Always a traveller: a portrait of Valene L. Smith

“If we can open the eyes of the world to the world … then it’s a better world” Valene Smith, 10 November 2016.

Introduction

As a professor at California State University Chico (“Chico State”), I took my introduction to hospitality class to a museum exhibit (at the Valene L. Smith Museum of Anthropology) called From Chico to China: The Life and Travels of Valene Smith. Jackie Coon, my co-author, was one of the curators of the exhibit. I wanted to show my students how tourism history unfolded in the twentieth century in conjunction with the academic study of tourism. Artefacts from world travels, maps, travel brochures, and a stereopticon with slides of foreign places introduced students to a world that a textbook never could. Dr. Valene L. Smith, retired but still educating at age 89, stopped by to tell us stories, answer questions, and continue her lifelong work of connecting students and travellers to the world. My mostly female class was in awe of not just her travels, but her courage to undertake them in an era in which both international travel and independent women travelling were rare. They left class knowing they had met a pioneer.

Our challenge is to illuminate the life and contributions of Valene, without simply repeating what has been presented in past works. She detailed her academic contributions in an essay in The study of tourism: Anthropological and sociological beginnings (Smith, 2007) and personal details of her life in her autobiography Stereopticon: An entry to a life of travel and tourism research (Smith, 2015), which Swain (2015) called “an engaging yarn about achieving bold goals while promoting academic study of what she loves to do, tourism” (p. 184).

As her autobiography’s title states, her life includes two overlapping themes “a life of travel” and “a life of tourism research.” Here we attempt to combine the two to create a portrait of a woman who experienced the massive growth of the tourism and simultaneously planted the seeds for the flowering of tourism research. While we draw upon Smith (2007, 2015) for many facts, we believe that a portrait of an anthropologist should focus on both her experiences and views. We could paint her as an educator, a researcher, an anthropologist, a geographer, a learner, a pioneer, and a philanthropist, but we choose to label her as a traveller.

Personal background

Valene was born in 1926 before America’s Great Depression and grew up in what we today would call a lower middle class environment. As a child, her family lived in a 400-square foot (37 m²) apartment in Los Angeles where she slept on a davenport while her parents slept on a murphy bed. In her early childhood, she demonstrated a curiosity and a commitment to learning that would guide her through life. She recalled visiting the public library to check out not only books but also slides to be viewed on a stereopticon – which created three-dimensional photographs. While her parents were asleep in the early morning, Valene would peer into the stereopticon and look at pictures of “African villagers, Eskimos in their fur garments, [and] the Taj Mahal and dream” of travelling (Smith, 2015, p. 7). In a world before television, these slides of distant lands took her on journeys and inspired her future travels.

Although they were not a family of means, her parents took her on occasional driving vacations. During one trip to Yosemite, Valene observed Tabuce, an Ahwahnee Indian, preparing acorn meal. The experience was fascinating to a young Valene and ultimately sparked her interest in other cultures. As she grew older, driving vacations with her family allowed her to absorb more nuanced observations. For example, by looking at the different items in J.C. Penney stores across the country, Valene reflected on the cultural differences between regions (Smith, 2015).

Though her father accompanied them during several trips, many of Valene’s earliest travels were done with her mother and the family car, a 1929 Buick, which they fondly referred to as “Lizzie.” During the road trips with her mother, they would read textbooks as they drove and occasionally work brief seasonal agricultural jobs to make extra money for Valene’s schooling. When they could not locate a campground they would sleep in their car in locked service station garages; Valene and her mother challenged the role of women during this period and did exceedingly well at showing how capable and self-sufficient one can be regardless of gender. In 1950, during a road trip to Alaska (before its statehood), Valene and her mother loaded “Lizzie” onto a flatcar of a train and slept in the car as the train travelled to Anchorage. Though not the height of comfort, sleeping in the car made travel cheaper and inarguably more adventurous. By 1947 she had visited all 48 United States.

In 1946, Valene earned a B.A. degree in geography from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA); to this day, she credits geography as being a life changing major that was her “passport to a better understanding of the countries that [she] hoped to visit” (Smith, 2015, p. 22). After earning her degree, she started teaching at Los Angeles City College, where she served from 1947 to 1967, culminating as a professor of Earth Sciences. She chose to be a teacher because, in her words, becoming a teacher, nurse, or secretary were the only alternative careers to motherhood that were readily available for women (Smith, 2015). As an instructor at Los Angeles City College, Valene taught a class of G.I. beneficiaries. In teaching the soldiers she realized that, because of their overseas experience, they knew more about the world than she did at the time. As a result, Valene felt personally motivated to both continue her education and experience international travel first-hand. In 1950, she completed an MA in geography at UCLA and embarked on the ensuing years of travel and adventure that set the stage for her academic legacy.

On her 1950 Alaska trip, Valene and her mother travelled from Seattle to the Kenai Peninsula via steamship. Curious to see more of what Alaska had to offer, she took her first airplane flight, in order to visit Nome and Kotzebue and the Inuit (then called “Eskimo”) villages of Alaska. These first initial visits to Inuit villages not only inspired future tourism research, but founded the basis of long-lasting friendships with locals. In 1951, she took her first trip to Europe with her mother and drove 9000 miles in 12 weeks through six countries.

She returned to Europe the following year with the intention of driving from France to India, but had to turn around in Jordan due to an Iranian coup. Though Valene had not yet successfully made it to India, she remained interested in that region. She applied for, and was granted, a Fulbright scholarship in 1953 to the University of Peshawar (Pakistan) which was still under construction when she arrived. For one year, Valene taught classes (divided by gender) in methods of education and oceanography. During breaks, Valene was able to travel to Northern India, ultimately securing her desire to see more of Asia.

Upon leaving Pakistan, Valene continued to share the world with others through travel. In 1955 the L.A. City School District realized there was a gap in their teachers’ knowledge. Valene was called upon to take a group of 46 students (who were actually teachers) on a two month tour of Europe as a “travel geography” class, and she continued to take these trips for many more years to a variety of destinations. One of her most remarkable tours deserves a place in tourism history. In 1957, she planned and led an “Around the World in 80 Days” tour. The one-of-a-kind experience, which took patrons through Asia, the Middle East, and into Europe, attracted a great deal of media attention, and it was not uncommon for the tour group to make the front page of local newspapers. In many destinations, it was rare to see tourists, and the tour group was often treated graciously by the host country. For instance, they visited Katmandu (Nepal), a city that did not yet have any hotels for tourists, where the tour group was provided cars for sightseeing by the government (Smith, 2007, 2015). In Taipei, they were invited to a luncheon at the Palace Hotel with Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, considered to be the First Lady of China (Smith, 2015).

Upon the successful completion of two international tours, Valene opened Jet-Age Travel Service in North Hollywood (California) with a Swiss employee of American Express. Following the completion of her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Utah (1966), Valene accepted a teaching position at California State University, Chico, and moved the company to Chico (California). At its new location, Jet-Age Travel Service employed many recent graduates, who, after a full year of employment, were eligible for a paid trip in the U.S., including per diem for meals or a paid vacation to Europe (Smith, 2015). Even employed as a full-time professor, Valene prioritized travel and tourism for not only herself, but her employees as well.

From the 1950s onward, Valene observed various countries opening their doors to foreigners. From her experienced standpoint, Valene witnessed the positive cultural exchanges and economic benefits resulting from tourism but also noted several consequences. Frequently, the environment and local living conditions were compromised to meet the growing demands of tourism. Air and water pollution, over-consumption of local resources, and exploitation of local people are just a few examples of the raw edges of tourism that gradually became more obvious over time. Though tourism was yet to be taken seriously as an academic field at the time, Valene was keen to acknowledge its significance and start to seek out others who had taken note of its potential importance.

Contribution to tourism sciences

1974 Tourism Symposium & Hosts and Guests – Valene is probably best known for editing Hosts and Guests (Smith, 1977a, 1989), which is still used in classes in a broad array of fields, including tourism, anthropology, geography, and East Asian studies. Looking at the table of contents is a “who’s who” of tourism research, but the book derived from a simple idea. In 1974, Valene put a brief notice in the Newsletter of the American Anthropological Association asking “is anyone else interested in the study of tourism?” There were 28 replies to the notice, and this resulted in a symposium at the 1974 AAA meeting in Mexico City (Smith, 2007). While this symposium launched the modern study of tourism (Smith, 2015), she also pointed out that “I personally lay no claim to any exceptional role in the events that followed” aside from organizing the first forum (Smith, 2007, p. 185).

While enjoying post-session cocktails, the idea was initiated to publish a book based on the presentations. Theron Nuñez proposed the title Hosts and Guests, and Valene was selected as the editor. When writing to potential publishers, Valene’s attention-getting cover letter read: “There is something NEW in anthropology besides women and drugs – TOURISM!” (Smith, 2007, p. 187). The pitch worked. Published in 1977, the book presented research on the impacts of tourism and theoretical frameworks for approaching the study. Valene later called the book “a pioneering work that legitimatized the American academic study of tourism” (Smith, 1989, p. ix). The work helped to legitimize the study of tourism as worthy of academic interest.

While the original was groundbreaking, the second edition of Hosts and Guests (Smith, 1989) also made a significant contribution by presenting updated essays on the same topics as the original, allowing a reflection over time on the influence of modernization and tourism on peoples. Its scholarly importance was summarized: “To date, no other comparative tourism study exists, with time-depth documentation by the same author(s).” (Smith, 1989, p. x). It also documented the major increases in tourism over this time, while also generating the conclusion that “tourism is not the major element of culture change in most societies” (Smith, 1989, p. x).

A third book, Hosts and Guests Revisited (Smith & Brent, 2001), included a broader description of theory backed by case studies, in order to be better utilized as a textbook. Valene was not happy with the title of the book, as it sounded like it was simply a third version of Hosts and Guests. Therefore, she felt that its impact was never fully realized (Smith, 2007).

Her article on anthropology and tourism for a special issue of Annals of Tourism Research (Nash & Smith, 1991) clearly encapsulated the connection between the two areas, providing a review and foundation for future research. She also served as senior editor of the Tourism Dynamics series from 1997 to 2010 (Smith, n.d.)

Arctic Research – Valene’s research on Arctic peoples and to the Arctic regions are particularly notable. When completing her PhD in 1965, she suggested a dissertation on the effect of tourism on the Inuit cultures based on data she had collected in 1950 and 1963. However, her doctoral committee refused the proposal because there was not sufficient literature to cite (Smith, 2007), so her dissertation (“Kotzebue: A modern Alaskan Eskimo community”) took a broader approach. She continued her research on the Arctic for many years. In 1970, she created a short film along with photographer Ira Latour called Three Stone Blades. This film told the most widely known legend in the Western Arctic, an Inupiat folktale about a widow and her children in the Arctic (Smith, n.d.). The film was well received in both the Arctic and film festival circles and in 1983, the New York Film Festival awarded the documentary the Bronze Award. This film is still available from California State University, Chico. Her portrait of the history of tourism to Arctic Alaska “Eskimo Tourism: Micro-Models and Marginal Men” (Smith, 1977b) provided “a unique contribution to understanding the process of tourism development in relation to cultural change” (p. 77).

The 4 Hs of Tourism – Valene developed the “4 Hs of tourism”: habitat, heritage, history, and handicrafts, which she describes in videos on her personal website (www.valenesmith.com). In her eyes, if you can identify the 4 Hs, then you have a framework to build a destination, as well as to help a traveller to understand a destination and its people (Smith, personal communication, November 10, 2016). Valene describes “habitat” as being the climate, landforms, resources, and activities performed in the area, “heritage” as identifying the origins, values, and worldviews of a population, “history” represents events that impact heritage and world view, and “handicrafts” signify verbal and oral histories, music and dance, and manufactured goods. She proposed that the four Hs of Tourism “have repeatedly proven to be a useful tool with which to structure tourism research” (Smith, 2008; p. 188). She has used the 4 Hs in research in a wide range of locations, including the entertainment destination of Branson, Missouri (Smith, 2008) and Indian pueblos in the south-western United States (Smith, 1996), while others have applied it to far-reaching destinations including the Sami people of Finland (Johansen & Mehmetoglu, 2011) and Sweden (Müller & Pettersson, 2001). Despite Valene’s pride in this research framework, Forristal (2012) lamented that the 4 Hs are not included in influential tourism textbooks.

Looking Ahead – Throughout her career, Valene has continuously considered the future of tourism. In 1989, she wrote

I believe that eventually tourism in China, Taiwan, and Korea will greatly increase, first as a form of domestic tourism within their respective countries; then, in years to come, Chinese, Taiwanese and Koreans will become tourists to adjacent Pacific rim nations, and finally overseas visitors. Thus, the predicted increase in world tourism will probably come in large measure from the Pacific rim countries. (Smith, 1989, p. 3)

Clearly she had a forward-looking vision, perhaps inspired by her own travelling life, as she personally witnessed tourism’s infancy in locations from Taiwan to Nepal to Arctic Alaska.

Valene attended NASAs first conference on space tourism (Smith, 2015) and has also written about the potential of space tourism (see Smith, 2000). She concluded her autobiography with further reflection.

I am still, or shall we say remain, a staunch advocate of space tourism and would be overjoyed to be able to be stationed out there someplace in a location with a window, so that I could watch the planet I know so well physically and culturally, revolve around and display its many interesting panoramas from the Arctic to the deserts, the mountains and the seas. Perhaps in the next life that dream may come true. (Smith, 2015, p. 208)

Personal Impact on Tourism Sciences – From Hosts and Guests to the 4 Hs, Valene has impacted the academic study of tourism research, and she was there from its (so-called) beginnings. In the mid-1970s, before founding Annals of Tourism Research, Jafar Jafari asked Valene if she thought there was a place for a journal in tourism research (Smith, personal communication, 2016). Valene was a founding member of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, which was founded in 1988 in Santander (Spain), and she co-edited Tourism Alternatives for the academy, another collection of works from leading scholars (Smith & Eadington, 1992). She is admired by some of the most renowned tourism researchers. Jafari paid tribute to Valene for her substantial impact:

In my mind, [Valene Smith is] the one who, through her many contributions to an anthropology of tourism … has done the most to introduce the social sciences and tourism to one another. Much of the multidisciplinary strength in tourism research we witness today is due to her pathmaking initiatives. (Jafari, 2007, p. 117)

In 2011, a conference called “Reflections and new directions: A Conference on the anthropology of tourism in honour of Valene L. Smith” was held in Chico. Margaret Swain Byrne’s keynote address included a quote from John Tribe that Valene was the “wise chief of our academic tribe and pioneer of our academic territories” (as cited in Forristal, 2012).

Among her impactful findings were that the “tourist trade does not have to be culturally damaging … It can be a bridge to an appreciation of cultural relativity and international understanding.” (Smith, 1989, p. 9). While she has noted the negative impacts of tourism, her experiences have demonstrated how she has used tourism as a bridge to cross-cultural understanding.

Discussion of Valene Smith’s life and outlook

The breadth of Valene’s background created a well-rounded framework for her influential life. More than an academic, she has been a “role mode of lifelong learning” (Forristal, 2012, p. 101), always travelling and searching for new ideas. She was trained as a geographer and an anthropologist, but her writings are also informed by her travels and her teaching. Instead of reflecting from an ivory tower, she has been inspired by the journey.

Her accomplishments are more remarkable considering she spent her career at universities focused on teaching, without the resources in time and money that many research universities provide. In contrast to the current era, in which tourism academics spend their twenties reading journal articles on computer screens, Valene experienced the world through tourism, giving her a broader perspective from which to draw. Valene served as advisor for over a dozen theses and a handful of dissertations, including Dorothy Hill’s thesis “Indians of Chico Rancheria: An ethnohistoric study,” which Valene fondly recalls over forty years later. Although she did not have a regular group of doctoral students to advance her research, Valene still inspired others. Maryann Brent cited Valene Smith as “my inspiration” in her 1997 doctoral thesis at University of Waterloo, Canada (Brent, 1997, p. v).

While many recognize Valene for her research, teaching was equally important to Valene. Her favourite students to teach were first year students. She loved opening their eyes to ideas that they were not accustomed to thinking about (Smith, personal communication, 2016). Her role in opening eyes and minds is clear in her autobiography as she reflected on teaching GIs after Second World War, as well as community college students who had never left Southern California. Throughout her teaching career, she shared her remarkable experiences, photos, artefacts, and souvenirs to illuminate her lectures.

Practical knowledge, and not just theoretical concepts, are important to Valene. “No one wants to listen to pure theory,” she explained, “You’d fall asleep.” (Smith, personal communication, 2016). Visual and hands-on learning are hallmarks of her teaching. Before taking a professorial job at Chico State, she ensured that there was a great library of slides to show in her classes. She still uses an interactive approach today when speaking with local senior citizen groups. She brings an artefact to start a discussion and allows conversations to evolve.

Valene holds strong beliefs on the role of the educator in engaging students in learning. In her words, she said professors have many responsibilities. They must provide resources to motivate students and to recognize interest in them. They must stimulate ideas and guide research, encourage them, and congratulate their successes (Smith, personal communication, 2016).

After serving as a professor of anthropology at Chico State from 1967 to 1998, Valene retired and now holds the title of professor emeritus. Decades into retirement, Valene still seeks knowledge, through written research, conferences, and the anthropology forums at Chico State. While the exhibit From Chico to China: The Life and Travels of Valene Smith was on display, she spent her weekends at the museum, eager to talk to visitors, share experiences, and answer questions. Today she remains interested in research, especially that which is being developed towards a practical goal or improving our lives, and she still presents at the Society for Applied Anthropology annual meeting. But she worries about the current necessity of tourism academics to publish so prolifically. “The only way to do it is superficially” without the time to invest in the research, she commented (Smith, personal communication, 2016). Looking back on what made her research so impactful, her reflections could be used to advise today’s researchers. She explained that her iconic work Hosts and Guests was successful because it was down to earth, in readable English. It’s both homespun and practical, she explained (Smith, personal communication, 2016). It is clear that she believes in the connection between academic research and the living world.

It is difficult not to be enchanted and amazed by speaking with Valene. A conversation reveals her wide range of interests and expertise and her ability to view life through so many lenses: as a traveller, a geographer, and an anthropologist. A talk about travel evolves into discussions of foodstuff and terrains. She relates the climate and weather to land forms and its effects on the ways that people are living. It is clear that she views travel, not as a collection of attractions, but through the more holistic approach of the 4 Hs. She believes in travel as “an essential tool for information gathering and survival.” (Smith, personal communication, 2016).

If we can call Valene a traveller, we must also call her a tour guide. One of her legacies is taking others on journeys – both real and virtual. These journeys exposed others to new places, new ways of thinking, and new insights into the cultures of the world. In her early career, she exposed the teachers from the Los Angeles school district to the world through study trips. For decades, the students of Los Angeles City College and Chico State saw the world and its people through her photographs and lectures. Through her travel agency she developed and led over 80 trips to lands far and near, most of which raised money for local non-profits, like the Chico Museum. And through her written word, she has taken readers to Alaska, Greenland (Smith, 1982), and even space (Smith, 2000). She has travelled, but also inspired dreams of the journey in so many others.

Her legacy is not just in her written word, but in leaving a foundation for the future. She is a founding member of the Chico Museum, in the city she has called home since 1966. She endowed the Valene L. Smith Museum of Anthropology at Chico State. This is not just a museum, but a laboratory for students in museum studies and anthropology who help to curate a wide-ranging exhibits, from Asian ceramics to Hmong lives and from the myth of dragons to physical anthropology.

Conclusion

Others would never have taken the journeys that Valene took. Others would not have read textbooks on driving trips and holed up in mechanic’s garages when there was no campground to sleep in. Others would not have journeyed to Pakistan to teach in 1953. They would not have taken teachers on their first trip to Europe or written to the official Soviet tourism office to set up a visit to learn more about their tour guide training. Yet, Valene did all of these things, starting in an era in which women were not expected to do these things. And these are just a few snapshots of Valene’s extraordinary life.

Adrienne Scott, Curator of Education at the Valene L. Smith Museum, encapsulated her views of Valene. Valene has always seen the world “as a place to explore and enjoy from both a scholarly and a tourist’s perspective. She still has that sense of wonder and joy about all the journeys life has to offer and she never wants to miss out” (Scott, personal communication, 14 November 2016). Above all, Scott said that Valene seems to live life without obstacles. “She bravely travels to places many of us wonder how to navigate” (Scott, personal communication, 2016). In 2016 (at age 90), Valene flew alone to Iran to speak at a conference and meet up with Jafar Jafari as his family home was being declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In November 2016, a few weeks before she left on a journey to Laos, Valene revealed that she “never felt afraid” during all her travels (Smith, personal communication, 2016). It is clear that she was never afraid to take a chance, to blaze trails, to make new friends, explore new topics, and introduce the world to the world. When Valene is not travelling, she lives in Chico, California … but she will always be travelling.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Matthew J. Stone, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Recreation, Hospitality, and Parks Management at California State University, Chico. His research focuses on consumer behaviour and marketing in tourism and hospitality, as well as the educational outcomes of travel experiences. His passion is travel.

Jackie Coon is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Chico, with a specialization in museum studies. Her professional experience includes internships with the Smithsonian Institution.