Carribean of the East? Global Interconnections and the Southeast Asian Cruise Industry

Abstract

In Globalization and Culture, John Tomlinson (1999) argues that the most fundamental characteristic of contemporary globalization is deterritorial ization — the disembedding of social activity from immediate geographic location. Perhaps no industry constitutes a more extreme case of global ization in this sense than the cruise industry, due to its highly mobile nature and its unique liberation from traditional constraints of place. The flip side of this disembedding of social relations is the forging of new types of global interconnections. Few 'locations' are as purely simu lated as are cruise ships, with their postmodern style mixing of themes and motifs from around the world. Few worksites bring together workers from so many far-flung places, setting in motion new migratory patterns. Plus, the particularly footloose nature of capital in the industry has resulted in sudden shifts in ownership and control. In this context, important new interconnections are being forged between Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. The two regions, of course, share many linkages that go back centuries. It was, after all, the spices from contemporary Indonesia — filtered by trade through India — that Columbus was looking for when he first set his eyes on islands that today are part of the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Subsequent colonial rule brought many Asian migrants, including a fair number from Southeast Asia, to the region. But never have the two regions been more closely linked than today. Migrants from all over Southeast Asia now make up the largest single group of crew on most Caribbean cruise ships. Elements of Southeast Asian culture have become an integral part of the Caribbean cruise experience. With the takeover of the fourth largest Caribbean cruise operator by a Malaysian company in 2000, the Southeast Asian presence is now felt at the highest levels of the Caribbean cruise industry. At the same time, the Caribbean has long provided a model of a suc cessful cruise industry to tourism planners in Southeast Asia. Cruise tourism is generally regarded as the fastest growing segment of the tourism industry, increasing between eight and nine per cent annually over the past two