I have always been pretty fascinated by the life histories of tourism destinations. Thinking about touristic spaces in a kind of archaeological sense--that is, over greater periods of time--is endlessly fascinating. I often wonder about the future of places like Las Vegas, Cancun, and Nakheel, especially since many international organizations (like the UNWTO) promote tourism development as a sustainable, surefire solution for socio-economic development. What will Vegas--or Cancun--look like in 100 years? What purpose will these places serve, and how sustainable will they actually be in the long run?
Many countries around the world continue to promote and finance ever more tourism development, in hopes that these investments will create long-lasting social and economic benefits. At least, that's how the narrative goes. But what kinds of social spaces and places are being created under the guise of tourism, and what futures do these places face? What are the lasting social, political, and economic effects of these spaces? For a little insight, I am going to discuss a few tourist destinations that I have read about recently: Elmina, Ghana, Prora, Germany, and finally Acapulco, Mexico.
Edward Bruner's writes about Elmina Castle in Ghana in his wonderful book Culture on Tour (2005). His discussion, which is in chapter three, brings up some poignant issues, one of them being that any tourist location has a multiplicity of histories and meanings. Bruner focuses on how African-American tourists travel to Elmina to experience a connection with their shared understandings of heritage and history. The irony of the chapter, however, is that the local Ghanaians do not share the same understandings about the castle itself. While the American tourists come to see the castle as a brutal representation of the transatlantic slave trade, the Ghanaians have a much broader conception of the same place. For many African American US tourists, "the castles are a sacred ground not to be desecrated. They do not want the castles to be made beautiful or to be whitewashed...Some diaspora Blacks feel that even though they are not Ghanaians, the castles belong to them" (Bruner 2005:103).
