Afrigather My research of interplay between vacationers and a Maasai group raised questions concerning the boundaries between analysis, tourism and leisure. For one factor, the native Maasai usually classify abroad guests, whether or not researchers, NGO staff, businessmen or vacationers, in the identical class. I additionally discovered that cross-cultural interactions don’t all the time assist to interrupt down stereotypes.
The research was a part of a 12 months of fieldwork with Maasai engaged in a small, domestically owned ecotourism venture in Northern Tanzania. The venture gives camel safaris for vacationers.
The primarily European and American vacationers additionally go to a Maasai homestead as a part of the safari. As a result of vacationers are scarce on this space and it’s tough to supply advance discover of a go to, native individuals are usually caught unexpectedly when a gaggle of tourists walks into their village. The vacationers sometimes keep for 20 minutes to an hour, trying on the cattle corral and at folks’s homes.
My research provides a detailed description of “Maasai” and “vacationer” views of one another, and the way these views are influenced because of their encounters. It exhibits how and why concepts about “the opposite” persist even when they don’t match folks’s experiences.
The conclusions of my analysis led me to direct a brief movie – “Eliamani’s Homestead”. The movie illustrates a few of my most vital findings on host-guest encounters. Viewers comply with the expertise of a gaggle of Dutch vacationers visiting a younger mom, Eliamani, and her household. 4 languages – Maa, Swahili, Dutch and English – are spoken, and all conversations are subtitled.
Vanessa Wijngaarden, Creator supplied
Parallel fears
Why do these encounters occur, anyway? Vacationers say they go to Maasailand as a result of they’re fascinated by cultural distinction. The Kenyan and Tanzanian Maasai primarily interact in tourism because of the financial distinction between them and the guests, and so they complement their earnings by promoting safaris and artefacts.
Their incentives and their fears when interacting are intimately related and there are some hanging parallels.
The Maasai and vacationers concern being seen as naive or ignorant by the opposite social gathering. They concern being exploited. Each side exaggerate the revenue the opposite makes within the encounter. Maasai overestimate how a lot cash vacationers might make from taking images. Vacationers blow out of proportion the worth their cash has in Maasailand.
Each side concern that the opposite is performing purely out of slim self-interest. Vacationers fear that Maasai interact with them solely to promote beads and Maasai fear that vacationers’ solely want is to take footage. Both sides wonders if the opposite’s obvious friendliness is pretend.
The main points of the discussions about costs and funds present that the couple of Euros concerned in buying artefacts aren’t the reason for the emotional outbursts of the vacationers, as a substitute it’s concern of lack of face. In the identical manner, Maasai concern the vacationers could also be solely of their cultural otherness, and take into account them not as folks, however as a spectacle. A transparent instance is when Eliamani runs behind the home to flee from the vacationer digital camera’s gaze, as a result of she fears the guests are ridiculing her.
Confronting gaze
So it isn’t all about materials pursuits and exploitation. Each side are involved about how they’re perceived. They aren’t a lot performing on the picture they’ve of “the opposite”, however reacting to the picture they assume “the opposite” has of them.
In psychology it has lengthy been noticed that “the presumed picture the opposite has of me” is of nice significance in interactions between folks of various cultures. On this context, psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson described the phenomenon of the “stereotype threat”. This proved to be broadly related, not solely in relation to stereotypes about minorities but additionally to these about powerful majorities.
Sociologist Marie-Françoise Lanfant explains that in the tourism context, the receiving society involves mirror upon its personal traditions and values by way of the confrontation with otherness signified by the presence of vacationers. The identical is true for the vacationers beneath the gaze of their hosts.
Persons are in a position to think about themselves in others’ sneakers and create a picture of how they could be seen.
Fifteen minutes into the documentary Eliamani out of the blue turns round to look straight on the filmmaker’s digital camera and complains about being filmed an excessive amount of. And thus the filmmaker and the viewer are urged to mirror if they’ve turn out to be a part of the issue of the voyeuristic invasion of cultural tourism.
My analysis, and the movie elevate questions whether or not watching a documentary or doing analysis are completely different from leisure or tourism. And what does that imply for our identification as tourism researchers?
