Diverse Economies and alternative economic practices in tourism

Abstract

This chapter discusses what is generally considered to be ‘the economy’ and deconstructs its representations as a singular pervasive abstract entity to unlock diverse economies. A focus on economic practices in tourism offers a new epistemological strategy to analyse the confluence of structure and agency in respect to economic actions. The chapter examines alternative economic examples in tourism (such as home exchange, gift-giving, charity, voluntourism, wwoofing) to offer examples of economic practices following market, alternative market and non-market exchanges. Introduction Research on tourism economies still lags behind contemporary research in the wider economic social sciences (mainly in anthropology, geography and sociology). It is dominated by quantitative, universalistic survey methods framed by studies of consumer behaviour and to-date largely ignores the cultural meanings of exchange relationships. The bulk of research on tourism economies either fails to mention alternative economies or simply views them as minor distortions of a capitalist system. The inherent difficulty of quantifying and measuring alternative exchanges and thus incorporating or addressing alternative economic practices in national accounts or official accounting systems offers governments and researchers a pretext to disregard, ignore or trivialize these economies. In this chapter, I claim that critical tourism scholars should engage with and think critically about the representations of ‘the economy’. I aim to challenge a capitalocentric understanding of tourism and argue for an economy that is constituted of complex and dynamic relationships between a variety of economic practices at multiple sites and spaces. In making this argument, I primarily draw on literature on diverse economies (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006, Leyshon et al. 2003) and alternative economic practices in varied cultural and socio-economic contexts (Smith and Stenning 2006, Pavlovskaya 2004, Amin et al. 2002) and use examples of economic practices from the tourism literature. First the chapter will discuss and deconstruct the representations of ‘the economy’ to unlock diverse economies ; second, practices are briefly contextualised as a new epistemological strategy to analyse the meeting point of structure and agency in respect to economic actions; finally, the diverse economies of tourism are separated into economic practices according to market, alternative market and non-market exchanges following the diverse economies framework by Gibson-Graham (2006). (Re)thinking economies The dominant discourse in most societies elevates the economic to an entity that ultimately controls society. This meta-narrative is widely presumed to be following an inescapable economic logic (Williams 2005): Economic transactions are performed according to ‘free’ market exchange (unrestrained by social or political impediments). Prices are determined by the laws of supply and demand and labour is sold to producers in order to transform raw materials into products to be sold for a surplus. The labourers’ wage allows for the purchase of the necessities of life and additional luxuries. In this narrative, there is no room for differences or alternatives. Yet although this myth of a single and pervasive capitalist market economy is uttered by many academics, politicians and capitalists (see Williams 2005), there are multifarious social exchanges that do not follow the ‘rules’ of a capitalist market economy (Williams and Nadin 2010, Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006, Leyshon et al. 2003, Williams 2005). Yet, ‘the economy’ has been elevated to a mythical status beyond the control of society, leading GibsonGraham (2006: 53) to question its common usage: ‘Why has Economy become an everyday term that denotes a force to be reckoned with existing outside of politics and society – a force that constitutes the ultimate arbiter of possibility?’ The capitalist market economy is generally considered to be ‘the economy’, but is merely one aspect of a bundle of different social practices that together constitute a set of diverse economies. This representation of ‘the economy’ as a singular and all-encompassing abstract entity reduces the economy to mere monetary values and stifles possible alternatives and parallel economies (Gibson-Graham 2006). Yet, the term is itself socially constructed and therefore open to a de-construction in order to reach a pluralist understanding of economies (Massey 1997, Mosedale 2011). The problem is not that there is a dominant, capitalist discourse but that this representation of the economy has become extradiscursive (beyond discourse) and thus hegemonic, that it does not permit any alternatives. We have come to accept the singular and pervasive nature of ‘the economy’ and do not question its meaning (the meaning has been fixed in our collective imagination). This leads to the ‘economistic fallacy’ (Polanyi 2002) where ‘the practice of analyzing all economic systems through the theoretical gaze that presumes that the horizons of the economy are fully comprehended by a map that includes only market exchange and the calculative behavior couplet’ (Adaman and Madra 2002: 1046). The dominant discourse should not diminish the diverse nature of our economic practices. In order to understand the diverse economies in tourism, we need to go beyond a capitalocentric understanding of the tourism economy and use a map or ontology that makes it possible to include different economies. Then the economic subject is shaped, formed and constituted by social structures, as well as agency and the local context. Critical scholars should ‘unfix’ or deconstruct the meanings of ‘the economy’ in order to reconstruct diverse economies that are inclusive of economic difference (economies that differ from the dominant capitalist economy). Once we start to (re)think the artificial and socially constructed boundaries of ‘the economy’ and view it in a more pluralistic manner, ‘new economic imaginaries’ (Gibson-Graham, 2002: 2) can emerge and become discursively viable: ‘Then a whole new world moves into view’ (Thrift and Olds, 1996: 311). The Cultural Turn and its effect on the economic social sciences was the first major turning point for a deconstruction of ‘the economy’. In their seminal volume Lee and Wills (1997), for instance, offer an analysis of different approaches towards the economic subject and promote the widening of economic research to include culture as a key constituent. The Cultural Turn led to a significant shift from seeing ‘the economy’ as transactions which are somehow separate from social and cultural spheres to understanding the economic subject as a fluid economic landscape consisting of multiple economies embedded in place-specific cultural, as well as historic, contexts and social relations (see Mosedale 2011 for a more detailed discussion of the relationship of culture and economies following the Cultural Turn and how it relates to tourism research). Poststructural political economists take a slightly different approach to diverse economies in that they do not merely see the analysis of the multiple natures of economic practices that constitute diverse and pluralist economies as a new research agenda, but also as a political project to prepare the ground for a multifaceted, flexible and open-ended economy of non-capitalist practices that is able to overcome the grand narrative of capitalism: the myth of a singular, pervasive economy (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006). Recognising that discourses about the economy are contested may lead to wider representations of frictions within the capitalist economy and offer opportunities to embed the term within every-day practices influenced by specific geographical and historical contexts. For a critical analysis of economies it is necessary to reconnect economies with wider society, as they are constantly reproduced via social practices (Mosedale 2011).