The touristic transformation of postcolonial states: human zoos, global tourism competition, and the emergence of zoo-managing states

Abstract

Tourism is transforming states. Nevertheless, how, in what ways, and with what consequences has yet to be adequately theorised and interrogated. This paper takes up this task by asking: How does tourism govern and transform states? And, what does this mean for places and people? Tourism is a global mobilities system with immense power. While this system is capable of governing and transforming all states, it has particular resonance in postcolonial states. Due to their historically constructed economic dependency on international tourism, postcolonial states are increasingly conceptualising, representing, and governing their territory/citizenry as desirable/safe ‘tourism destinations’ and ‘touristic figures’ for international—primarily white Western—tourists. This, we argue, is indicative of postcolonial states enacting a mode of governance that harks back to the colonial practice of human zoos and, thus, that they are acting as competitive ‘zoo-managers’. Through theorising and interrogating this touristic state transformation we reveal the continued coloniality of postcolonial states and how this is being experienced, negotiated, and resisted by citizens.

Keywords:

• Tourism competition
• governance
• mobilities
• coloniality
• postcolonial states
• human zoos
• zoo-managing states
• Global South

Introduction

Tourism is transforming states. Indeed, today it is possible to find tourism-specific state ministries, departments, institutes, divisions, laws, and procedures of justice, and there has been a touristification of numerous state functions, including immigration, security, diplomacy, branding, conservation, heritage, innovation, urban planning, and education, among others (Becklake, 2016; Coles, 2003; Córdoba Azcárate, 2020; Devine, 2014; Enloe, 2014; Ojeda, 2013; Wynne-Hughes, 2012). Despite these empirical insights and the recognition that everyday practices of tourism are entangled with geopolitical ‘discourses and practices of…territorialization, statecraft and nation-building’ (Mostafanezhad, 2018, p. 345), to date only a few critical scholars have sought to theorise and interrogate the touristic transformation of states (exceptions include, e.g.: Gonzalez, 2013; Hollinshead, 2009; Werry, 2011). In taking up this task, this paper asks: How does tourism govern and transform states? And, what does this mean for places and people?

We approach these geopolitical questions by drawing upon mobilities, governance, de-/post-coloniality, and political economy theories. In so doing, we show that tourism has emerged into a global mobilities system with immense power. While this system is governing and transforming all states, it has particular resonance in postcolonial states. Today many postcolonial states are economically dependent on international tourism and, thus, global tourism competition has become of upmost national importance. In their efforts to attract/satisfy international tourists, these states are conceptualising, representing, and governing their territory and citizenry as desirable/safe ‘tourism destinations’ and ‘touristic figures’ for—primarily—white Westerners (Becklake, 2021). As the key task of states is often understood as governing to protect/secure their sovereignty and foster their populations, this reflects a significant transformation. Through theorising and interrogating this transformation, we argue that postcolonial states are enacting a mode of governance that harks back to the colonial practice of ‘human zoos’ and, thus, that they are acting as competitive ‘zoo-managers’.

While the most flagrant examples of human zoos ceased in the early twentieth century, indigenous peoples and artefacts are still represented and/or enrolled to perform ‘Otherness’ in Western zoos (Manderson, 2018; Milstein, 2009; Purtschert, 2015), as well as in the film, performance, and tourism industries (Higgins-Desbiolles & Canosa, 2018; Trupp, 2011). While this speaks to the ‘colonial debris’ (Stoler, 2008) of human zoos, few have studied their contemporary iterations in detail (Chikha & Arnaut, 2013). Focusing on international tourism to Africa, Harry Wels asserts that the colonial practice of human zoos, which put African ‘Others’ on stage in Europe, has since been generalised to Africa itself; what he calls ‘from exhibition on stage to exhibition on location’ (2002, p. 62). We pick up and develop this insight by tracing how the cluster of logics that underpinned the colonial practice of human zoos, which aimed to create ‘exotic’ tourism destinations for white Westerners within Europe, are now shaping postcolonial states’ current practice of global tourism competition, which aims to create desirable/safe tourism destinations for (mainly) white Westerners within the Global South.

More specifically, using examples from Egypt, Tanzania, and Guatemala, we demonstrate how the logics of (a) commodifying and othering; (b) caging and staging; and, (c) studying and saving are being (re)enacted through global tourism competition for white Western tourists, and how this is being experienced, negotiated, and resisted by local people. In so doing, we demonstrate how the colonial practice of ‘human zoos’ lives on—albeit in highly modified form—through the governing power of tourism and, following, reveal the continued coloniality of postcolonial states. The paper proceeds in two steps: first, we theorise tourism as a global mobilities system and show how Western international tourism is governing and transforming postcolonial states; and, second, we identify the key logics underpinning colonial human zoos, and, through drawing upon ethnographic research, show how these logics are being (re)enacted by postcolonial states through global tourism competition and how local people experience and respond to this. We conclude by suggesting that the theoretical framework used in this paper should be widened to create a fuller understanding of how the logics of the human zoo live on through the governing power of tourism.

The global tourism system: governing & transforming postcolonial states

In this paper we draw upon the mobilities paradigm (Sheller & Urry, 2006). Mobilities scholars argue that all spatial mobility practices give rise to, rely upon, and help shape complex socio-technical mobilities systems that are performative of the geo-social (Urry, 2003, 2007). In other words, it is through potential and actual spatial mobility that different institutions, places, and people are brought into dialectical relation and it is through these relations that they are co-constituted and continuously coevolving (Bærenholdt, 2013; Cresswell, 2010; Sheller, 2016; Sheller & Urry, 2006). Urry (2003) highlights the emergence of numerous global mobilities systems, or those that connect practically all institutions, places, and people in the world. As mobilities scholars argue, it is this increased relationality at a distance which continually (re)produces global and local space through processes of de/re-territorialisation (Sheller & Urry, 2006; Urry, 2003). From a mobilities perspective, then, tourism is inherently a geopolitical practice; indeed, it has emerged into a global mobilities system with immense worldmaking power.

Alneng (2002) argues that scholars tend to assume tourism was born in and diffused from ‘the West’ to ‘the Rest’ and that the tourist par excellence is a (white) Westerner traveling to consume the immobile ‘exotic Other’. In defining tourism from this Eurocentric perspective, many mobilities are deemed ‘not tourism’ and, thus, ignored. In their efforts to provide a non-Eurocentric definition of tourism, Cohen and Cohen (2015a, 2015b) draw upon the mobilities paradigm to turn attention to ‘discretionary mobilities’, defined as numerous different forms of (in)formal voluntary, temporary mobilities that use disposable income and occur at different scales (Cohen & Cohen, 2015a). While Cohen and Cohen argue that tourism (i.e. vacationing, sightseeing) constitutes a ‘blurry strain’ of discretionary mobilities, following Becklake (2021), we use tourism as an ‘umbrella concept’ to include diverse privileged mobilities characterised by choice, circularity, consumption, and formalisation. Likewise, the global tourism system includes, but is not limited to: holidaymaking, business travel, studying and volunteering abroad, pilgrimage, visiting friends and family, and so on. Through opening up the concept of tourism it becomes possible to see and compare different touristic mobilities in, from, and across all regions of the world, as Cohen and Cohen (2015b) have done. Following, they show that colonial encounters shaped how touristic mobilities were defined, structured, and practiced and how some forms of tourism remain dominated by ‘the West’ and ‘Westerners’.

In the vernacular, ‘the West’ and ‘Westerners’ are regularly used to denote countries and their corresponding citizens that, as a result of colonialism/coloniality, have dominant positions within the international system (e.g. Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel). Post-colonial scholars draw attention to the relational, hierarchical, and racialised construction of these contested geopolitical concepts. Indeed, while ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’ have been co-constituted via hierarchical opposition and ‘how they have selectively appropriated each others’ ideas and practices’ (Wynne-Hughes, 2012, p. 617), white subjects are often imagined—regardless of their citizenship—to ‘belong’ to the West and, thus, are privileged and protected in relation to correspondingly constructed ‘others’ (Ahmed, 2000; Said, 1995). While more studies that de-centre the West and white Western tourists are much needed (Alneng, 2002), in heeding de-colonial scholars’ call to expose and challenge the continued ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano, 2000), we focus on Western international tourism in this paper. Indeed, we argue that there is still much conceptual work to be done to fully understand how this form of tourism is (re)making the world. We contribute to this by theorising and interrogating how Western international tourism—as one part of the wider global tourism system—is governing and transforming postcolonial states.

Western international tourism: governing and transforming postcolonial states

Governing is often associated with and studied as purposeful embodied action underpinned by a vision about how objects/subjects/selves are and ought to be. Embedded in such governing actions are rational strategic efforts to manage or solve the problematised discrepancy. While this understanding of governing assumes a governing subject, disembodied systems also have governing power; indeed, such systems shape actors’ embodied governing practices (Dean, 2010). This embodied/disembodied distinction can be found in literature on tourism and governing. On the one hand, policymakers and tourism scholars focus on how different actors can ‘best’ govern tourism (Bramwell, 2011; Crotti & Misrahi, 2017; United Nations World Tourism Organization, 2018) and, on the other hand, various social scientists have theorised how tourism itself governs (Córdoba Azcárate, 2020; Franklin, 2004; Sheller & Urry, 2004b). In support of the latter perspective, Bærenholdt argues that while mobility can be governed, it ‘is first and foremost a way of governing, a political technology’ (Bærenholdt, 2013, p. 20). Following, he asserts that, ‘government and governmentality do not only deal and cope with mobility; they work through mobility. They have become based on mobility’ (Bærenholdt, 2013, p. 27; emphasis in original). Consequently, Bærenholdt suggests analysing the many socio-technical components that facilitate/shape different mobilities systems and, thus, how they govern.

While states are often studied as powerful institutions governing mobility, they too are governed by mobility. States, as Lemke (2007) argues, are not ‘homogenous’ and ‘stable’ actors; rather, they are both effects and enactors of power, as well as sites of strategic action. Likewise, Lemke suggests paying attention to how ‘multiple governmentalities’ inform the emergence, enactment, stabilisation, and transformation of different forms of statehood. Political economists argue that, while states played unequal roles in the historical construction of the neoliberal global capitalist system, once established this system was able to govern all states, although not necessarily to the same degree or in the same way (Harvey, 2005; McGrew, 2005; O’Brien & Williams, 2004; Weiss, 1997). In particular, they have highlighted how the neoliberal ability of capital to move around the world is leading to the emergence of ‘competition states’ (Cerny, 2010) that aim to (re)fashion themselves as attractive to capital, thus combining ‘statesmanship’ with ‘salesmanship’ (Fougner, 2006), with the latter referring to the state’s ‘self-commodification’ (Cerny, 2010). Following these insights, we argue that while states clearly shape tourism—indeed, the very notion of domestic and international tourism is state produced (Cohen & Cohen, 2015b)—the global tourism system is also governing states, partly through neoliberal touristic competition, though not necessarily to the same degree or in the same way.

While the global tourism system is governing all states, international tourism has particular resonance in postcolonial states. International tourism’s ability to govern postcolonial states is especially, but certainly not exclusively, linked to its immense economic power under neoliberalism. The neoliberalisation of ‘development’ has forced countries to find their ‘niche’ in the global marketplace (McMichael, 2004). For many postcolonial states, international tourism was deemed their only real ‘competitive advantage’ (Smith & Duffy, 2003), and, thus, they were encouraged to turn to international tourism as their only ‘realistic’ tool of export-oriented economic growth (Telfer & Sharpley, 2008). In particular, with state restructuring from the 1990s, International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment programmes encouraged international tourism development and the privatisation of tourism infrastructures and services as part of countries’ loan conditionalities (Gray, 1998; Richter & Steiner, 2008; Salazar, 2009). This has facilitated the growth and spread of the international tourism industry. Growing out of European colonialism (Baranowski et al., 2015; Lisle, 2016), the international tourism industry remains dominated by large transnational corporations with headquarters in the West, where most of the professional jobs and profits from international tourism accrue (Bianchi, 2002; Mowforth & Munt, 2009). Through their ability to (re)direct flows of international tourists, these firms hold considerable power over postcolonial states.

As a result of these shifts, today many postcolonial states have come to economically depend on international tourism and there is immense competition for international tourists (Becklake, 2021; Mowforth & Munt, 2009; Sharpley & Telfer, 2002; Urry & Larsen, 2011). The ability to be an international tourist requires, at the very least, economic resources, passport power, and security clearance (Bianchi & Stephenson, 2014). Reflecting the continued ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano, 2000), until relatively recently, these mobility capitals were primarily limited to Westerners and elites from the Global South (Cohen & Cohen, 2015b). While there has been considerable growth in international tourists from emerging economies, especially in Asia (Assiouras et al., 2015; Zhu et al., 2021), only a small segment of the Asian population has access to international tourism and those who do tend to travel regionally or to the ‘prestigious’ West (Cohen & Cohen, 2015b). Furthermore, despite the numerical dominance and economic importance of domestic and regional tourism, postcolonial states have tended to prioritise international long-haul tourism from the West in their economic development policies and plans (Cohen & Cohen, 2015b). As a result, the West remains the main market for international tourists for many postcolonial states and, thus, (mainly white) Westerners are centred in their global tourism competition strategies.

State forms of global tourism competition entail ‘tourism reflexivity’ (Sheller & Urry, 2004a) informed by two key sources of Western-dominated knowledge: expert knowledge (e.g. the World Economic Forum’s ‘Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index’) and popular knowledge (e.g. the tourist gaze). The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index addresses political actors, giving them information on how they can best market, organise, and manage their territories and citizenry as tourism commodities. In other words, it sets out a framework for what constitutes ‘good’ tourism governance, which combines two governing logics: governing for the global market and governing for international tourists; indeed, there is an assumption that the ‘right’ conditions for one, help create the ‘right’ conditions for the other (Becklake, 2016). Governing for tourists requires learning to see/know place/people through the tourist gaze and, thus, coming to ‘discover’ touristic competitive (dis)advantages; this then shapes states’ competitive strategies to emphasize the ‘tourist-attracting’ and downplay the ‘tourist-detracting’ (Becklake, 2016, 2021). As postcolonial states tend to centre white Western tourists, their ways of seeing and experiencing the world profoundly shape postcolonial states’ tourism reflexivity and, following, how they conceptualise, represent, and govern their territory and citizenry as desirable/safe ‘tourism destinations’ and ‘touristic figures’ (Becklake, 2016, 2021).

Through global tourism competition, then, postcolonial states are governing their territory and citizens for white Western tourists, reflecting a significant transformation in state governing logics. We now turn to theorise and interrogate the wider consequences of this transformation, arguing that postcolonial states are enacting a touristic mode of governance that harks back to the colonial practice of ‘human zoos’ and, thus, that they are acting as competitive ‘zoo-managers’.

Competitive zoo-managing states: governing for international tourists

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, indigenous people from the colonies were (often forcefully and violently) brought to Europe to be put on display at fairs, exhibitions, and zoological gardens for the entertainment and education of paying visitors. As mass ‘consumer spectacles’ (McClintock, 1995), such ‘human zoos’ attracted millions of Europeans interested in seeing ‘exotic Others’ (Putnam, 2012). Human zoos relied upon and (re)produced (post-)colonial discourses and hierarchies of ‘difference’ between Europeans and Others (Cariou, 2016; Manderson, 2018; Purkayastha, 2019; Purtschert, 2015; Putnam, 2012) and involved ‘caging’ and ‘staging’ (Chikha & Arnaut, 2013). Indeed, ‘exotic Others’ were often immobilised in lifelike ‘native villages’, where they were asked to perform daily activities in full view of gazing Europeans (Chikha & Arnaut, 2013; Manderson, 2018; Putnam, 2012). These spectacles of ‘radical difference’ not only entertained Europeans, but also educated them about modernity, progress, race, and the wider world (Purkayastha, 2019; Putnam, 2012). Human zoos aligned indigenous Others with ‘exotic’ nature and animals, which were deemed destined for extinction under European progress. This worked to ‘justify’ their objectification, consumption, and domination; encouraged scientific efforts to collect, study, and exhibit them; and, incited Christian pity and, following, strategies to protect and save them (Chikha & Arnaut, 2013; Manderson, 2018; Putnam, 2012).

Colonial human zoos shaped and encouraged the development of Western international tourism. On the one hand, they helped create a Western taste for ‘exotic’ places and people (Trupp, 2011) and, on the other hand, as their ‘authenticity’ as genuine representations of ‘Otherness’ eventually came into question (Putnam, 2012), Westerners were increasingly enticed to travel to the colonies to have ‘real’ encounters with ‘radical difference’ (Baranowski et al., 2015; Lisle, 2016). Through visiting the colonies and bringing back images and stories of ‘exotic’ places and people, these early international tourists reinforced the bourgeoning Western curiosity and desire to see/know ‘Otherness’, which still exists to this day. Indeed, white Westerners are increasingly travelling to the Global South in search of immersive experiences of ‘exotic Otherness’ (Mowforth & Munt, 2009). While Trupp (2011) argues that the decline of colonial human zoos in the 1930s can be linked to the shrinking power of colonial empires, increased critical public awareness, the emergence of television, and international tourism, colonial human zoos also live on through tourism, as especially seen in the form of so-called ‘ethnic villages’ (Higgins-Desbiolles & Canosa, 2018; Trupp, 2011).

As was also the case in colonial human zoos (Cariou, 2016; Chikha & Arnaut, 2013; Poignant, 2004; Purkayastha, 2019), scholars of contemporary ‘ethnic villages’ stress how those ‘on display’ can and do express agency in highly delimiting and dehumanising contexts (Higgins-Desbiolles & Canosa, 2018). Indeed, they may cooperate as a strategic means of using tourism/tourists to gain economic and/or political capital or engage in ‘open’ and/or ‘veiled resistance’ (Maoz, 2006). While this leads some to argue that tourism is an ‘ambivalent force’, bringing both exploitation and opportunity (Higgins-Desbiolles & Canosa, 2018), Matilde Córdoba-Azcárate (2020) traces the cultural, political, and economic processes through which places and people come to be ‘stuck with tourism’ and, thus, are forced to make do with it. In other words, more important than merely highlighting agency is to analyse the wider political context in which agency takes shape, is expressed, and may alter. As outlined in detail above, in the context of global neoliberalism, many postcolonial states are now stuck with international tourism and, thus, they compete fiercely for international tourists.

Given the economic imperative to attract/satisfy international tourists in search of ‘exotic Otherness’, we argue that postcolonial states are coming to enact a mode of governance that harks back to the colonial practice of human zoos. In other words, through global tourism competition, postcolonial states are (re)enacting the cluster of logics that underpinned human zoos, including: (a) commodifying and othering; (b) caging and staging; and, (c) studying and saving. To develop our argument, we now link the framework and logics identified above to our own and others’ ethnographic research in Egypt, Tanzania, and Guatemala. While all of the logics can be found in each country, given space restrictions, we highlight only two logics in each case and pay attention to some (but certainly not all) of the ways this is being experienced, negotiated, and resisted by local people. While we emphasise different forms of resistance, as many livelihoods are tied to tourism/tourists, local people may also demand that states do a ‘better’ job at attracting/satisfying international tourists. Indeed, doing so supports some to survive and thrive in the neoliberal global economy. This, however, remains tied to maintaining international tourists’ fascination with them as ‘exotic Others’ and living under conditions akin to the human zoo.

Commodifying and othering: producing desirable touristic differences in Egypt

Like human zoos, the logics of commodifying and othering underpin global tourism competition. As part of commodifying and othering processes, states conceptualise their territory/citizenry as national resources to be cultivated and managed as touristic products, engage in tourism reflexivity to identify their tourist-attracting and -detracting ‘differences’, and develop and deploy discursive and material strategies to emphasize the former and downplay the latter. The white Western tourist gaze strongly influences postcolonial states’ identification of attracting/detracting touristic differences and, following, their global tourism competition strategies. The white Western tourist gaze is deeply shaped by (post-)colonial discourses of the ‘Other’ (Said, 1995), which conceptualises the Global South as both ‘desirably Other’, but also potentially ‘threateningly Other’ (Becklake, 2021; Lisle, 2006). To (re)produce their ‘desirable Otherness’, postcolonial states emphasize their ‘exoticness’ (i.e. difference from the West/Westerners) and ‘uniqueness’ (i.e. difference from rival destinations) (Becklake, 2016), while downplaying ‘threatening Otherness’ by highlighting states’ comforts, hospitality, and passivity (Becklake, 2021; Morgan & Pritchard, 1998).

Since British colonialism, Egypt has long been a popular destination for white Western tourists in search of ‘exotic Otherness’ (Lisle, 2016). However, in the 1990s, there was a series of terrorist attacks in Upper Egypt which culminated in the 1997 ‘Luxor Massacre’, where gunmen killed more than 60 people, mainly international tourists. As a result, Egypt was increasingly imagined as a ‘risky’ destination in the Western imagination. To combat this, the Egyptian state implemented its ‘Red Sea Riviera’ campaign, which refocused on developing its Sinai Peninsula into a luxurious sun/sand/sea destination with modern amenities independent of any mention of Egypt (Avraham, 2016; Vitalis, 1995). This campaign, which geographically disassociated Sinai from Egypt, coincided with the encouragement for package tourism resort development in Sinai through an IMF agreement and financial assistance, World Bank structural adjustment loan and funding, and government incentives for private (local elite/foreign) investment. The increase in mass tourism infrastructure in the 1990s was part of Egypt’s global tourism competition strategies to compensate for foreign debt and fiscal losses from the decline of oil rent revenues in the 1980s (Gray, 1998; Richter & Steiner, 2008; Vitalis, 1995).

Jacobs (2009) argues that Westerners tend to imagine Sinai as a ‘desert paradise’ outside of ‘Western modernity’ where they can find a unique mixture of personal freedom, ‘authentic’ encounters with vast empty space and Bedouin people, and accessible and attractive tourism infrastructure. These imaginaries are (re)produced by the Egyptian state and Western tour operators, who market Sinai using images of ‘exotic’ landscapes and people (Jacobs, 2009), but also ‘modern’ resorts that are exclusive, personalised, comfortable, and safe ‘homes away from home’ (Bryce, 2007; First Choice, 2012; Thomas Cook, 2012). Such developments have involved and benefitted prosperous local and foreign investors, economically marginalising the local Bedouin community and appropriating their semi-nomadic lands (Jacobs, 2009; Richter & Steiner, 2008; Tuitel, 2014). While Sinai is a highly popular destination for Westerners, contestations to international tourism and the government continued, with several terrorist attacks in Sinai tourist resort locations in the mid-2000s, the first such incidents since the Luxor Massacre. Nevertheless, after the government’s 2011 Arab Spring, Egypt’s ‘Where it all begins’ tourism campaign again used the ‘Red Sea Riviera’ to emphasise Sinai as a ‘safe place’ geographically disassociated from the violence occurring elsewhere in the country (Avraham, 2016). This campaign visually ‘portrayed Egypt as the travellers’ gateway to an exceptional holiday, the experience of their dreams’, and included mainly white, Western-looking models wearing Western clothes, and women without head coverings, enjoying various beach activities (Avraham, 2016, p. 46). As found in other places in the world (Becklake, 2021), the use of ‘vulnerable’ white Western women in tourism marketing helps to render place safe for all Westerners.

The Egyptian state’s prioritisation of tourism-driven economic development has led it to increasingly commodify and other its territory and citizenry, especially Sinai and the Bedouin. While the state and non-Bedouin Egyptians appropriate and profit from Bedouin aesthetics, traditions, and narratives (Aziz, 2000; Jacobs, 2009), the Bedouin have also strategically used tourism as a means of acquiring cash, which can involve drawing on aspects of their culture (like their traditional dress), selling land, owning campsites, offering inland safaris, driving taxis, or dealing in drugs (Aziz, 2000, p. 34). This has not only made them reliant on the tourism cash economy, disrupting various aspects of their traditional social order and land use (Aziz, 2000), but these sources of income have also increasingly been confined and side-lined by package tourism development (Tuitel, 2014) and state securitisation. While some argue that the 1990s terrorist attacks against tourism/tourists in Upper Egypt were a form of ‘open resistance’ (Maoz, 2006) by Islamic groups who object to the Egyptian state’s repression and corruption, as well as its economic dependence on the West (Wheatley & McCauley, 2008), those behind the terrorist attacks in Sinai in the mid-2000s were never identified and their motivations are unknown. The government, however, claimed that the Bedouin were involved. This led to increased state violence, criminalisation, incarceration, and the exclusion of Bedouins from the tourism economy (Tuitel, 2014). Following the 2011 revolution, longstanding grievances against the government led to increased collaboration between Bedouins and militants, resulting in an ongoing insurgency and violent military responses (Tuitel, 2014).

Caging and staging: producing touristic (im)mobilities in Tanzania

Human zoos included caging and staging; that is, ‘exotic Others’ were contained and displayed within them for the entertainment and education of Europeans who were attracted to them and could enter and exit them freely (with a purchased ticket). Through global tourism competition, postcolonial states aim to attract international tourists (that is, mobilise them to move). This includes facilitating their entry and their smooth and safe spatial mobilities within them (Bianchi et al., 2020; Wynne-Hughes, forthcoming), as well as immobilising (‘caging’) and refashioning (‘staging’) in ways that appeal to white Westerners, from the all-inclusive resort to ethnic villages. The construction of caged/staged touristic spaces creates numerous types of borders within states; while international tourists can enter and leave these spaces at will, local people often cannot. Indeed, while local people are excluded from exclusive tourism spaces, such as resorts, they are also often temporally and spatially immobilised; that is, they are stuck performing the lives/lifestyles of their ancestors for international tourists in defined and staged spaces where they are imagined ‘to belong’ (Salazar, 2012).

In response to international tourist demand for safari tourism—a legacy of colonialism—and in line with IMF/World Bank structural adjustment imperatives, since the 1990s the Tanzanian state’s Tanzania Tourism Board (TTB) has increasingly prioritised the creation and expansion of national parks, game parks, and other protected areas, and the privatisation of tourism infrastructure and operations (Salazar, 2009). The creation of highly securitised protective parks for animals (and indigenous people), which effectively function as large-scale cages, speaks to what Snyder and Sulle (2011) call ‘fortress conservation policies’, which address local and international concerns for conservation in a way that maintains lucrative forms of international tourism. In tandem with the conservation of wildlife, the TTB’s global ‘Tanzania, Authentic Africa’ campaign used the Maasai to represent the Tanzanian people, despite the presence of over 120 different ethnic groups (Salazar, 2018, p. 58). The Maasai have become ‘true icons of (an imagined) Indigenous ‘traditionalism,’ unwitting symbols of resistance to modernist values’ (Salazar, 2018, p. 36). Tourism stakeholders link ‘authentic’ Maasai identities and cultures to the geographically bounded safari landscape, as an extension of wildlife (with which they ‘live in harmony’), thereby temporally, spatially, and symbolically immobilising them despite their status as pastoral nomads (Salazar, 2012, 2018).

While ‘caged’ in various ways, the Maasai are also highly staged. In cooperation with the TTB, in 1995 the Dutch Aid Agency ‘Sitchting Nederlandse Vrijwilligers’ set up a Cultural Tourism Program, which created a network of Maasai communities offering individually developed tour packages and trained local guides. Tourists could experience homestays, natural and cultural attractions, and engage with key members of the community (e.g. healers, storytellers, artisans, and cooking mamas). Officially registered ‘bomas’ (a form of homestead that differs from contemporary Maasai homes) with traditional dome-shaped mud houses encircled by cattle kraals (enclosures) were established specifically for tourists to have ‘authentic’ experiences and encounters with Maasai culture without impacting inhabitants (Melubo & Carr, 2019). These staged encounters are sanitised of anything that would disrupt their ‘authenticity’ (MacCannell, 1976/1999), such as mobile phones and socks and shoes (Salazar, 2009). Indeed, white Westerners often want to see and take pictures of the ‘traditional’ Maasai in the safari landscape, leading Tanzanian tour guides to ‘joke’ that foreign visitors do not want to see the ‘big five’ (lions, leopards, elephants, buffalo, and rhinoceroses), but the ‘big six’ (with the Maasai being the sixth) (Salazar, 2009). While said in jest, this represents a clear animalisation of the Maasai people within a new iteration of the human zoo.

Thus, as part of global tourism competition, the Tanzanian state’s caging and staging strategies have tended to focus on the safari landscape, wildlife, and the Maasai. The logic of caging has restricted the Maasai’s movements, effectively removing them from some of their lands, curtailing their access to natural resources, and undermining their traditional practices and livelihoods (Salazar, 2009). Through this dispossession, they have become more amenable to staging; indeed, as they have come to economically depend on tourism/tourists, they strategically embody and perform the indigenous African ‘Other’, effectively bring Western tropes to life (Salazar, 2009). However, the Maasai are also engaging in various forms of resistance, using international concerns about their imminent extinction to call for special protections within Tanzania (Salazar, 2018), refusing the imposition of Wildlife Management Areas and subsequent evictions (Snyder & Sulle, 2011), adapting their practices to protect their culture and/or moving to remote locations to escape the touristic cage (Salazar, 2018), and, in some cases, moving to the coast to take up other forms of touristic work (Salazar, 2009).

Studying and saving: producing touristic personal development in Guatemala

Human zoos focused on studying and saving ‘exotic Others’, allowing Europeans to develop themselves as knowledgeable and generous Christian subjects. Due to the increased value currently placed on global competence and cosmopolitanism in education and labour markets, many Westerners want to engage in ‘pedagogical tourism’ (Becklake, 2023). Westerners often imagine ‘exotic/risky’ places in the Global South to be highly pedagogical and, thus, they use immersive embodied experiences of ‘colonial difference’ (Mignolo, 2002) to test and prove themselves, gain cultural capital, and have transformative life experiences (Crossley, 2012; Lozanski, 2011; Vrasti, 2013). There has also been a ‘moralisation of tourism’ (Butcher, 2003), whereby tourists are increasingly encouraged to travel to ‘save the world’. On the one hand, this is argued to occur through participating in ‘sustainable’ tourism that helps conserve nature and culture and, on the other hand, through volunteering with local projects. Following these trends, postcolonial states compete to attract/satisfy white Westerners looking for pedagogical and helping experiences through which they can gain professional competencies and become ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘generous’ global citizens (Mostafanezhad, 2014; Vrasti, 2013).

Building on Western desires to see and study the ancient and/or living indigenous Maya, the Guatemalan state has long marketed itself as ‘The Heart of the Mayan World’ (Becklake, 2016). The state’s use of Mayan culture to (re)produce Guatemala into a pedagogical tourism destination is further evident in the Guatemalan Tourism Institute’s (INGUAT) 2014 marketing campaign called Life Lessons, with the slogan ‘Guatemala: More than a journey, let Guatemala teach you life lessons’. Through a series of short promotional videos, INGUAT marketed the country as a place to learn about Guatemalan language, culture, nature, people, and wisdom (specifically that of the Maya), and, in the process as a place for international tourists to be transformed into more cosmopolitan subjects (Becklake, 2023). While the Life Lessons campaign placed emphasis on pedagogical experiences with the Maya, it also presented Guatemala as ‘the perfect place’ to learn Spanish. Indeed, the state is supporting the development of the country into a Spanish-learning destination, as seen through INGUAT and the Ministry of Education’s registration and accreditation of small Spanish schools, some of which are now accredited by Western universities, allowing their students to come to Guatemala to take Spanish lessons for credits back home (Becklake, 2023).

To attract international tourists looking to ‘help’, the Guatemalan state officially promotes the development of ‘sustainable tourism’ and unofficially supports the development of ‘volunteer tourism’ (voluntourism) (Becklake, 2014, 2016; Vodopivec & Jaffe, 2011; Vrasti, 2013). Here we focus on the latter. As a result of neoliberal restructuring, many Guatemalans have come to rely upon non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for basic services, such as education and healthcare. Given increased competition for funding, many of these NGOs have turned to tourism as a means of sustaining their operations and, thus, they compete to attract/satisfy international voluntourists (Becklake, 2014). Indeed, NGOs attract thousands of voluntourists to Guatemala every year, most of whom want to ‘help’ the Maya. Because it exposes state failures and social problems, the Guatemalan state does not officially promote voluntourism, but rather unofficially supports it through turning a blind-eye to foreign NGO-workers living/working on tourist visas and allowing large groups of voluntourists to enter the country. While NGOs and voluntourists take on service provision roles previously offered by the state, they also support the wider tourism economy through filling up hotels, frequenting restaurants and bars, buying souvenirs, and engaging in fun touristic activities (e.g. tours, cultural performances, etc.) (Becklake, 2014; Vodopivec & Jaffe, 2011).

The logics of studying and saving are shaping how the Guatemalan state is competitively representing and governing its territory and, especially, the Maya. The Maya’s experiences of this are highly mixed. On the one hand, international tourists’ fascination with and compassion for the Maya have turned them into ‘national resources’ that the Ladino¹-dominated state, tourism businesses, and foreign-NGOs use to generate revenues, leading the Maya to argue that their culture is being appropriated and exploited. On the other hand, the Maya use their position as key tourist attractions to gain political and economic capital in a country where they have been violently repressed and dispossessed (Becklake, 2016; Little, 2004). In other words, they strategically use their colonial relation with Westerners to challenge their colonial relation with Ladinos. This requires playing to Western imaginaries of the ‘authentic’, ‘victimised’ Maya as a form of ‘veiled resistance’ (Maoz, 2006). For example, as Vodopivec and Jaffe (2011) argue, instead of being a pre-existing, localised, homogeneous, passive, or static group of ‘needy’ people requiring ‘help’, the targets of voluntourism are a diverse set of people who strategically move towards and negotiate their identities to cater to NGOs and voluntourists as a means of gaining access to services.

Conclusion

Drawing upon mobilities, governance, de/post-coloniality, and political economy theories, in this paper we have theorised and interrogated how Western international tourism—one part of the wider global tourism system—is governing and transforming postcolonial states, and examined what this means for places and people. States are traditionally understood as governing to protect/secure their sovereignty and foster their populations. However, in the context of economic dependency on Western international tourism, postcolonial states are increasingly conceptualising, representing, and governing their territory/citizenry as desirable/safe ‘tourism destinations’ and ‘touristic figures’ for international—primarily white Western—tourists. While state actors may argue that creating the ‘right’ conditions for international tourism/tourists is creating the ‘right’ conditions for their territories/populations to survive and thrive in the neoliberal global economy, our analysis highlights the continued coloniality of the postcolonial state. Indeed, as part of global tourism competition, postcolonial states are (re)enacting the cluster of logics underpinning colonial human zoos, and thus are coming to act as competitive ‘zoo-managers’.

We developed our argument through the illustrative cases of Egypt, Tanzania, and Guatemala, showing not only how state-led touristic ‘zoo-management’ is manifesting in different places, but also how this is being experienced, negotiated, and resisted by the people being governed as ‘zoological curiosities’. As our cases show, this form of state governance is informed by a highly problematic postcolonial ‘touristic zoopolitics’, where (white) Western tourists’ desires and fears determine what places/people are touristically ‘valued’ and ‘devalued’, and therefore what/who is biopolitically fostered or terminated. As found in other countries in the Global South (Devine, 2014; Loperena, 2016; Ojeda, 2013), while those places and people deemed tourist-attracting (often ‘exotic’ nature and indigenous peoples) become targets of highly disciplinary and restrictive forms of ‘conservation’ and ‘care’, those deemed tourist-detracting face exclusion, expulsion, criminalisation, and even murder. As this suggests, while the touristic zoopolitical mode of governance is enacted in similar ways within different countries in the Global South, it does not affect all places and people equally and/or in the same way, giving rise to highly fractured geographies and experiences. ‘Touristic zoopolitics’ as a mode of governance requires further theoretical attention and is the subject of our future research.

While we argue that the colonial practice of human zoos lives on—albeit in highly modified form—through postcolonial states’ global tourism competition practices, this is not to say that these two practices are ‘the same’. Indeed, the latter is more complicated and contradictory due to the neoliberalisation of development, which sees numerous new actors engage in tourism, such as NGOs, and local people subverting, resisting, and reshaping this form of governance. While in this paper we have focused rather limitedly on Western international tourism and postcolonial states, there is good reason to believe that the global tourism system more broadly is encouraging all states to act as competitive touristic zoo-managers. Indeed, this paper’s theoretical framework can and certainly should be extended and modified to interrogate how domestic, intra-regional, and international long-haul tourism of various forms is linked to touristic zoopolitics and the zoo-management of places and people and how this may differ (or not) around the world. There is, in other words, still much work to be done to fully understand how the logics of the human zoo live on through the governing power of the global tourism system.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers from Tourism Geographies for their constructive criticsm, which greatly enhanced this piece. Draft versions of this paper were presented at the International Studies Association 2021 and 2022, Millennium Conference 2021, and the British International Studies Association 2022. We would especially like to acknowledge Ali Bilgic and Aida Hozic for their feedback on earlier drafts, and Debbie Lisle for her enthusiastic support, guidance and advice on this paper and its larger project. All errors are, of course, ours alone.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, Global Challenges Research Fund [grant number: ES/P009840/1].

Notes on contributors

Sarah Becklake

Sarah Becklake is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Institute for Sociology at Leibniz University Hannover. Her research interests include human spatial (im)mobilities, (in)security, global political economy, and coloniality.

Elisa Wynne-Hughes

Elisa Wynne-Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Cardiff University. Her research focuses on the intersections between popular culture and international relations, focusing on tourism and the anti-street harassment movement.

Notes

1 A term commonly used in Guatemala to refer to people of mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage.