Современные проблемы сервиса и туризма 2016_v.10_#1 | Page 9

ЛОКАЛЬНОЕ В ГЛОБАЛЬНОМ: ФОРМУЛА ТУРИЗМА Туристские системы и кластерные модели LOCAL IN GLOBAL: FORMULA FOR TOURISM Tourism systems & cluster models UDC 368:338.48 DOI: 10.12737/17779 Maximiliano E. Korstanjea, Geoffrey R. Skollb a University of Palermo (Buenos Aires, Argentina); PhD, Professor; e-mail: [email protected] b Buffalo State College the State University of New York (Buffalo, NY, USA); PhD, Associate Professor; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected] TOURIST RISK: AN ALL ENCOMPASSING MODEL TO UNDERSTAND SAFETY IN TOURISM FIELDS Though risk perception theory has advanced a lot over the last decades, its preferred methodologies much of them closed-led questionnaires or intrusive instruments obscures the derived conclusions. This text aims not only to explore the problems and limitation of risk perception theory to understand the difference between fear, anxiety, panic and risk, but also the tourist-safety. The adoption of risk research, post 9/11 was based on quantitative methods alone. This creates a serious conceptual myopia to understand the connection of risk and late-capitalism. Our attempt to fulfill this gap is shown in this essay-review. Keywords: risk, fears, tourism, disasters, epistemology. 1. Introduction. Every culture has developed ways to adapt to its environment. One method is the construction of feared object which serves as a mechanism to adjust social perceptions of danger. Elements which instill fear vary from one society to another [35]. In recent years policy makers in the tourism and hospitality industry have acknowledged problems with mass media in maintaining images of tourist destinations. Through an ever changing world, where humankind seems to be subject to a state of instability, the tourism industry is affected by a kind of risk inflation. Though many sociologists have observed that risks are inextricably intertwined with postmodernism [4, 6, 22, 45], the fact is that the term was widely adopted by tourism fields after the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks to World Trade Center and Penta gon [8, 11, 12, 17, 18, 49]. The attacks caused serious financial losses to tourism even years after the event. In part, this has been because terrorists employed mobile technologies, which are the pride of West, against the symbolic epicenter of world. At bottom, the message was that nobody will feel safe anywhere anymore [29, 34, 78]. Although the concept of risk has served scholarship on the safety of tourist destina- tions, there remains much to say about the conceptual problems of risk. The present essay aims to explore not only the roots of risk in capitalist societies and attendant methodological limitations, but also to differentiate among fear, risk, and safety. We argue that an all encompassing model is needed to understand tourism risks and needs for protection required by the industry. 2. Fear. Fear can be defined as a basic emotion, which protects the survival of an organism. Not just human beings, but all animals experience fear of external threatening stimuli. Alerted by fear, the organism has three possible reactions: paralysis, attack, or withdrawal [20, 44, 54, 65]. Nonetheless, the concepts of behavioral psychology have not embraced by other social sciences. Anthropology has developed its own sense of what fear means. Although, recognizing a strong neurobiological basis that reduces or enhances the fear, ethnologists evaluate the social factors by which some fears are over-valorized while other rejected [47]. Therefore, culture plays a vital role not only conferring a specific meaning to objects, but also to fears. Mary Douglas, a pioneer scholar interested in exploring the connection of fear, evil, and 7