Современные проблемы сервиса и туризма 2016_v.10_#2 | Page 10

Maximiliano E. Korstanje

and policy makers who always see in tourism
a fertile source of energy, it forged a chaos in
academy to organize all the produced material. The logic of businesses is often conducive
to find new segments in a competitive market, which leads to dispersion, but these are
not the goals science pursues [31].
As the previous backdrop, other scholars
exert an extreme criticism against tourism literature by two main reasons. At a first glance,
scholars have devoted considerable resources
and times to producing scientific knowledge
but it is far from being a scientific corpus consolidated as other disciplines. Beyond impact
factors and citations, tourism-research still is
naïve, biased and profit-oriented to understand the psychology of tourist mind. Secondly,
the question whether positivists underpinned
the proposition the interview was the only
valid methods for reaching the truth, epistemologists in tourism fields have not contemplated in their respective fieldworks any other
method than the opinion of tourists think [1,
2, 5, 62, 64, 65]. The problem with this perspective lies in the fact sometimes tourists are
unfamiliar with their behavior or simply lie.
Following this, ethnographers have adamantly
observed the limitations of open or close-ended questionnaires or even formal interviews
under some contexts. More interested in looking for new business opportunities or protecting the profits of investors, tourism-research
is today far from explaining not only its origins
but also what tourism is [36, 88]. Nonetheless, others seminal texts already discussed
in the anthropology of tourism can give further hints [17]. In this short essay review, we
discuss the contributions of founding parents
who had worked to delineate the boundaries
of discipline [10]. Later, in restant sections we
propose our own conception of tourism not
only as an escape-goat mechanism, but as an
anthropological rite of passage.
Tourism: a long-simmering issue. Over
last decades, tourism has been defied and
approached from diverse angles. While some
scholars prioritizes its dynamism (producing
and distributing wealth) [46, 59, 76], others
voices have exerted a radical critique respecting to its colonial legacy [20, 26, 49, 73, 81,
83, 84]. For this wave, tourism would be a
mechanism of control enrooted in colonial8

ism. The needs of being there that today characterize modern tourism can be equaled to
the first ethnologists and social scientists who
launched to the unknown. Aside from the scientific interests of these explorations, Europe
expanded the colonial order to the periphery imposing not only a cultural matrix, but
their products and trade [3, 9, 32, 33, 69]. A.
Santana-Talavera has convincingly confirmed
that the already-existent theories in tourism
fields can be organized in 6 great families [71]:
a) commercial hospitality, b) an instrument of
democracy, c) a subtype of leisure, d) a form
of cultural expression, e) a process of acculturation, and f) a discourse that strengthen
the colonial dependency between centre and
periphery. Though it is hard to imagine tourism without the pay-for logic, it is important
not to lose the sight other theories have said
something on this.
It is unfortunate that etymologists are
not in agreement about the origin of activity [29]. While some experts associate the
terms to old Saxon term torn, others envisaged France was the epicenter where tourism
surfaced [45]. What is important to discuss is
that no matter the used term, cultures have
developed similar institutions for escapement
than tourism.
Swiss-born economist J. Krippendorf
found that tourism was something else than
a mere industry, or a net of services as economists precluded. His original works were
intended to discuss the psychological motivations of holiday-makers in the industrial
society. At time of travelling to other sites
moved by pleasure and relax, we are fulfilling
one of our basic needs, resting. Since workers are trapped with a set of diverse frustrations and deprivation during an extended period of time, escapement and tourism play a
crucial role by contributing to mental health.
The maximization of individual pleasure is the
main goal tourists pursue. Starting from the
premise that economies and leisure are inextricably intertwined, Krippendorf adds, each
society develops different forms of tourism.
Human behaviors, which are socially determined by culture and values, are changed according to endogenous and exogenous forces.
Combining anthr opological insights with their
own studies in economy, Krippendorf leaves