Resident tourists and the local 'other'

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed growing numbers of residents exploring their own cities as tourist destinations. This phenomenon challenges academic understandings and definitions of who is defined as a tourist, and what differentiates tourists from residents when both display the same behaviours linked with spectacle and consumption. Of particular interest in these developments are situations where the emergence of ‘resident tourists’ involves residents transgressing boundaries of territorial stigma and fear to visit previously-avoided urban areas. Safety and security concerns and continued territorial stigma towards the Johannesburg inner city has isolated a generation of suburbanites from this urban space. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of various – often online – social media-driven (particularly Instagram) initiatives to bring these suburbanites into the inner city as resident tourists. Drawing survey data from 200 such visitors to Johannesburg’s inner city, this paper reflects on the implications for defining (proximate) tourism in terms of social or psychological rather than spatial (Euclidian) distance/proximity. In so doing, we reflect upon the role of new touristic gaze practices, inspired not only by curiosity but by a concern with self-promotion and social media self-branding. Our argument is that by rethinking emergent practices of collective consumption (facilitated in this instance by social media), we can understand how new forms of tourism occur within the locale of residence. These challenge trends towards the enclaving of daily life and mediated tourist consumption.

摘要

近年来, 越来越多的居民探索自己的城市作为旅游目的地。这一现象挑战了学术界对于谁是游客的理解和定义。其中特别有趣的发展是出现了”常住型游客”, 涉及居民越过在地域歧视的边界和担心访问以前旅行回避的城市地区。安全问题和对约翰内斯堡内城的持续的领域歧视已经将一代郊区居民与这个城市空间隔离开来。近年来, 各种各样的——通常是在线的——社交媒体(尤其是照片墙)的出现, 推动了将这些郊区居民作为常驻游客带入内城的举措。本文通过对200名前往约翰内斯堡内城的游客的调查数据, 反思了从社会或心理而非空间(欧几里得)距离/邻近来定义(近似)旅游业的含义。通过这样做, 我们反思了新的旅游凝视实践的作用, 它不仅受到好奇心的启发, 也受到了对自我宣传和社交媒体自我品牌推广的关注。我们的论点是, 通过重新思考集体消费的新近实践(在这个例子中是由社交媒体推动的), 我们可以理解新的旅游形式是如何在居住地发生的。这些挑战趋向于日常生活的飞地化和经过调节的旅游消费。

Keywords:

• Branding
• Johannesburg
• poverty
• resident tourism
• social media
• South Africa
• tourist gaze
• walking tour

关键词:

• 南非
• 居民旅游
• 品牌化
• 贫困
• 社交媒体
• 徒步旅行
• 游客凝视
• 约翰内斯堡

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The concept of ‘tourists in their own city’ was developed by Van Driel and Blokker in 1997 in a cartoon strip where an unemployed Amsterdammer explores his own city like a tourist donned in a safari outfit (Richards, 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gijsbert Hoogendoorn

Prof. Gijsbert Hoogendoorn is a tourism geographer in the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. His research focusses on second home tourism, climate change and tourism, and urban tourism.

Daniel Hammett

Dr. Daniel Hammett is a political and development geographer in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield. His research focusses primarily on citizenship, civil society, and geopolitics of the global south.