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Sustaining Tourism, SustainingCapitalism? The Tourism

Industry's Role in Global

Capitalist ExpansionRobert Fletcher

a

aDepartment of Environment, Peace, and Security,

Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica

To cite this article:Robert Fletcher (2011) Sustaining Tourism, Sustaining Capitalism?The Tourism Industry's Role in Global Capitalist Expansion, Tourism Geographies: An

International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment, 13:3, 443-461, DOI:

10.1080/14616688.2011.570372

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Tourism Geographies

Vol. 13, No. 3, 443461, August 2011

Sustaining Tourism, SustainingCapitalism? The Tourism Industrys Rolein Global Capitalist Expansion

ROBERT FLETCHERDepartment of Environment, Peace, and Security, Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica

Abstract This article contends that international tourism may be one important means bywhich the capitalist world-economy seeks to sustain itself in the face of inherent contradic-tions that threaten its long-term survival. Marxist critics have long identified an inevitabletendency towards crises of overproduction (over-accumulation) within the capitalist system,provoked by what Marx termed the central contradiction between imperatives of productionand consumption. Subsequent analysts have highlighted a variety of so-called fixes by whichoverproduction crises can be forestalled through spatial and/or temporal displacement of ex-cess accumulated capital. Building upon this analysis, I outline a number of such fixes intrinsicto the development of the international tourism industry. In addition, I suggest that ecotourismdevelopment in particular provides additional fixes for capitalisms so-called second contra-

diction between the imperative of continual growth and finite natural resources. In sum, Ipropose that advocacy of global sustainable tourism by a transnational capitalist class mayplay an important role in sustaining capitalism as well.

Key Words: Capitalism, neo-liberalism, conservation, ecotourism, sustainability, Marxism

Introduction

Virtually every tourism study currently published begins by highlighting the indus-

trys spectacular growth over the past several decades. In this respect, tourism is

commonly pronounced the worlds largest industry, although some commentatorsdispute this (e.g. Wheeller 2004), and others question whether tourism constitutes a

unitary industry at all (see Higgins-Desbiolles 2006). Frequently cited United Nations

World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) statistics, which must of course be read with

caution (Mowforth & Munt 2003), claim growth between 1950 and 2008 from 25 to

922 million international tourism arrivals generating $US944 billion in receipts and

averaging 4 percent growth per year (UNWTO 2009a). Greenwood (1989: 171) goes

so far as to call tourism the largest scale movement of goods, services, and people

that humanity has perhaps ever seen.

Correspondence Address: Robert Fletcher, Department of Environment, Peace, and Security, PO Box 138-

6100, Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica. Fax: 506-2249-1929; Tel.: 506-2205-9090; Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1461-6688 Print/1470-1340 Online /11/03/0044319 C 2011 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2011.570372

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Sustaining Tourism, Sustaining Capitalism? 445

shorter hours of work, less physically taxing jobs, and better education, vacationers

began to demand personal development as well as relaxation and entertainment. In

this analysis, the growth of ecotourism in particular is seen as part and parcel of the

development of so-called new or alternative tourism in the 1970s in an effort toescape the type of standardized packaged tours characteristic of conventional mass

tourism and experience destinations off the beaten path (Poon 1993; Mowforth &

Munt 2003).

This perspective is contested, however. Several critics contend that there is in fact

little evidence for the claim that there exists a particular type of ecotourist driving

the industrys growth through a demand for eco-friendly experiences. Rather, these

critics assert, consumers have simply responded to an increased supply of nature

tourism services what Sharpley (2006) calls a supply of nature developed by

operators in search of profit through developing a niche market neglected (or created)by mass tourism (Wheeller 1993; Sharpley 2006).

On the supply side, then, researchers suggest that tourism growth has been spurred

by several different factors. The first involves the desire of industry operators to

develop profitable enterprises. Fundamental in this respect was the development of

the commercial airline industry in the 1950s (Honey 2008). From this perspective,

as mentioned, ecotourism can be seen to be spurred by the desire to exploit a niche

market in response to saturation of the conventional mass tourism market by other

operators.

Alternatively, tourisms rise can be attributed to efforts on the part of internationaldevelopment planners to promote the industry as a strategy for economic growth,

particularly in less-developed nations that have not seen substantial benefits from

conventional development measures. Thus, Munt (1994: 49) describes tourism as a

last-ditch attempt to break from the confines of underdevelopment and get the IMF to

lay the golden egg of an upwardly-mobile GNP. Indeed, since the 1960s tourism has

been embraced as a development strategy by a great number of development planners,

including transnational institutions such as the United Nations and World Bank,

international aid agencies such as USAID, and national governments worldwide.

From this perspective, growth in ecotourism specifically can be understood as an

innovation of tourism development strategy in the face of problems associated with

mass tourism development. By 1979, recognition of mass tourisms negative social

and environmental impacts prompted the World Bank to suspend loans for tourism

development, and the following year saw the Manila Declaration of World Tourisms

pronouncement that mass tourism does more harm than good to people and societies

of the Third World (quoted in Honey 2008: 1011). In the mid-1980s, however,

ecotourism in particular was newly promoted as an alternative form of development

that might evade these problems, a conviction reinforced by the crystallization of

the international sustainable development agenda following the 1987 Bruntland Re-

port and 1992 Rio Summit. This shift was further strengthened by the embrace ofecotourism during the same period by international conservation non-governmental

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446 R. Fletcher

organizations (NGOs), such as World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Conservation In-

ternational (CI), as a strategy for integrated conservation and development (West

2006).

Of course, these different explanations for tourisms growth are not mutuallyexclusive and are often viewed as acting in concert. In this combined narrative,

then, the dramatic post-war growth of tourism is attributed to the development of

a symbiotic feedback loop among three relatively independent groups of actors:

alienated tourists seeking extraordinary experiences; industry operators endeavouring

to provide these experiences in order to glean a profit; and development/conservation

organizations seeking to harness the exchange between these two groups in order to

promote their own goals.

In what follows, I seek to challenge this narrative to a degree by suggesting

that rather than viewing these different groups of actors as relatively independent, ifintimately intertwined, we can better understand tourisms rapid rise by framing these

groups as even more closely conjoined as components of a single process by means

of which the capitalist world-system harnesses the tourism industry in order to fuel its

expansion and attempt to resolve internal contradictions. In short, I suggest, tourism

development may constitute one of the significant dynamics by means of which

capitalism sustains itself in the present era. Adopting this perspective, I believe,

provides for a deeper understanding of the dynamics and causes of tourisms growth

than previous analyses have offered.

While tourism has been described as a form of capitalism for some time now (see,for example, Britton 1982; 1991), its analysis in this respect remains underdeveloped,

as several recent reviews have pointed out (Bianchi 2009; Gibson 2009). As Bianchi

(2009: 487, emphasis in original) describes, the preoccupation with the discursive,

symbolic and cultural realms of tourism has for the most part been undertaken

at the expense of any sustained analysis of the structures and relations of power

associated with globalization and neo-liberal capitalism. By the same token, while

the various means by which capitalism is able to forestall an inherent tendency

towards crippling crisis have been documented at length (e.g. Harvey 1989; 2006),

the role of tourism in this process has never been systematically elaborated. In the

discussion to follow, therefore, I synthesize and build upon previous analyses of the

relationship between tourism and capitalism in order to develop a comprehensive

framework for understanding tourism growth as an element of capitalist expansion.

This analysis builds upon recent work describing the confluence between capitalism

and natural resource conservation as well (e.g. Sullivan 2006; Brockington et al.

2008; Castree 2008; Brockington & Duffy 2010).

I do not wish to overstate my case, however. My aim is to ascertain, for heuristic

purposes, precisely how far analysis in the terms suggested here can be pushed before

it becomes untenable. Neither do I intend to present capitalism as a homogenous entity

with autonomous will and initiative. A variety of commentators, however, contend thatthe development of the capitalist world-system at present is directed by a relatively

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coherent transnational capitalist class with a common interest in perpetuating the

system from which they benefit by promoting global economic growth based on a

cultural-ideology of consumerism (Brockington et al. 2008: 5; see also Korten

2001; Sklair 2001). This transnational capitalist class, I will show, largely directsthe global tourism industry as well. Thus, it is possible to analyse tourism growth

from the perspective of capitalism without necessarily attributing false agency to the

system itself.

Tourism and Capitalism

Brockington and colleagues (2008) observe that the rise of global conservation in

general is often described as a process by which conservation interests initially

opposed to capitalist development gradually adapted to the reality of a capitalist-dominated world by learning to accommodate and access the resources of large

commercial interests in order to further their conservation ends, resulting in an

increasing convergence between conservation and capitalism over time Rejecting

this explanation, the authors contend that in reality capitalism and conservation

or at least what they call the mainstream conservation practised by the largest

environmental NGOs (e.g. CI, The Nature Conservancy, WWF) have been conjoined

from the conception, writing, The problem with this argument . . . is that it assumes

a separation that does not really exist (Brockington et al. 2008: 198). Rather, they

suggest, mainstream conservation should be understood, in substantial part, as onemeans by which capitalism expands through creating economic value in natural

resources left in siturather than extracted and processed, and commodifying, in the

process, spaces and things that had not previously been valued in monetary terms.

The authors identify the promotion of ecotourism, which like conservation in

general is commonly described as an oppositional force to conventional capitalist

resource exploitation via mass tourism (see Honey 2008), as one important aspect of

this process. While of course not all ecotourism is aimed at facilitating biodiversity

conservation, the activitys dramatic surge in popularity in recent decades is closely

tied to its ostensive function in this regard (West & Carrier 2004). Yet Brockington and

colleagues analysis of the specific means by which ecotourism exemplifies capitalism

is little developed. In what follows, I build on their insights and others to construct

a comprehensive picture of tourisms function as a component of capitalist growth.

This is certainly not to suggest that all (eco)tourism is necessarily the handmaiden of

capitalist expansion, merely that the industry as a whole plays an instrumental role

in this respect.

The study of tourism as a form of capitalism can be seen to have begun with

Britton, who proclaimed the industry a product of metropolitan capitalist enter-

prise (1982: 331) and a major internationalized component of Western capitalist

economies (1991: 451). In subsequent years, other researchers have built uponBrittons analyses to describe how the tourism industry has evolved in concert with

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448 R. Fletcher

global capitalism (e.g. Lash & Urry 1987; Urry 2001). In its origins as a small-scale,

elite enterprise, tourism of the Grand Tour variety reflected early liberal capitalisms

nascent entrepreneurial structure. The rise of mass tourism centred on collective

prepackaged holidays in the post-war era, by contrast, coincided with the consoli-dation of an organized, Fordist regime of accumulation emphasizing increasingly

larger vertically-integrated firms. Finally, the 1970s saw the rise of new/alternative

tourism offering a variety of flexible, individually-tailored trips concurrent with cap-

italisms shift towards a novel disorganized, post-Fordist form centred on flexible

accumulation (Harvey 1989) through diverse structures. This has led to the develop-

ment of a myriad niche or boutique markets designed to offer an outlet for every

tourists particular taste, including such diverse (and disturbing) products as war, sex

and slum tourism (Munt 1994; Gibson 2009).

Similarly, a number of researchers note that in its approach to development andconservation, ecotourism often encompasses elements of neo-liberal capitalism (cf.

Harvey 2005). In particular, ecotourism is seen to embody such characteristic neo-

liberal mechanisms as privatization, marketization, commodification and deregulation

in its emphasis on employing nature-based sightseeing as a force for locally-directed

economic development based on individual entrepreneurship through affixing mon-

etary value toin situnatural resources and thus creating both a market and incentive

for their sustainable management (see, for example, Vivanco 2001; 2006; Duffy,

2002; 2008; Mowforth & Munt 2003; West & Carrier 2004; Bianchi 2005; Carrier &

Macleod 2005; Author 2009; Duffy & Moore 2010; Neves 2010). West and Carrier(2004: 484), therefore, describe ecotourism as the institutional expression of partic-

ular sets of late capitalist values in a particular political-economic climate.

Recognition of these dynamics helps set the stage for a systematic analysis of

the relationship between tourism and capitalism. One must go further, however, to

examine the ways in which tourism, in its co-evolution with capitalism, may fulfil

functions vital to the latter.

The Fix is In

Marx, in the Grundrisse (1973), identified as capitalisms central contradiction the

tension between capitalists desire to extract profit from the system and the necessity

for sufficient capital to be transferred to the workforce so that production could

be consumed (see also Harvey 1989). Capitalism profits by appropriating labours

surplus value, of course, necessitating that workers be paid less than the full sale

value of their product. If workers are paid less than this full value, however, then,

on aggregate, they will be unable to purchase what they have produced, leading to

overproduction, over-accumulation and economic stagnation.

Marx saw this tension as an inevitable feature of capitalism that would eventuallycontribute to the systems self-destruction. Subsequent researchers, however, have

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identified a number of mechanisms by which capitalism is able to alleviate overpro-

duction crises through economic growth. Thus, they contend that capitalism requires

continual expansion in order to survive what Sandler (1994) calls the GOD (grow

or die) principle. Harvey (1989), for instance, observes that excess capital may bereabsorbed into the system by means of a variety of different spatial and/or temporal

displacements or fixes, thereby (temporarily) forestalling an overproduction crisis.

Tourism can be seen to provide a number of such fixes.

Harveys spatial fix entails exporting excess capital to a new geographical location

where it can be reinvested in novel development. International tourism development

can be viewed as an ideal means by which this is accomplished, and ecotourism in

particular, in its quest specifically for relatively undeveloped areas, can be viewed as

the epitome of this strategy. Thus, Costa Rica, for instance, has become an important

site for the displacement of foreign tourism capital seeking new outlets, particularlysince the 1980s, increasingly attracting both lone entrepreneurs in search of isolated

natural retreats and such powerful global players as Barcelo, Marriot and Four Seasons

(Honey 2008). The capacity of ecotourism specifically to provide a spatial fix is

identified by Robbins and Fraser (2003) in their study of forestry policy in Scotland.

A temporal fix, by contrast, involves displacing excess capital into future return,

either by investing in ventures that will realize profit down the road or by reducing

turnover time, that is, the speed with which money outlays return profit to the in-

vestor, such that speed-up this year absorbs excess capacity from last year (Harvey

1989: 182). One means that Harvey identifies by which the latter is accomplished isthe selling of not a durable product but rather a transient event that is instantaneously

consumed, thus reducing turnover time to a minimum. As an activity predicated on

the sale of transient events, tourism may be seen to provide a temporal fix as well.

A whitewater rafting excursion, for instance, is entirely consumed by the end of the

trip (although it may be extended to a degree through further merchandizing of pho-

tographs and other paraphernalia) and must be purchased anew to be re-experienced

(Fletcher 2009).

Combining the forms of displacement identified above into a composite

timespace fix, according to Harvey, is accomplished principally through the pro-

vision of loans, which simultaneously displace capital into new spaces and into the

future as well, to be recovered upon repayment. Lending for tourism development,

therefore, of the type widely provided by the World Bank and United Nations Devel-

opment Program, among many other organizations (Honey 2008), accomplishes this

timespace fix as well. After suspending its tourism loans in the 1980s, for instance,

the World Bank began lending anew in the 1990s and, by 2009, was providing more

than$US550 million annually (Hayakawa & Rivero 2009).

In a number of ways, then, we can view tourism development as providing a

means for capitalism to find outlets for excess capital that might otherwise provoke

an overproduction crisis, and thus assisting the system to sustain itself over time.In addition to providing an outlet for capital from other sectors, tourism expansion

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450 R. Fletcher

may help to overcome over-accumulation within the tourism industry itself as well

through facilitating the displacement of capital from locations that have become

overdeveloped to those newly on the rise, as Butlers (1980) classic tourism area life

cycle demonstrates.In addition to providing temporal and/or spatial fixes, there are several other ways

that tourism might contribute to capitalisms self-maintenance as well. One of these

concerns tourisms status as a service economy. As noted above, an overproduction

crisis is provoked by a dearth of capacity for consumption on the part of manufacturing

labourers due to capitalists desire to extract maximum profit from the system. This

problem can be resolved in part, however, by redistributing capital to another category

of labourers, for instance service workers, who are thereby enabled to consume the

production that industrial workers cannot. By paying workers to perform a service

such as tourism, therefore, capitalists receive a twofold benefit. First, some workersare provided with the funds necessary to purchase the commodities that others have

produced, thereby ensuring the continuation of the system without the need to reduce

profit extracted from production. In so doing, secondly, capitalists simultaneously

receive a valued service as well. This is certainly not to deny that of course much

work created by travel is poorly paid, deskilled and insecure if not dangerous

(Gibson 2009: 530), and may thus be merely another means of extracting surplus

value from workers labour. Yet a proportion of tourism workers are in fact quite well

paid for instance, waitstaff in high-end hotels and restaurants, or the collection of

itinerant international adventure tour guides I have previously studied (Author 2009).In the USA, for instance, entire resort towns (e.g. Aspen, Colorado) survive largely

due to this mutualism between wealthy visitors and local service providers (Coleman

2004). Neither does this dynamic imply overt collaboration between capitalists and

governments nor even conscious intention on the part of capitalists themselves.

Rather, individual capitalists simple desire to spend excess accumulated wealth on

the purchase of luxury services, coupled with collective mobilization on the part of

diverse actors and firms to provide such services, is sufficient to stimulate substantial

growth in this regard. Given the relatively low wages earned by most tourism workers

this dynamic may be of minor significance to the overall capitalist expansion process,

however.

In addition to helping to resolve the central capitalist contradiction, ostensibly

sustainable forms of tourism such as ecotourism in particular may help to resolve

what James OConnor (e.g. 1988; 1994) calls capitalisms second contradiction

as well. In OConnors analysis, efforts to resolve the overproduction crisis through

growth tend to provoke a second crisis, what Marx (1973) called a metabolic rift

(see Foster 2000), due to the fact that capitalisms need to continually expand in order

to survive is ultimately predicated on the extraction of finite natural resources. As

increased production increasingly taxes limited resources, rents for such resources

rise, thus augmenting production costs, decreasing demand and eventually provokingeconomic stagnation once more.

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According to Martin OConnor (1994), adaptation to the reality of this second

contradiction has provoked a wholesale shift in the nature of capitalism, exemplified

by the newfound global concern for sustainable development that crystallized in

the late 1980s. In the previous regime, with certain exceptions of course (Robbins &Fraser 2003), natural resources were viewed predominantly as inexhaustible, to be

exploited when needed but otherwise considered external to production. In the new

regime, which this latter OConnor calls capitalisms ecological phase, by contrast,

natural resources have been internalized as integral conditions of production to be

managed in the interest of ensuring their sustainable exploitation into the future

and thus forestalling the ecological crisis that the former OConnor foretells. Boyd

and colleagues (2001), drawing on Marxs (1967) distinction between the formal

and real subsumption of labour, identify a similar shift in contemporary capitalism

from formal to real subsumption ofnature(see also Smith 2007), and Garland (2008)elaborates upon this dynamic in her recent analysis of the rise of a conservationist

mode of production.

Escobar (1995) observes that, in addition to sustainable harvesting, another means

by which ecological capitalism may approach natural resources is by promoting their

consumption in situ. Building upon this observation, Robbins and Fraser (2003)

identify ecotourism as exemplifying this ecological capitalism. Unlike Escobar, how-

ever, who saw both sustainable management for extraction andin situuse as forms of

ecological capitalism, Robbins and Fraser identify the ecological phase exclusively

with the latter, characterizing sustainable timber management as representative of theprevious regime.

By generating capital based on in situ consumption of natural resources, in the

form for instance of visits to protected areas, ecotourism may thus be viewed as

an exemplary means by which capitalism seeks to resolve OConnors second con-

tradiction and provide for ecologically sustainable economic growth. In this, sense,

then, sustainable tourism may be seen as providing an environmental fix (Castree

2008) similar to the various spatialtemporal fixes that it, as a component of tourism

in general, provides capitalism as well.

Yet this is still not the entire story, for in addition to helping to forestall an ecological

crisis, ecotourism may capitalize upon this very same crisis as well (Igoe et al. 2010;

Neves 2010). Klein (2007) contends that neo-liberal capitalism in general displays

the remarkable ability to turn crises to which it has contributed into opportunities for

economic growth, and Brockington and colleagues (2008) build upon this analysis to

suggest that international conservation in general may actually gain value from the

disappearance of the biodiversity it seeks to preserve, as that which remains grows

increasingly desirable. Neves (2010) identifies this dynamic in cetourism (whale

watching), whereby the activitys value has increased in concert with its objects

depletion. Munt (1994) notes that, through new tourism activities such as ecotourism,

capitalism is able to transform crises to which it has contributed into marketablecommodities, selling poverty and class struggle, for instance, as touristic experience.

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452 R. Fletcher

In addition, ecotourism may be seen to capitalize on the loss of undeveloped areas

due to the expansion of extractive capitalist production, in the same manner as

conservation generally. Many ecotourism sites, in fact, explicitly market themselves

as desirable destinations based on the probability that they will cease to exist down theroad (Mowforth & Munt 2003). In this respect, ecotourism may function as a form of

what Buscher (2010) calls derivative nature, in that resources are valued not in and

of themselves but rather in terms of their projected worth relative to a hypothetical

future scenario of degradation and loss. Of course, the extent to which this process

results in a net gain for capitalism as a whole is debatable; it is, however, a means

of generating at least some value from a situation that would otherwise constitute a

wholesale failure.

Tourism and the Absorptive Class

Returning to the triad of actors centrally involved in ecotourism described at the

outset, the role of industry operators in promoting the interests of capitalism through

tourism is obvious. International development planners particularly transnational

institutions such as the World Bank and IMF have long been critiqued as in-

struments for the propagation of global capitalism as well (Escobar 1995; Korten

2001). Brockington and co-authors (2008), with others (e.g. MacDonald 2008), level

a similar critique at many international environmental NGOs.

The role of tourists themselves in this process is less obvious but still apparent.In this respect, it is significant that the origin of mass tourism is identified with

the middle class (MacCannell 1999) and that, with the subsequent embrace of such

tourism by other class groups, the current growth of new tourism in particular remains

strongly associated with the middle class as well (Mowforth & Munt 2003; Fletcher

2009). As Mills (1956) observes, a new or professional (Ehrenreich 1989) middle

class arose with the consolidation of Fordist capitalism after World War II in order to

manage both the increasingly larger and multinational firms dominating production

under this regime and the rapidly growing economy as a whole. This new middle

class, of course, became the consumers of the expanding tourism industry, facilitated

by the general economic growth which saw median family income in the USA double

between 1945 and 1973 (Savran 1998: 46) a three-way symbiosis.

Stander (2009a; 2009b) contends that this group functions as an absorptive class

helping to alleviate capitalisms overproduction crises. It does so, first, by absorbing

through its consumption the bulk of industrial production so that capitalists can

realize profit. Ehrenreich (1989) notes that since the 1950s the new middle class

has indeed received tremendous pressure to consume increasing quantities of this

production. This observation resonates as well with Mills (1956) and Hochschilds

(1999) contention that much of the labour performed by this class involves personal

relations-orientated service work. As noted earlier, employing (well-paid) serviceworkers not only provides a needed function in its own right but also allows capital to

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recirculate back into the economy to facilitate consumption of production that most

manufacturing labourers particularly in the post-Fordist area of offshore outsourcing

lack funds to purchase.

In addition, Stander asserts that the absorptive class alleviates overproductioncrises by seeing their investments devalued during the recession resulting from such

crises, thus reducing surplus capital and restoring conditions for economic recovery.

He writes that

the absorptive class has also to absorb the shock of re-current economic crises

in that they have to experience much of their personal surplus assets destroyed

and thus help the capitalist system to find a new equilibrium where it can launch

into a new phase of production during which capitalists can derive a high rateof profit (Stander 2009b).

Moreover, it is possible to discern in the new middle classs consumption of tourism

another means by which capitalism is able to exploit crises it has helped to create.

Copious research suggests that the type of labour performed by this class group

in the service of capital generates substantial discontent due to its alienating and

de-authenticating nature (Mills 1956; Ehrenreich 1989; Hochschild 1999). Members

of the new middle class are thus motivated to attempt to escape these conditions

through leisure activities in which qualities seen as lacking in everyday work life

can be pursued (Lyng 1990; MacCannell 1999; Fletcher 2008). This process can be

seen in this class groups embrace of new tourism activities such as ecotourism in

the 1970s in concert with the development of post-Fordism. Both Harvey (1989)

and Arrighi (1994) contend that post-Fordism arose in response to a world-systemic

accumulation crisis resulting in the global recession of 1973 as a spatial fix in search of

new markets to sustain previous levels of profits. Harvey, along with Friedman (1994),

suggests that this crisis provoked a profound cultural shift towards post-modernism

within advanced industrialized societies. This post-modern shift, in turn, motivated

the consumption of new forms of tourism (Mowforth & Munt 2003). Moreover,the alienation from non-human nature wrought by many (particularly the sedentary,

indoor, mind-based, new middle class) forms of capitalist labour an important aspect

of Marxs metabolic rift may be seen as one of the motives spurring ecotourism in

particular (Smith 2007; Fletcher 2009; Neves 2010).

In undertaking tourism in response to capitalist work conditions, the new middle

class consumes the services provided by the tourism industry, allowing owners to

realize profit, while in the process assisting simultaneously to further distribute to

other service workers the funds necessary to absorb still more production. Thus, we

can see that the new middle class forming the vanguard of tourism consumption mayserve, in variety of ways, the interests of global capitalist expansion.

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454 R. Fletcher

Tourism and the Transnational Capitalist Class

As noted in the introduction, various critics suggest that the world capitalist-economy

is managed in substantial part by a relatively coherent transnational capitalist class.The influence of this class can be seen in the history of tourism development, as pre-

viously outlined. According to Sklair (2001), one role of this transnational capitalist

class is to attempt to resolve the internal contradictions that would otherwise threaten

the system that sustains them. One of the means by which they do so, at present, may

entail promotion of the international tourism industry.

From its inception, post-war mass tourism was explicitly managed as an element

of capitalist expansion by a coalition of private and public interests. While the for-

mer core of the capitalist world-economy Western Europe and, particularly, Great

Britain was crippled by World War II, the USA emerged from the conflict with

its infrastructure largely intact and its economy revitalized by a dramatic increase in

wartime production. To sustain this economic productivity in the post-war period,

however, would require a dramatic global expansion. As US Undersecretary of State

Clayton pronounced in 1945, Weve got to export three times as much as we ex-

ported just before the war if we want to keep our industry running at somewhere near

capacity (quoted in Savran 1998:45). One important strategy among many in this

effort was the provision of international development aid, which was often contingent

upon the hire of US firms in funded projects (Escobar 1995; Korten 2001). And while

its role in this regard has never been emphasized, I would suggest that stimulation of

the tourism industry functioned significantly in this effort as well.Post-war mass tourism growth was underwritten by government support of US

corporations in the explicit interest of economic expansion. As Honey (2008:41)

describes,

After World War II, the U.S. government used its surplus of military aircraft

to subsidize the aerospace industry. It created financial institutions, such as

the ExportImport Bank of the United States, that gave low-interest loans to

corporations for purchase of U.S.-made aircraft and equipment. U.S. assistance

programs constructed and enlarged airports overseas, improved long-haul nav-igation, and financed development of long-range and wide-bodied aircraft.

Other nations were encouraged to establish their own national airlines as well, usually

requiring jet aircraft, navigation equipment, and services from the Boeing Company

and other U.S. corporations, the purchase of which were frequently financed by the

[U.S.] ExportImport Bank (Honey 2008: 41).

Thus, the growing global tourism industry was dominated increasingly by a small

number of firms based in wealthy countries and supported by their home govern-

ments. This trend merely increased in the 1980s, as neo-liberalization championed

by the IMF and World Bank increasingly opened societies throughout the world tocompetition from foreign firms in search of new markets in which to invest excess

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capital accumulated during the 1970s crisis (Arrighi 1994). As a result, nascent do-

mestic tourism industries worldwide were quickly controlled by foreign operators

(Mowforth & Munt 2003; Honey 2008).

Hence, as Truong (1990: 11011) observed some time ago:

The general trend in integration in international tourism is that firms from

industrialized countries tend to dominate the market . . . This entails a division

of labor according to which Third World countries, with few exceptions, merely

provide the social infrastructure and facilities with little or no control over the

process of production and distribution of the tourist-related services at an

international level.

Indeed, researchers note that as much as 90 percent of tourism revenues leaks outof poor host countries due to domination by foreign operators (Mowforth & Munt

2003: 175). This appears to have resulted, as quite a few commentators observe, in

increasing consolidation of the industry over time in the hands of a small number

of interconnected transnational players (e.g. Britton 1982; 1991; Duffy 2002; 2008;

Mowforth & Munt 2003; Honey 2008; Gibson 2009).

According to this analysis, then, a small number of increasingly interrelated

transnational tourism operators control much of the goods and services that tourists

consume globally. In this respect, tourism expansion can be viewed as an instance

of the accumulation through dispossession that Harvey (2005) finds characteristicof neo-liberal capitalism in general. These operators also control much of the adver-

tising by which tourists are enticed to consume the products offered. Transnational

tourism operators work hand-in-hand with other important tourism promoters, in-

cluding international development agencies and national governments, which are of

course dominated by members of the transnational capitalist class as well (Korten

2001). Chapin (2004) and MacDonald (2008), among others, contend that interna-

tional environmental NGOs promoting ecotourism development have become part

and parcel of this collaboration as well, increasingly relying on powerful transna-

tional corporations to provide funding for conservation initiatives. This reinforces

Sklairs (2001: 8) analysis that in the current era the transnational capitalist class has

supported the consolidation of a sustainable development historic bloc undergirding

the sustainability movement (see also Igoe et al. 2010). From this perspective, the

increasing promotion of so-called sustainable tourism around the world can be seen

as part and parcel of the transnational capitalist classs continued domination of the

global tourism industry.

This is certainly not to suggest that all tourism development is entirely dominated

by this transnational capitalist, or even that all such development necessarily suc-

cumbs to the logic of capital accumulation outlined above. Just as Gibson-Graham

(1996) asserts in general that descriptions of capitalism as a hegemonic system canobscure the numerous non-market interactions and mechanisms that exist within the

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456 R. Fletcher

interstices of the dominant order, tourism can at times be employed by local actors and

communities to facilitate small-scale, grassroots forms of alternative development at

odds with the industry consolidation pursued by the transnational class (Higgins-

Desbiolles 2006; Honey 2008). Yet it is clear that the post-war growth of the industryas a whole has been substantially directed by a small group of transnational players

and that its function in facilitating capitalist expansions is part and parcel of this

reality.

The Future of Tourism

One important question following from the preceding analysis concerns how the

function of tourism as an agent of capitalist expansion might change as a result of thecurrent global economic recession, which Stander (2009b), among others, describes

as a classic overproduction crisis. This crisis has precipitated an unprecedented slow-

down in a global tourism industry that had experienced nearly continuous, substantial

growth for the previous half-century. The latest UNWTO assessments available as of

this writing indicate that 2009 saw an unprecedented decline in the global tourism

industry of 4.3 percent (UNWTO 2010: 3). The last quarter of 2009 witnessed a slight

reversal in this trend, with international arrivals increasing 2 percent, and the first

two months of 2010 suggest a continuation of this trend, with an estimated 7 percent

growth worldwide (UNWTO 2010).Despite this recent resurgence, 2010 numbers remain below the industrys peak

2008 levels (UNWTO 2010), leading to speculation that tourisms nearly 60-year

expansion period may have reached an end. If this prediction is born out, will the

loss of tourism as an outlet for over-accumulation have repercussions throughout the

capitalist world-economy? Will the system, on the contrary, find new ways to exploit

tourism as a strategy to recover from this current crisis? For instance, while some

observers are suggesting that the current crisis represents the end of neo-liberalism

(Harvey 2009), a number of national governments are responding to this crisis by

attempting to revive their tourism industries through further reducing barriers to

foreign capital (UNWTO 2009b). Will this latest stage of post-Fordist capitalism,

on the other hand, give way to yet another stage, displaying a novel structure the

nature of which we cannot yet foresee? Or does this current recession finally signal

capitalisms exhaustion of its potential for crisis displacement and thus the imminent

demise that Marxists have long been predicting?

Such questions are compounded by the growing global focus on mitigating anthro-

pogenic climate change. One of the main critiques increasingly levelled at tourism of

late concerns its contribution to climate change via long-haul air transport, upon which

the industry fundamentally depends (Gossling & Peeters 2007). This constitutes a

particular problem for ecotourism, which as discussed above is commonly touted forits ostensive environmental benefits (West & Carrier 2004; Carrier & Macleod 2005).

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Currently, the tourism industry, like the airline industry as a whole, is thus desper-

ately striving to address this dilemma. It is doing so in a variety of ways, including

promoting increased efficiency in airline design and fuel consumption (Gossling &

Peeters 2007). Most prominent among these reactive strategies perhaps has been thepromotion of carbon credit purchasing to offset air travel emissions, yet this strategy

has been criticized widely as ineffective (see, for example, Bohm & Dabhi 2009).

Hence, at least one former offset proponent, an NGO promoting responsible travel,

recently reversed its longstanding endorsement of carbon offsets, asserting instead

that the only way to truly reduce tourisms climate implications is for people to

travel less (http://www.responsibletravel.com/Copy/Copy902116.htm). If such calls

are widely heeded, the retraction already suffered by the global tourism industry due

to economic recession may be exacerbated further. In this respect, then, tourism as a

capitalist industry might be approaching the ecological limits that James OConnorpredicted with no further environmental fixes available. This possibility demands

further investigation, building upon the growing body of work exploring the multi-

faceted relationship between tourism and climate change (e.g. Hamilton et al. 2005;

Gossling & Peeters 2007; Gosslinget al. 2007).

Conclusion

For neo-Marxists, an important question concerns why capitalism has not yet suc-

cumbed to the internal contradictions identified by Marx and given way to the Endof History (Fletcher 2001). In an early response to this question, Lenin (1916) fa-

mously pronounced imperialism the highest stage of capitalism in its capacity to

provide new outlets for excess accumulation. The end of formal European colonial-

ism, however, has not witnessed capitalisms demise; thus, subsequent researchers

have continued in Lenins legacy to describe the various ways that capitalism succeeds

in (temporarily) forestalling its self-destruction.

While tourism development conforms to many of the mechanisms these researchers

have identified, its importance in facilitating capitalist expansion has been underem-

phasized to date. In the above, I have sought to highlight and systematize the myriad

ways in which tourism development provides spatial, temporal and environmental

fixes for capitalisms tendency towards overproduction and unsustainability. In sum,

I suggest that, as one of the largest and fastest-growing industries in the world, a

major component of globalization, tourism deemed a form of neo-colonialism by

many (Munt 1994; Mowforth & Munt 2003) might be viewed as one of the im-

portant means by which the capitalist world-economy has sought to sustain itself in

the post-war era. If, as Weaver and Lawton (1999) contend, sustainable tourism has

become the dominant paradigm within the global tourism industry as a whole, then

this may be due in part to the need to sustain capitalism as well.

Tourism is, indeed, one of the few novel capitalist industries to appear on the worldstage in the post-war period (along with petroleum production, tourisms closest

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458 R. Fletcher

competitor for the status of worlds largest industry). In the several prior centuries of

European colonization, capitalists had scoured the globe in search of any remotely

marketable product. Hence, the post-war push to create markets for new so-called

non-traditional commodities, such as non-timber forest products, as a means tostimulate development for impoverished peoples in less-developed societies has often

proved futile. As West (2006: 214) contends, If there were markets for these products,

wealthy and powerful people located at the core would certainly have already found

a way to get them out of the periphery. Tourism, however, has in fact emerged as

a powerful new product found in core and periphery alike (yet dominated, as with

most other industries, by actors in the core), transforming from the minor pursuit of

a handful of elites to become perhaps the worlds foremost growth industry over the

past half-century, one of the chief means by which capitalism has been able to expand

its commodification of natural resources on a global scale. At the same time, however,due to its relative novelty on the world stage, and notwithstanding the many pitfalls

enumerated above, tourism may also at times hold the potential to be harnessed as

an oppositional force by those (such as the rural poor in less-developed societies

inhabiting those places most sought by ecotourists) who have heretofore been largely

excluded from established commodity markets and conventional forms of economic

development based upon these (Higgins-Desbiolles 2006; 2008). This potential, as

Higgins-Desbiolles insists, calls for further conceptualization and investigation.

This analysis has been primarily theoretical, seeking to outline in macro-socio-

economic terms the logical structure according to which tourism development canbe seen to facilitate temporary resolution of contradictions inherent in the capitalist

world-economy. In addition to the future research directions outlined above, further

investigation is needed to test this model empirically by assessing whether it conforms

to the actual process of tourism development in particular contexts and historical

periods, in the manner pioneered by Robbins and Fraser (2003) and Neves (2010).

Future research might also further investigate, following Igoe and colleagues (2010),

the concrete relationships among various elements of the transnational capitalist class

involved in tourism development, as well as differences in this classs influence and

composition in diverse locations (Duffy & Moore 2010). Study of this sort would do

much to redress the current deficit in understanding the precise nature and extent of

tourisms role in historical processes of capitalist expansion and transformation.

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Notes on Contributor

Robert Fletcher is Assistant Professor of Natural Resources and Sustainable De-

velopment at the United Nations-mandated University for Peace in Ciudad Colon,

Costa Rica. His research interests include development, ecotourism, globalization,

environmental governance, climate change, and resistance and social movements. He

has conducted field research concerning these various issues in Chile, Costa Rica and

the USA.

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