SYMBOLISM IN TOURISM: LESSONS FROM ``BALI 2002''—LESSONS FROM AUSTRALIA'S DEAD HEART

Abstract

In October 2002, the monstrous bombing of the Kuta Bay entertainment district in Bali was a climacteric wake-up call for all who work in Tourism Studies/Tourism Management. The al-Qaida attack on tourists in Indonesia starkly underlined the fact that tourism considerably matters as a realm of symbolism in the contemporary world. Many believe that the Kuta Bay assault by radical Islamist groups—yet to be confirmed at time of writing—was an attack on the shape and profile of current Western-led international tourism (and all that the industry signifies), itself. In these momentous and dire respects, this review article argues that while the fully fledged political science studies of tourism have always been rare, the singular study of symbolic value/significatory practice in Tourism Studies has been especially uncommon. The article therefore seeks to remedy that long-seated shortfall of attention by firstly drawing a number of cardinal insights from the ``Bali 2002'' incident on the need for both Tourism Studies researchers and Tourism Management practitioners to be schooled in the emergent transdisciplinary field of ``Representation Studies,'' to be more alert to the power and reach of the symbolic meanings and the cultural and political reach of the significations those who work in international tourism axiomatically deal in on a day-by-day basis. Thereafter, and secondly, the article seeks to highlight the importance of the role and function of tourism in the development of symbolic understandings by distilling an example of symbolic critique vis-a-vis tourism. Here, the review article examines the recent work of Haynes on the way the deserts and the arid outback of Australia (i.e., the famous ``Red Centre''/``Dead Heart'' of Australia) have been variously represented/symbolized over the last two centuries, and now also conveyed through tourism itself. Although Haynes's magnus opus (Seeking the Centre) is not a publication expressly written for Tourism Studies, per se, it is argued that the domain indeed needs to generate all manner of creative new inquiries into the discourse and praxis of symbolic meaning/significatory action if researchers and practitioners are to come to terms with not only the intended, but the unintended, communicative power of tourism. The article advances by translating (within the Appendix) the meaning of 10 important conceptional ``subjects'' or ``approaches'' within Representation Studies, and concludes by generating (within Exhibit 1) a list of 20 cardinal research agendas on ``symbolism'' and ``signification'' that—after Kuta Bay, October 2002—it is critical for newly qualified Tourism Studies scholars sincerely and robustly delve into, if the world-shaping/worldmaking projective authority of tourism is to be decently understood by those working deeply within the very field.