Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 08:24:40 -0800
From: "Marlene R. Atleo" <maratleo-AT-island.net>
Subject: Re: Travel Writing and Postcolonialism?


I have to agree with Terry....especially since I come from the "heart of
ecotourist" country on the "pristine" travel destination of the West Coast
of Vancouver Island where the whales are more endangered of being stressed
by Zodiacs full of tourists buzzing them than by the spears of the Makah
whalers. And the German tourists are in danger of dying because they get
drawn into the "background" without cultural cues for "wave action"....
 
What about: environmentalists as the new "tourist" travellers....
not really anti-imperialist in my estimation but playing into the
exoticization/eroticization of the periphery....with such activities which
include the myth making of the order of the "Big Bear Forest" in the "save
the tropical rain forest" canpaigns...looks a little like hiking up Everest
to me....and the locals get subsumed in these projects in the same way...

But how else can currency continue to move from the center to the
peripheries..????  an addiction which I would say, is a product of
colonialism/imperialism & its hand maiden technology....

Mar


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