Tourism presents new trends, values in mobile society
Yulong Snow Mountain and Yueliang Valley in Lijiang City, Yunnan Province Photo: Ma Yuhong/CSST
The growing enhancement of mobility extends the spectrum of human mobility from shopping, commuting, daily leisure, short-distance travel, long-distance travel, and academic travel to seasonal migration (to a second residence), and transnational immigration, from reality to imagination, then virtuality.
A product of modernity, tourism comprises multiple aspects of the mobility spectrum due to its scalability in time and space, and these aspects constitute an important part of people’s daily lives in modern society. Therefore, in the context of a mobile society, tourism needs to be scrutinized within a broader context of social mobility.
Social normal
Mobility is a theme of modern society. It fuels the existence, operation, and development of modern society, and has come to accurately describe basic facts about modern life. The invention of trains in the 19th century became one of the symbols for modernity. In the 1930s, cars and airplanes also began to power daily mobility. As such, the mobility of individuals and the pace of modern society started to accelerate, and people began to reorganize the relationships between regions and space. Nowadays, frequently mentioned phrases such as “global village” and “space-time compression” have become our shared experiences.
Abundant statistics are a testament to the abovementioned phenomena. For example, the UN International Migration Report 2017 shows that the number of international migrants worldwide reached 258 million. From 1990 through 2017, the number of global migrants increased by 100 million (69%), echoing the “new era of mobility” described by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006. Tourism, the world’s largest industry, can also provide evidence of this. In 2018, the number of global international tourist arrivals (overnight visitors) hit 1.4 billion.
Modern society’s mobility is increasing, and its influence on China’s social practice is equally abundant and profound. Against the backdrop of modernization and urbanization, rapid economic development has constantly upgraded transportation infrastructure and communication technology. Remote inland areas have long been involved in the wave of globalization. A typical example is China’s Spring Festival travel rush. This is recognized by the World Record Association as the world’s largest and periodic human migration. More than three billion trips are made in the span of 40 days. People celebrate the Spring Festival by returning home or traveling for pleasure. The enormous scale of population movement represented by the Spring Festival travel rush impacts many facets of Chinese society, influencing attitudes toward hometowns, resource allocation, urban-rural dual structures, semi-urbanization, and tourism consumption.
The mobility of modern society is not one-dimensional, but a form which flows, expands, and disseminates. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai described the five “scapes” of globalization, namely ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes. Human mobility in modern society goes beyond the movement and migration through which people follow natural laws to satisfy livelihoods. Presently, it has turned into an inclusive flow accompanied by multiple factors.
In the past, nomadism represented mobility and was regarded as a barbaric and inferior lifestyle, while settlement indicated stability and was the justified choice for human survival. Today, the boundaries of space and regions have fallen apart. The speed and competence of mobility have grown into factors that dominate our time. In such an era, lifestyles have also started to shift from settlement to migration, and the mobility brought by tourism is an adaptation to this shift.
Diverse forms
Tourism is one of many modes of human mobility. However, travel activities are spatial behaviors. Travel’s diverse types cover many dimensions of the human mobility spectrum, and its connotation and significance are both particularly important to modern people. China’s tourism industry has served as an active leading force globally. Tourism has reached the daily lives of Chinese people, and more people are engaged in relevant production and consumption. Developing tourism is also pushing the flow of social factors. Tourist-generating regions and tourist destinations have more urban-rural migration cases, cultural exchanges, and interactions between residents. Therefore, tourism mobility involves the flow of individual tourists, and more importantly, mobility systems comprised of various mobility resources and factors. Also, it is necessary to notice the forms of mobility that the systems can trigger, such as the mobility of social and cultural relations as well as capital and its economic relations. Deepening tourism research, based on the ideas of all-around mobility and systematic mobility, matters a lot theoretically for guiding the formation of a more logical paradigm.
Meanwhile, in the context of a mobile society, tourism mobility is becoming increasingly diversified. Fast-moving society creates a change in people’s original lifestyles, and tourism as a modern way of life is inevitably affected by mobility. Tourism serves as a means of social mobility, like commuting or migration. More importantly, different tourism modes contribute to diverse forms of mobility, and vice versa. Tourism interacts with other forms of mobility and they shape each other. Different travel modes are often based on a wide range of motivations, creating rich travel experiences and meanings. The enhancement of individual mobility leaps through time and space, and now, many mobility types and activities are available. There is temporary mobility for leisure and entertainment, seasonal travel, as well as long-term travel, such as academic travel, and cases in which people move to places like Tibet for comfortable life, integrated culture, and beautiful scenery.
Regarding material support for individual mobility, abundant transportation choices have shaped types of tourism such as backpacking, bicycle travel, road trips, train travel, airplane travel, and even future space travel. From the perspective of individual mobility’s social nature, tourism mobility not only supplies livelihoods for residents in tourism destinations, but also provides a channel for social class and occupational mobility. On a macro level, tourism mobility prescribes development paths for underdeveloped areas such as central and western regions. Under these distinct paths, regions can pursue higher-quality modernization as they demonstrate higher capabilities for mobilization due to well-preserved ecological zones and authentic culture. Hence, tourism mobility can expand through time, space, and even social dimensions.
Blurred boundary
The binary opposition between dwelling and traveling has been dismantled; both show continuous and complex interactions. Dwelling is no longer defined as the rooted space of a home. It is a pursuit and state that can occur in the process of movement. Thus “home” is not constrained to a fixed and static place. It can also be fluid and unstable. Residence and travel are complicatedly intertwined. “New nomadism” cases rose in Western societies and in Chinese society as it transitions. People who choose this lifestyle don’t have a fixed residence but move constantly from one place to another, which is similar to what scholars refer to as “lifestyle travelers.”
The boundaries between different forms of mobility are blurred. Some scholars even proposed “the end of tourism.” As tourism activities become prevalent in daily life practice, the differences and opposition between tourism and life are increasingly vague, and the definition of tourism no longer includes limitations of specific locations and lengths of stay. Daily life practices also impact tourism activities. Meanwhile, similar dualistic concepts such as the “host and tourist” face new challenges. The “host-guest relationship” is the cornerstone of social relations in all tourism systems. However, in the context of a mobile society, the residents of mature destinations, such as Lijiang City, Yunnan Province, often consume tourism right there, while travelers who engage in the tourism industry often start a business there.
Tourism becomes richer in terms of practice and significance. To a certain extent, tourism is the manifestation and driving force of a mobile society. Tourism mobility not only reveals the dynamics and complexity of a modern society, but also lends an excellent perspective to tourism researchers as they strive to recognize and understand society as a whole. Tourism research should more widely touch upon the social sciences. Tourism should no longer be seen as a marginal social matter. Instead, it should be pulled back from the margins of the social sciences to a more central position in social, economic, and cultural research.
Sun Jiuxia is a professor from the School of Tourism at Sun Yat-sen University.
Edited by MA YUHONG
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