Dominant Anthropocentrism in the Representations of Nature in Jakarta Post “Destinations” Travel Articles

Abstract

Travel, travel writing, and tourism industry are today inseparable although travelers are noted to try to distance themselves from tourists. Seen in the critical context of the potential harms caused by tourism, travel article (a sub-genre of travel writing commonly published in mass media) might contribute in one way or another. Therefore, a study on this sub-genre is important to gain a better insight of the degree of its participation in the potentially harmful impact of tourism.
 This essay covers a study on travel articles from the “Destinations” section of The Jakarta Post between September to December 2017. The articles are analyzed for words, sentences, or passages that in one way or another represent to nature. The purpose of this study is to explore and explain how tourism articles represent nature. By extension, I hope to demonstrate how today’s travel articles might contribute to the potentially damaging impact of tourism on nature.
 Throughout the research, I discovered that there are seven ways in which writers represent nature in the studied texts. These ways include representations that focus on 1) spirituality, 2) visual beauty, 3) celebration of popular culture, 4) social media presence, 5) mental rejuvenation, 6) prudent treatment of nature, and 7) concern for preservation. Further analysis on these seven ways of representation led to three tendencies in the representation of nature in the twenty articles, i.e. full anthropocentrism (which covers the first five ways of representation), thoughtful anthropocentrism (the sixth way of representation), and relative ecocentrism (the last type of representation). The unbalanced percentage of representations of nature in the first category appears to support the critical opinion of tourism. Therefore, I argue through the analysis that tourism writing contributes despite relatively small to the imminent threat of tourism industry on natural preservation.