villages,
hardworking people like in Eastern Europe 20 years ago. It’s our job to change that.
As a contrast to the development discourse, the mountain guide Jurek rejects the idea of
development and instead addresses a need for preservation:
The main idea is to save nature. We have to save nature; this is our treasure, the natural
environment. A lot of people would like to develop cable cars but I think we should save nature.
It’s very easy to destroy nature, but it’s dif?cult to recover. It’s fragile.
Jurek then goes on to contrast Zakopane to other places, such as the French Alps in which
he saw ‘‘concrete buildings and a lot of ugly settlements,’’ stating that ‘‘tourism
progressive’’ town counsel members should be careful in their eagerness to develop.
During the interview, Jurek brings out examples of ways of developing and perceiving
nature and local culture, discursively establishing differences between places, people and
development strategies.
5. Challenging the difference-approach to cultural misconceptions
Cultural misconceptions in tourism are commonly conceptualized through differences.
When talking of tourism-induced con?icts at the destination, local stakeholders appear to
identify and explain differences as an area of at least potential con?ict. Differences are
situated in or between cultures, between local and outside types of behavior, between
preservation and development, between strategies employed in regards tourism.
As cultural scholars, taking peoples opinions and statements seriously is a vital part of our
research and of our methodology. Through interviews, observations and other qualitative
research methods cultural researchers go beyond the descriptive ‘‘what’s’’ of tourism to
also afford answers or perspectives to more subjective and explorative ‘‘why’s’’ and
‘‘how’s’’. In the context of cultural misconceptions, the aim is therefore not just to pinpoint
and prove the existence of cultural misconceptions, but also, more importantly, to
understand why and how these are created and may be understood and hopefully
avoided. Based on this normative research agenda, how do we justify not using the
concept of difference as the starting point of analyses, when local stakeholders claim, that
differences are the cause and background for misconceptions? In this article, the aim is not
to reject the fact that differences do cause misconceptions, but rather to provide a different
and hopefully more fruitful analytical view on the phenomenon. The point is that seeking
explanations in culture and human differences may very easily, as has been illustrated in
the above, result in a freezing of juxtapositions between individuals or groups already
pointed out as incommensurable or imbalanced.
In the following, a new focus on doings rather than differences on the destination might help
analytically to transcend a binary opposition between them and us rooted in and explained
through cultural structures or human action. Instead, it is proposed to view these con?icts
and strategies as practices within a heterogeneous tourism network composed of human
and non-human actors alike. Hence, explaining cultural misconceptions is not a question of
pinpointing differences, but rather of how various objects and artifacts are used and
integrated in tourism practices and performances. Where the former difference-approach
based its classi?cation and interpretation of these things on inherent differences, ANT sees
them as an active part of a process of stabilization and destabilization of these differences.
Differences are from that perspective no longer conceived of as an inherent starting-point,
but rather as an on-going socio-material production. From this perspective, not only the
articulation and pointing out of things, people and performances are important but also
tracing how they are assembled and translated into a destination network. With this new
approach to the ?eld of research, cultural misconceptions take on a whole new meaning and
also, as we shall a see, a whole new role at the tourist destination.
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6. The destination as network
Studying cultural misconceptions ate the tourist destination ?rst of all means seeing the
destination not just as purely physical space or as an empty container to be ?lled with
attractions and facilities, cultural meaning or development strategies (Tinsley and Lynch,
2001). Rather the destination is to be understood as a heterogeneous network or
tourismscape (Van Der Duim, 2006) in which various human and non-human actors are
ordered, associated and accorded agency following a principle of general symmetry (Law,
1994, p. 9). This does not mean that things and people are ‘‘the same’’, but rather entails an
analytical leveling of humans and non-humans through a ‘‘bracketing of common-sense
categorization of the entities under investigation’’ (Bruun Jensen, 2003, p. 226). According
to Bruno Latour, agency can only be explained through a necessary composition of forces, in
which action is ‘‘not a property of humans but of an association of actants’’ (Latour, 1999, p.
182).
Following this line of thought, the destination is not related to or created by an agency or
culture based model of explanation, as a result of human action or as structured by tensions
between binary and opposing entities. Rather, it is thought of as the continuous workings of
things, people, technologies, money, information, images and brands (Sheller and Urry,
2004) materialized into the hybrid con?gurations (Callon and Law, 1997) making up the
destination network. The identi?cation and description of the destination as a heterogeneous
network emphasizes the different roles of objects, technologies and the material
environments in enabling tourism practices and performances (Haldrup and Larsen,
2006). Exactly through their net-work, the destination actors enable the constant production,
construction and negotiation of the destination. Hence, the wooden buildings, goat cheese,
folk music, hostels, mountain pastures and web pages of and about Zakopane all take part
in the simultaneous and constant construction and doing of this destination.
In performing an ANTanalysis the aimis to overcome the traditional social divisions between
the individual and the collective, humans and non-humans, action and structure, micro and
macro (Callon and Latour, 1981). By focusing on the relational character of these categories
otherwise conceived as pure (Barnes, 2005), ANTcancels out their separation and ability to
act single-handedly. There is nothing at the destination which is purely social, purely cultural
or purely physical and nothing which work on its own. By bringing the complex, embodied
materiality (Hayles, 2005) of the destination to the fore, this understanding reveals a more
chaotic and messy picture of a highly heterogenic destination. Actors are constantly busy
denominating, differentiating and contextualizing each other, forging durable connections
between cultures, practices, things and places at the destination. In the relational
understanding of the network, concepts such as local and foreign are effects, rather than the
pre-given basis of social relations. On that same note, the concept of cultural
misconceptions is not a bounded or a priori category, but rather a highly unstable
product of the ordering of and doing with things, people, materials and technologies in the
destination network.
Studying translations and misconceptions in the destination network
In an ANT analysis, empirical investigation of how the network is constructed is essential.
This is due to the fact that the analytical importance of categories, people, objects or actions
cannot be established prior to the examination of the network and its materiality (Henare and
Holbraad, 2006). It is through the empirical examination of the relations between different
actors that their importance and ability to speak, act, de?ne and represent can be
established. In this process characteristics or identities such as local, foreign, authentic or
commercial, work as the effects, rather than the pre-given basis of social relations.
Discerning cultural misconceptions requires speci?c focus to how humans, non-humans,
discourses and technologies are ordered and translated in the network.
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This discernment is performed by focusing on so-called translations; a trinity composed of
the translator, the translated and the translation media (Jo´ hannesson, 2005). According to
Rene´ Van Der Duim (2006, p. 966):
[. . .] translation refers to the process of negotiation, mobilization, representation, and
displacement among actors, entities, and places. It involves the rede?nition of these
phenomena so that they are persuaded to behave in accordance with the network
requirements, and these rede?nitions are frequently inscribed in the heterogeneous materials
that act to consolidate networks.
The process of translation also involves a synchronic continuity of transformation and
displacement of goals, interests, devices human beings and inscriptions (Callon, 1986;
Jo´ hannesson, 2005). In the on-going process of translation (Callon, 1991), actor-networks
are assembled by the connection and association of a broad variety of
entities-becoming-actors.
Detecting or tracing the translations, workings and effects of the destination network
involves looking at the way things, performances and practices are involved in the process
of creating the destination. According to Latour the objects of scienti?c results are at once
discursively constructed, socially produces and materially real (Latour, 1993; in Hayles,
2005). The destination is constructed in the same way, as imagined, planned, and built. On a
British internet web site about the city the result of this particular assemblage reads in the
following way:
Zakopane is a charming resort and winter sport centre. There is a fairytale atmosphere here, with
its ‘‘gingerbread’’ wooden cottages and many inhabitants still wear national dress.
This communication can be seen as an important part of the destination construction, as the
quote refers to and makes use of many entities and artifacts in conveying what Zakopane is.
We see how Zakopane is aligned with a battery of socio-material entities with which and in
which it is mediated and constructed. These are items such as clothes and buildings,
narratives such as the fairytale and representations such as the gingerbread house. Also a
more vague entity such as atmosphere is accentuated as well as the spatial categories of
Poland, capital, resort and the Tatra Mountains. Finally, the quote is itself conveyed through
the help of internet technology, allowing the destination to expand to a global audience.
This example of the translation and ordering of different human and non-human entities
shows that although culture (or other features about the destination) may possibly be the
way by which the destination is sought communicated and marketed, it is only by referring to
and deploying a whole ray of entities that culture is made communicable. Culture cannot act
alone, but requires a translation in and through various human and non-human actors in
order to be conveyed to us, in order to work. The joining of gingerbread cottages, national
dresses, and the practice of winter sports in to a internet narrative of Zakopane and its charm
is one attempt to perform and sustain the destination as durable. However, as seen next, the
process of translation centered around tourism does not stand unchallenged, as a quotation
from the previously mentioned architect illustrates:
They all think that since we’ve joined the EU we got ?ooded with foreign tourists. There were
always many foreign tourists here, always, and we’ve always had good contacts with foreign
countries. There are many Go´ rale abroad – in the USA, in Austria and many other countries.
There were always many foreign tourists here. During the communist times... All these people in
Denmark, they think that it’s been like in China here, like a closed area. It’s so untrue. We’ve had
many foreigners and we could go abroad, back in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. The ?rst Go´ rale band
played in the USA in 1966!
Talking to the interviewer, a Polish anthropology student who served as a translator during
my ?eldwork, the informant challenges what he sees as the Danish researcher view on
regarding immobility and isolation. He does this by introducing practices such as travel and
contact, and rejecting ideas of recent tourism ?ooding, hence discursively rejecting
in?uence from for example the EU as an important part of the destination network. In his
statement, the architect brings forward a variety of entities translating them into a whole,
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namely the destination, by referring to practices, performances, or skills such as playing
music, travelling or entering into contact with other people. Also material objects are brought
into his description of the town:
We’re right in the city centre – the Krupo´ wki Street. This house is one of the oldest ones around –
built in 1897. We used to have cows and other animals here only a few years ago, when my
father-in-law was still alive. We used to have a proper farm with ?elds, and we ran the farm in a
Go´ rale style directly in the city centre. Zakopane, like some villages in the Alps, has its own,
characteristic style - you have a big, fancy hotel, some shops, and right next to it a barn and a
heap of dung. Zakopane isn’t a city in the minds of the people. Zakopane is something different.
Other people’s attempt to transform the destination is criticized:
[The town] has been growing ever since the 1920’s, 1930’s. There have been some attempts
made to make it look like a regular city – take a look at Krupo´ wki Street [the main pedestrian
street, ed.]. It was a very bad idea; you can still see its echo here and there. It would have been
better to turn it into a garden-city, like Witkiewicz planned, with all the villas, houses and pensions
standing in gardens, parks, in the green, right? The communists came up with an idea of turning
Zakopane into a Communistic city, as they thought that it was a symbol of the pre-war Poland.
They built blocks. They brought in people to work. They turned it into something very weird, we
won’t live till the day when it’s all repaired.
In these descriptions of the city, town planning ideologies and practices from different
historical periods are challenged. Barns, hotels, streets, gardens, blocks are introduces,
evaluated, translated into the destination network or rejected as weird, as things – or people
– not belonging. It is in this process of translating the network that artifacts, people and
practices are either connected to or hooked off the network, discursively, socially, materially
and in practice. De?ning and performing the destination becomes an ongoing struggle and
process of contestation (Edensor, 2001).
The processes of translation are closely connected to power. Power is not to be seen as a
resource to be possessed or exerted, but rather as a relational capacity (Van Der Duim,
2006). This perspective is inspired by Michel Foucault and his work on the governance of
things and subjects in different time-spaces (Foucault, 1980, 1999). According to
Hollinshead, this insight must make researcher in tourism strive towards the registration of
how ‘ ‘tourism (often unsuspectingly) matters in the making dominant of some
inheritances/narratives/attractions and in the suppression or the denial of other
traditions/storylines/drawcards, and on another level how individual managers,
developers, researchers in tourism and travel quickly engage in small and large games of
cultural, social, environmental and historical, cleansing, as they promote and project some
socio-political universes and chastise or omit other possible contending worldviews’’
(Hollinshead, 1999, p. 7). It is these processes of exclusion and inclusion, omission and
suppression that according to this article ought to be more carefully addressed and traced
and to which the actor-network theory, or rather methodology and ontology provides a useful
tool. This means not assuming differences as the root to cultural misconceptions, but rather
as an on-going product of network translation.
7. Conclusion
This article shows how cultural misconceptions at the destination are usually articulated by
tourism stakeholders as difference inherent to culture or between strategies. Differences are
identi?ed between hosts and guests, developers and preservationists, locals and outsiders.
Also the article suggested that misconceptions where either explained as the workings of
immanent cultural structures or understood as the result of directed, intentional human
action. In an attempt to transcend this dichotomized ?eld, ANT was presented as a
socio-material and relational analytical tool to transcend the stare on difference blinding
other views and muting other interpretations on cultural misconceptions. Instead of
ontologically seeking for proofs and reasons for immanent differences or inherent strategic
mismatches between people and groups, ANT instead focuses on tracing how
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misconceptions are constantly and contingently created as effects through the powerful and
minutely workings of the destination network.
According to Bruner, scholars tend to retain an essentialist vocabulary of origins and
reproductions through their work of denomination. This risks establishing oppositions and a
judgmental bias, where one term becomes privileged at the expense of another (Bruner,
1994). When studying cultural misconceptions the risk of cultural judgments becomes both
higher and clearer. As researcher we need to face, address and question our more or less
implicit roles as judges of development or culture pronouncing our verdict of right and
wrong. The network approach in the study of cultural misconceptions is not an attempt to
ignore or deny the consequences of cultural misconception, but rather to open our eyes to
other explanations and other way to grasp our world. These explanations centre on the
relational, the processual and the socio-material character of tourism and also demonstrate
the heterogeneous and often subtle ways in which power and marginalization are exerted.
ANTchallenges more traditional ways of perceiving the workings of cultural tourism, and on a
more general level, social action and cultural expressions. It opens new possibilities and
offers great potential for new understandings. Looking at how much cultural teaching in
tourism curricula is based on functionalist theories assuming cultures as static and
incommensurable, this challenge is not only of an academic character, but also one that
addresses the teaching of future practitioners (Liburd and Ren, 2009). In this regard, a
relational and materially sensitive network approach may potentially provide richer, broader,
and hence culturally more sustainable notions of destination cultures, not only in research
but also in the communication, marketing and managing of destinations.
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Corresponding author
Carina Ren can be contacted at: [email protected]
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