Image Is Everything: the Development of the Negev Bedouin as a Tourist Attraction

Abstract

Introduction: Heritage Tourism as a Virtual Experience The growth of tourism in the developing world over the past few decades has fostered a considerable increase in the frequency of encounters between tourists and native peoples. The literature is replete with discussions of the various social and cultural impacts which such encounters have fostered in the developing world (Boniface and Fowler 1993; Boorstin 1961; Cohen 1979, 1988; Dogan 1989; Enloe 1990; Herbert 1995; Ioannides 1995; Lea 1988; Mathieson and Wall 1982; Murphy 1985; Nash 1996, 1989; Weiler and Hall 1992). In recent years, these interactions have been encouraged in particular by the development of tourism that commoditises local cultures and traditions--`heritage tourism'. This form of tourism brings peoples from distinctly different backgrounds and cultures into close proximity with one another. To be sure, encounters have the potential to promote intercultural understanding (Boniface and Fowler 1993: xi) and to educate host and guest communities about one another. At the same time, however, the commoditisation of tradition as a tourist product also has the potential to foster the creation and perpetuation of misinformation, in the form of stereotypes, biased viewpoints and prejudices. This is due in large part to the fact that heritage tourism often serves to facilitate the construction and dissemination of `hyper-real' images of the lives, cultures and traditions of host communities. In part, this process is almost inevitable, for tourists travel in order to get away from the mundane, seeking to be exposed to exciting, extraordinary and alternative ways of behaving and living in the places that they visit. As Boniface and Fowler explain (1993: 7, emphasis added): Tourists] want extra-authenticity, that which is better than reality. [They] want a souped-up, fantastic experience. [They] want stimulation, through simulation of life ways as we would wish them to be, or to have been in the past. As is clear, the travel industry knows it is dealing in dreams. Such a process is further exacerbated when the traditions being commoditised belong to a native population, and the consumers share similarities (or are the same people as) their colonisers. In such a specific context, Boniface and Fowler contend, `tourism, in many ways, is a sort of neo-colonialism' (1993: 19). In the following, I discuss and critique one example of heritage tourism development, and the commoditisation of native traditions and culture by European `colonisers'. Using the Israeli Negev Desert as a case study, I shall attempt to show how tourism development there has increasingly served to foster a `hyper-real' image of that region's native community, the Negev Bedouin. I shall contend too that the creation of such an image may be best understood within Boniface and Fowler's context of tourism as neocolonialism--that is, that heritage tourism can and is being used by the Israelis as an expression of power and control. In the present case of the tourism enterprise surrounding the Negev Bedouin (i.e. the Palestinian Arabs whose residence in the Negev well precedes that of Jews and the creation of the State of Israel), I shall argue that the image being created and disseminated for tourist consumption is a direct result of the colonisation of the former Palestine. A note about methodology is in order here. Given the nature of the topic, I shall utilise both traditional and nontraditional sources throughout the paper. While the former will help to develop the theoretical framework, such sources as popular tour guides and Internet web-pages will help formulate both the content of the `imaged Bedouin', and the manner in which the image is disseminated. Data from personal interviews and communications with Bedouin tourism providers themselves are included as well, in order to offer personal inputs regarding the Bedouin tourist industry. …