Article: Tourism and cosmopolitanism: a view from below Journal: International Journal of Tourism Anthropology (IJTA) 2010 Vol.1 No.1 pp.55 - 69 Abstract: Based on long-term fieldwork in Indonesia and Tanzania, this article sheds new light on the contested relationship between tourism and cosmopolitanism. The ethnographic findings shift the attention from tourists to key service providers as those accruing most cosmopolitan capital through the tourism encounter. Local tour guides are able to use their privileged contacts with foreign visitors to develop cross-cultural competencies and to enhance their own cosmopolitan status. They substantiate the idea that cosmopolitanism is no privilege of the rich and well-connected and that physical or spatial mobility is not a necessary condition to become cosmopolitan. Paradoxically, the guides| dreams of becoming more cosmopolitan (and more modern and Western) can only materialise if they represent to tourists their lifeworld, including themselves, as frozen in both time and space, because it is exactly this kind of imaged and imagined difference tourism sells to tourists for the build-up of their own cosmopolitan capital. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: Tourism and cosmopolitanism: a view from below

Authors: Noel B. Salazar

Addresses: Cultural Mobilities Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven, Parkstraat 45, bus 3615, BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium

Abstract: Based on long-term fieldwork in Indonesia and Tanzania, this article sheds new light on the contested relationship between tourism and cosmopolitanism. The ethnographic findings shift the attention from tourists to key service providers as those accruing most cosmopolitan capital through the tourism encounter. Local tour guides are able to use their privileged contacts with foreign visitors to develop cross-cultural competencies and to enhance their own cosmopolitan status. They substantiate the idea that cosmopolitanism is no privilege of the rich and well-connected and that physical or spatial mobility is not a necessary condition to become cosmopolitan. Paradoxically, the guides| dreams of becoming more cosmopolitan (and more modern and Western) can only materialise if they represent to tourists their lifeworld, including themselves, as frozen in both time and space, because it is exactly this kind of imaged and imagined difference tourism sells to tourists for the build-up of their own cosmopolitan capital.

Keywords: socio-cultural anthropology; ethnographic fieldwork; ethnography; tour guides; cosmopolitanism; cosmopolitan capital; imaginaries; Indonesia; Tanzania; contested relationships; service providers; local guides; privileged contacts; foreign visitors; cross-cultural competencies; cosmopolitan status; rich people; well-connected people; physical mobility; spatial mobility; modern life; Western influences; lifeworld; frozen representations; time; space; imaged differences; imagined differences; tourism encounters; tourist industry; tourists.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTA.2010.036846

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2010 Vol.1 No.1, pp.55 - 69

Published online: 12 Nov 2010 *

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Title: Tourism and cosmopolitanism: a view from below

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