The role of commoditization and social identity in Halong bay Vietnam

The role of commoditization and social identity in Halong bay Vietnam has been extensively dis- cussed (Franklin, 2003; Greenwood, 1989) and many commentators agree that cultural reproduction at a local level for global markets emphasizes shallow and fleeting ‘moments

of tourism’, where exchange is based on money for vulgarized culture. However, as with most things touristic, the solution (or even the description of the problem) is not so sim- ple. Such negative interpretations have to be balanced against the possibility for the nexus

of culture and tourism as a form of identity boosterism that can play a pivotal role in lead- ing people to rediscover or reinforce their identity through traditional dance, crafts and arts (Stanton, 1989; Bricker 2001). For example, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, where unique, ethnic, tribal or national identities were subsumed into the notion that all citizens were ‘Soviets’, traditional forms of dress, dancing and other folkloric customs have com- bined with tourism to boost (along with a resurgence in national languages) pride in the newly emerging independence and freedom (Burns, 1998).

Meaghan Morris captures the dichotomous essence of these arguments very well: “Wherever tourism is an economic strategy as well as a money-making activity, and wher- ever it is a policy of state, a process of social and cultural change is initiated which involves transforming not only the ‘physical’ (in other words the lived) environment of ‘toured’ com- munities and the intimate practice of everyday life, but also the series of relations by which cultural identity (and therefore difference) is constituted for both the tourist and the toured

in any given context” (Morris, 1995, pp. 180–181, italics and parentheses in original). However, the other side to the cultural coin is that identity is being changed ‘at home’ for tourists from the post-industrialized world (Lanfant et al., 1995) as work becomes displaced from the centre stage of modern social structures (economy, technology, occupational sys- tems) with egocentricity in the form of increased concern for self-actualization and a gen- eralized diffusion of the leisured class coming to dominate the socio-cultural milieu (Selwyn, 1996a). Halong bay Vietnam of tourism (epitomized in Europe by the hastily snatched city break from the likes of Lastminute.com or Travelocity.com) do serve MacCannell’s (contested) thesis on the tourist that “somewhere, ... in another country, in another lifestyle,

in another social class, perhaps, there is a genuine society” (MacCannell, 1976, p. 155).

Having discussed the roles played out in tourism that help construct some aspects of social identities, it can be seen that the commercial nature of these constructions means that while cultural encounters might be synchronous, tourism in its globalized form also comprises a series of encounters that are (in effect) ‘moments of tourism’ and reflect frag- menting societies that somehow lack a unifying ethic framed by the type of contested cul- ture described in the next section.