Sociology: The farce of tourisms
Sociology: The farce of tourism
by: LUCIANO D'MEDHEYROS
We intend, in this article, to get out from the systemic studies of sociology applied to the tourism. we look for a vision of insertion of of tourism. Therefore, we seek a vision of insertion of tourism into a typically capitalist economic activity, composed of workers who are immersed in the social division of labor and in the production of profit in the form of surplus value.
2. DEVELOPMENT:
Tourism is a recent vernacular, originating from English "tourism", as I saw in the virtual dictionaries (vernacular is the essence of a word, its original sense).
The word is possibly of English origin, for the United States is the country in which capitalism has developed more, causing its population to have higher real wages, to the point of being left to do tourism in other countries. Incidentally, the tourism phenomenon is directly proportional to the increase in the income level of the working class, in the case of mass tourism - just as it is linked to vacation as a labor right and the valuation of leisure time in retirement.
Recently the word "tourism" was born, as was to be expected, since tourism is a concept that did not exist in the Ancient and Medieval World, precarious in means of transportation and without much exchange apparatus (or currency conversion between two countries, modern Speaking).
There was more ostracism in these moments of history, since civilizations had no closer contacts because of the precarious nature of maritime and land transport, as I said, which ties tourism to the development of ships, cars, trains and of aircraft. At this time in history, the first centuries of the Christian Era, people did not go far from where they were born or where they worked, which was the same.
The contacts of civilizations were more by wars (contingent that the loser was beaten, hostile), commerce (few traders who went because of exotic products) or "diplomatic" negotiations (a group of scribes only) - not having the curiosity arising from otherness (a concept widely studied by Anthropology, born in the second half of the nineteenth century, which is the desire to know the other and its culture).
Current tourists resemble amateur ethnographers, with their cameras recording picturesque images.
In antiquity and Medievalism, there was no traffic in people who sought recreation or leisure, such as contemporary tourism, whose striking feature is the massification and the great airport flow, especially that allows the speed and fluidity of huge human masses in transit of 24 to 48 hours average. There is a tourist network, a tourist productive chain, when the subject is in the Contemporary Era.
A sort of escape is contemporary tourism, out of the oppression of daily life and work in large cities, in which tourists get their livelihoods.
Tourism is symbolic because the tourist is a consumer of stereotypes that help him to understand his identity that is also stereotyped (made of media clichés). The tourist is a product that has been modeled to consume marketing.
The tourist does not want to know the problems of the city that he visits, if there is prejudice and social exclusion among the "natives" (and even if there is, tourism needs to account for mystifying, through local artistic production, "of public safety aimed at creating" social hygiene ").
This requires cities to create tourist areas in which there is a "tourist theatralization" in which the local culture appears stereotyped and easy symbolic consumption, so as not to disappoint the tourist consumer created by tourist propaganda.
The public function begins to be delimited: that the Public Power make "touristic theatrics", make "beautification of tourist centers" and prevent the tourist from entering more in its territory and see what it does not want to see: "lumpem" proletarians.
The word tourism can also be related to the concept of domicile, very present in Civil Law, which contrasts with the word residence and abode. A person may have, according to civil law, a domicile different from the place in which he lives: a phenomenon typical of industrial societies.
I live where I work, which is boring, which is my domicile for the purpose of obligations; I have fun outside my home, where I'm passing through, whether by my will or by imposing my service (business tourism).
In fact, tourism is a phenomenon of industrial societies, born in the nineteenth century with the Industrial Revolution, whose striking features are:
1) the separation between the place I live and the place I work (which did not exist in feudalism, where a person produced what he needed at home with the help of enormous families);
2) large concentration of people in non-agricultural areas, but factories (creating spaces of tension between capital and labor);
3) valorization of work efficiency with permanent increase of production (increasing fatigue and disenchantment by the place I live).
Tourism is currently an economic branch that arouses the interest of the Social Sciences, as it is part of the international division of labor and all other derivations of this division, at the national and regional levels.
There are tourism chains that feed large hotel chains, which demand services and products from different areas (such as the demand for fruits, which are produced in previously forgotten agricultural areas).
There are tourism networks that feed small businesses and an informal economy (sellers of nets, chairs, fishing lures) - which can be a perverse side of tourism activity in the basements of this activity.
Here is an excellent study object for Sociology of Tourism. There is a penetration of functionalism in these analyzes, which tend to treat tourism as a social fact. But tourism can also generate a social rearrangement, which creates the invisible exploitation of parts of a marginalized population in large cities, or even in cities with a profile of fishing tourism, hunting, and water attractions - very present in the interior of Brazil ( which has been chasing tourism for a long time).
Tourism is responsible for directing urban planning, creating pressures on public policies. Influence on real estate speculation and how cities are zoned for infrastructure construction.
Therefore, tourism is a branch of capital. The capital that is a social relation whose production of merchandise is its main objective. Whose goal is the exploitation of labor by the circulation of money D-M-D '(money - commodity - money valued by labor exploitation).
Tourism is practiced both in the countries of the First World and in the countries of the Third World, not so much in the socialist countries, which do not emphasize the mercantile side of social relations.
In fact, the mercantile side of social relations is the focus of tourism, creating a reserve army of tourism workers, formed by a tourist assistance network that disembarks in a city, seeking to consume symbolic goods. The promotion of tourism is a socialization of the costs of capital with the network of dissemination of tourist attractions, expensive investments in means of transportation and tourist flow through port, roads, railways and airports.
Tourism is an incentive for the monetary circulation of goods and services, accounting for 3 percent of Brazil's GDP, being higher in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Recife and Fortaleza - in which are the largest airports, ports and hotel chains linked to this demand.
The profile of the tourism workforce is seasonal. An unqualified workforce. Precarious workers, working from sun to sun, who do not have limits of working hours, requiring greater organization.
Therefore, the object of the Sociology of Tourism should be shifted to the working conditions of tourism workers.
3. CONCLUSION:
In a preliminary line, it is observed that by changing the theory that focuses tourism with economic and social activity, also changes the results and the type of analysis of the phenomena that surround this branch of social division of labor. The focus would be the contingent of workers who are absorbed within the companies and the informal economy that surrounds tourism as a commercial activity.