Twenty first-century tourism representations of Sri Lanka: exploring the worldmaking role and implications of local tourism writers

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper engages in an empirical examination of the construction of postcolonial Sri Lanka by the field of tourism and the role and identity of local travel writers within this process. As such, it examines the significance of the writers’ identities to the constructed representations. I demonstrate how these writers have been socialised/indoctrinated into the practice of world citizenship, its institutions and its norms/ethics. Most significantly, they generate a gloss that covers local realities, underlying the ‘cosmetic’ writing they engage in for tourism. Thus, the paper explores explicitly how this role is firmly intertwined with the privileged, elite position of those that become writers (in English) within the hierarchical class system of Sri Lanka. Using a Bourdieusian framework, I argue that this position of the travel writer is accessible by/restricted to individuals with certain cultural capital such as the English language and education, resources, opportunities to study English literature within elite urban schools and exposure to an international culture of travel and tourism. The knowledge germinated from their writing significantly impacts the way Sri Lanka is represented within legitimised systems of ‘worldmaking’ /knowledge production leading to particular understandings of Sri Lanka within international tourism.