Annals of the American Association of Geographers
ISSN: 2469-4452 (Print) 2469-4460 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raag21
Selling Ethics: Discourses of Responsibility in
Tourism
Harng Luh Sin
To cite this article: Harng Luh Sin (2016): Selling Ethics: Discourses of
Responsibility in Tourism, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, DOI:
10.1080/24694452.2016.1218266
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2016.1218266
Published online: 28 Sep 2016.
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Date: 03 October 2016, At: 05:31
Selling Ethics: Discourses of Responsibility
in Tourism
Harng Luh Sin
Department of Geography, National University of Singapore
This article explores the grammars of responsibility through a discourse analysis of selected travel guidebooks
and argues that critical theory and popular media have so far failed to bridge the gap between ideologies and
practices of responsibilities. As it stands, an unspoken assumption that a particular set of practices (e.g., buying
goods labeled as fair trade or boycotting sweatshop-produced clothing) is perpetuated as undeniably responsible.
As long as important questions on what constitutes being ethical and by whose standards this is evaluated
against is neglected, however, there is a danger of pursuing practices deemed irrefutably responsible, although
they are not responsible or ethical at all. Building on the postcolonial critiques on literature in geographies of
responsibilities (Raghuram, Madge, and Noxolo 2009; Jazeel and McFarlane 2010; Noxolo, Raghuram, and
Madge 2011), this article interrogates the discourses of responsibility circulated in popular media and, using
examples from tourism, highlights the problematic nature of perpetuating a series of universalized instructions
regarding one’s responsibilities, while revealing the many inconsistencies advocated once one takes a closer
and more critical look at what is suggested. What is needed is an effort to close the gap between practices and
ideologies of responsibility, where a conscious postcolonial understanding of the variance of ideals of responsibilities across time and space is reflected in our practices and how we understand practices of responsibilities.
Key Words: postcolonialism, responsibility, Thailand, tourism.
本文对选定的旅游导览手册进行论述分析, 以此探讨责任的语法, 并主张批判理论与大众媒体至今仍未
能弥合责任的意识形态和实践之间的落差。事实上, 将一组特别的实践（例如购买公平贸易商标的产品,
抑或抵制血汗工厂生产的服饰）视为毋庸置疑的负责任行为的未明说假设持续存在。但只要有关什麽
构成道德的行为, 以及由谁的标准来衡量等重要的问题被忽略, 便带有追求尽管完全无关乎责任或道
德、但却仍被视为毋庸置疑的负责任行为的风险。本文建立在后殖民对于责任地理学文献的批判
(Raghuram, Madge, and Noxolo 2009; Jazeel and McFarlane 2010; Noxolo, Raghuram, and Madge 2011), 探讨
在公众媒体中流传的责任论述, 并运用旅游业的案例, 强调让一系列有关个人责任的普遍化指令续存的
问题本质, 并揭露以更批判的视角近观建议事项时与宣传的不一致之处。我们必须致力于弥合有关责任
的实践和意识形态之间的落差, 其中意识到不同时空中的理想责任之分歧的后殖民理解, 反映在我们的
实践和如何理解负责任的行动之中。 关键词： 后殖民主义，责任，泰国，旅游业。
Este artıculo explora las gramaticas de responsabilidad por medio del analisis del discurso que contienen las
guıas de viaje selectas y argumenta que la teorıa crıtica y los medios populares hasta ahora han fallado en salvar
la brecha existente entre ideologıas y las practicas de responsabilidades. En este orden de cosas, una presunci
on
silenciosa de que un conjunto particular de practicas (por ejemplo, la compra de cosas etiquetadas como comercio equitativo, o el boicot de prendas de vestir producidas en condiciones denigrantes) es perpetuada como
innegablemente responsable. Sin embargo, en tanto preguntas importantes sobre lo que se constituya como
etico y sobre los estandares contra los cuales esto se evalua, sean soslayadas, se corre el peligro de proseguir
practicas consideradas como irrefutablemente responsables, ası estas no sean en definitiva ni responsables ni
eticas. Construyendo a partir de la literatura de crıticas poscoloniales referidas a las geografıas de las responsabilidades (Raghuram, Madge, y Noxolo 2009; Jazeel y McFarlane 2010; Noxolo, Raghuram, and Madge 2011),
este artıculo interroga los discursos sobre responsabilidad que circulan en los medios populares y, mediante
ejemplos del turismo, destaca la naturaleza problematica de perpetuar una serie de instrucciones universalizadas
en relaci
on con las responsabilidades de uno mismo, en tanto que, tan pronto uno mira con mayor detenimiento
y mas crıticamente lo que se ha sugerido, se revelan muchas de las inconsistencias propuestas. Lo que de veras se
necesita es un esfuerzo para cerrar la brecha existente entre las practicas y las ideologıas de la responsabilidad,
donde un entendimiento poscolonial, consciente de la diferencia de ideales de responsabilidad a traves del
tiempo y el espacio, se refleje en nuestras practicas y en como entendemos las practicas de responsabilidades.
Palabras clave: poscolonialismo, responsabilidad, Tailandia, turismo.
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 0(0) 2016, pp. 1–17 Ó 2016 by American Association of Geographers
Initial submission, January 2015; revised submissions, August 2015 and June 2016; final acceptance, June 2016
Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.
2
Sin
Often [it is] simply a matter of redirecting where you
spend your money. Taking action to influence change
can be as simple as buying food that has been traded
fairly, choosing green electricity from renewable sources,
or opening an ethical bank account.
—Wroe and Doney (2004, 65)
1
hen we talk about responsibilities, we are
constantly exposed to messages like this
one. These are based on the premise that
it is simple and easy to be responsible and that
once we are made aware of it, we can make the
switch and make a difference. Played along the
lines of thinking globally and acting locally, such
messages of responsibilities call for one to integrate
ethical practices in one’s daily life through changing the ways we purchase and consume and assume
that one has “the power to make a difference to
the way international trade works” (Wroe and
Doney 2004, 65). The same is used to convey
notions of responsibilities within tourism materials:
Like our other consumption habits, we are implored
to make our tours and travels more socially and
environmentally responsible.
Is it really so easy, though? What exactly is an
ethical bank account? How do we know that food
that is labeled as fair trade is really traded fairly?
Indeed, what does this much-insisted fairness
involve and constitute? A closer look at materials
from tourism suggests that within advices and
directives, all sorts of subjectivities, biases, and
even irresponsibilities continue to persist. Through
a discourse analysis of selected travel guidebooks,
this article therefore explores the “grammars of
responsibility” (Barnett et al. 2011, 113) within
tourism. It critiques popular campaigns on ethical
consumerism and its overwhelming focus on particular practices that can be (easily) done. Building on the postcolonial critiques on literature in
geographies of responsibilities (Raghuram, Madge,
and Noxolo 2009; Jazeel and McFarlane 2010;
Noxolo, Raghuram, and Madge 2011), this article
interrogates the discourses of responsibility circulated in popular media and, using examples from
tourism, highlights the problematic nature of perpetuating a series of universalized instructions
regarding one’s responsibilities, revealing the many
inconsistencies they advocate. When discourses of
responsibility focus only on instructing particular
practices that are often similar regardless of
W
differing geographic locales and contexts, they fail
to acknowledge the heterogeneity and subjective
knowledges on the ground. The lack of a negotiation of what makes an action responsible or not
thus neglects the fact that acts of responsibility
are vulnerable, “messy, uncertain and can be
refused” (Noxolo, Raghuram, and Madge 2011, 2).
This article therefore suggests that although social
science research has highlighted the importance of
looking at practices in relation to ethics and
responsibilities (see Clarke et al. 2007; Raghuram,
Madge, and Noxolo 2009; Barnett et al. 2011;
Noxolo, Raghuram, and Madge 2011), a critical
look at responsible tourism as presented in guidebooks suggests that focusing on (instructing) practices alone is equally fraught. Instead, what is
needed is an effort to close the gap between practices and ideologies of responsibility, where a conscious postcolonial understanding of the variance
of ideals of responsibilities across time and space is
reflected in our practices and how we understand
practices of responsibilities.
Although the ethical tourist is not one and the same
as the ethical consumer,2 trends within tourism are
important to consider in grounding our understanding
of ethical consumption. Earlier works have pointed to
the central yet underrecognized role that tourism plays
in shaping the individual and collective representations
of self, identity, society, and geographical knowledge of
places (Selwyn 1996; Dann 2002; Franklin 2003; Morgan and Pritchard 2005) and highlighted that tourism
is part of the “vast and heterogeneous complex of global
mobilities, which also includes migration, return migration, transnationalism, diasporas, and other obligatory
as well as voluntary forms of travel” (Cohen and Cohen
2012, 2180; see also Urry 2000; Hannam 2008). The
observations and arguments put forth using examples
from tourism are therefore not limited in relevance
only to tourism scholars but should be seen as one part
of the puzzle in understanding the complex negotiation
and transference of ideas and practices of ethics and
responsibilities against which consumers are now
increasingly held. In considering the performative
nature of places that are malleable within a complex
network of hosts, guests, and objects (Hannam, Sheller,
and Urry 2006), Cohen and Cohen (2012) contended
that practices in tourism not only serve to (re)produce
social entities relevant to society at large but also provide platforms in which hegemonically imposed ideas
of public sites or attractions can be critically countered
Selling Ethics: Discourses of Responsibility in Tourism
(Obrador Pons and Carter 2010). Tourism is thus seen
not as an episode of exception where one suspends
everyday life in exchange for leisure and recreation in a
place away from home but as a continuation of home
and the everyday, where ideas and practices of ethics
and responsibility are carried back and forth by an individual who is simultaneously a tourist and a consumer.
Talking About Responsibilities in a
Postcolonial World
Ethical consumption campaigns are often based on the
notion that a collective of like-minded individuals can
bring about strong pressures to question and change what
is deemed unjust, including, for example, unfair trade
conditions prevailing in today’s capitalist world. Consumer awareness campaigns (see, e.g., Ethical Consumer
Research Association) tells us that we are not powerless—as consumers, our shopping choices act like voting
slips, and we are able to make a difference through changing the way we shop (Ethical Marketing Group 2002).
This is rooted in an assumption that it is possible for people to recognize their own wide-ranging and spatially
extensive responsibilities and that once made aware, they
would intervene through their choices of what they consume (see Clarke et al. 2007). Indeed, as Barnett et al.
(2011) succinctly put it, “Ethical consumption campaigning seeks to embed altruistic, humanitarian, solidaristic,
and environmental commitments into the rhythms and
routines of everyday life—from drinking coffee, to buying
clothes, to making the kids’ packed lunch” (13).
Ethical consumerism thus targets mass market consumers and adopts and celebrates the persona of a
(responsible) consumer—one who is able and willing
to discern and make conscientious choices between
what products he or she consumes based on what is
considered ethical or responsible. There is notably less
consideration on whether the consumption itself is
something that needs to be curtailed or changed, as
responsibility is made convenient and integrated into
existing lifestyles. The consumer and consumption
remain celebrated (and in fact the consumer becomes
the hero in the equation), and this is clearly distinctive from anticonsumerist movements (Zavestoski
2002; Littler 2005), such as the voluntary simplicity
movement (Cherrier and Murray 2002; Shaw and
Newholm 2002) or “No Logo” forms of antiglobalization campaigns (Klein 2000), and from degrowth
movements (Latouche 2009; Martinez-Alier et al.
2010; Schneider, Kallis, and Martinez-Alier 2010;
3
Kallis 2011) that questioned the foundational premise
of growth in the modern economy and put forth an
alternative vision where affluent economies and their
material flows are downscaled in a just and equitable
manner (Kallis 2015).
At the same time, responsibility is not an object but
rather an idea or a notion3; this means that attempts to
represent responsibility tend to use assemblages of visual
and textual discourses. As such, responsibility is often
defined by practice(s) and “is a quality that is ascribed or
imputed to practice, either before, while or after that
action takes place” (Noxolo, Raghuram, and Madge
2011, 4). Particular practices are therefore typically categorized as responsible or irresponsible, where, for example, one would talk about what charity they donated to or
how they bought certain products labeled as reducing
environmental pollution, rather than discuss the philosophical underpinnings of why such practices were considered responsible.
The Ethical Tourist
Similarly, the primary mode of ethical tourism
revolves around informing and potentially modifying
tourists’ behaviors and practices to supposedly result in a
more responsible form of tourism. This is largely based on
the prevalent view since the 1970s that mass tourism
caused more problems than benefits in the environment
and in the economic and social development in the
Global South. In a seminal piece, Budowski (1976) suggested that interactions between tourism development
and environmental conservation could be divided into
three categories, namely, conflict, coexistence, and symbiosis. He opined that the majority of tourism development largely reflected coexistence and tended toward
conflict (see also Krippendorf 1977; Cohen 1978). Boyd
(1999) further elaborated that although tourism was
touted as a savior or a “smoke-less industry,” experts now
find that it has displaced local and indigenous people,
continued unfair labor practices, and engaged in a myriad
of human rights abuses. Tourism has also been charged
with causing income inequity, sociocultural issues such as
loss of traditional practices in host destinations, and environmental damage (see, e.g., Cleverdon and Kalisch
2000; Scheyvens 2002; Fennell 2003; M. Smith and Duffy
2003; C. M. Hall and Lew 2009). A call was thus made for
paradigmatic changes in tourism to both understand and
mitigate negative tourism impacts and thus implicitly
strive to become ethical (Fennell 2006). Researchers
were asked to investigate the negative impacts of tourism
4
(Britton 1982; Cohen 1987; Butler 1990); to think, talk,
and write about the ethics of tourism (Ahmed, Krohn,
and Heller 1994; Moufakkir 2012; Lovelock and Lovelock 2013); and to view tourism within a wider global
context so as to make outcomes of tourism development
more “just” (Hultsman 1995; D’Sa 1999; D. Hall and
Brown 2006).
Alternative tourism (Weaver 1991) and sustainable
tourism (Cohen 1987; Pearce 1987) reflected early
efforts to incorporate social and environmental
responsibilities within tourism endeavors. These
developed alongside the popularization of the ecodevelopment paradigm and the concept of sustainable
development through the Brundtland Report, Our
Common Future (World Commission on Environment
and Development 1987), and together brought about
an era of tourism development where discourses of
responsibility became increasingly used in both academic and popular forums. Such discourse included
ideals of alternative tourism being a softer and gentler
form of tourism (Riddell 1981; Weaver 1998), where
small scale was juxtaposed against large scale, local
against foreign, and low impact against high impact,
with the former considered better than the latter
(Dernoi 1981). The threefold focus on environmental,
social, and economic outcomes in sustainable tourism
was further popularized in what is known today as
responsible tourism (International Centre for Responsible Tourism 2002; Goodwin 2011).
Today’s burgeoning tourist sectors in ecotourism,
green tourism, sustainable tourism, soft tourism, just tourism, hopeful tourism, responsible tourism, pro-poor tourism, volunteer tourism, fair trade tourism, and so on are
examples of this development. As in ethical consumption, the criticisms made toward the tourism industry
assume that once the world at large is made aware of the
ills of tourism development, they will naturally seek to
address such problems and in turn create an alternative
economy (Gibson-Graham and Cameron 2007; Gibson
2009) that will eventually “promote social justice and
equality through tourism across the world” (Ateljevic,
Hollinshead, and Ali 2009, 549).
At the center of these developments is the ethical
tourist—the ethical consumer in a tourism setting—
who is now tasked to make decisions to address social
and environmental concerns, put money into businesses and organizations that address social justice,
and become the industry watchdog who spots and
reports unethical practices in tourism. Tourists are
now encouraged to ask difficult questions of themselves and the tourism industry, including labor and
Sin
working conditions, human rights issues, who has
access to and benefits from employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, and environmental consequences of their travels (Goodwin and Francis 2003).
Alternatives are suggested, as highlighted by Gibson
(2009) in an excerpt written by Tricia Barnett from
the nonprofit organization Tourism Concern. The
introduction of The Ethical Travel Guide tells us that
“if you decide to visit one of these hotels, guest houses,
lodges or villages you will know that your money will
go to people directly and not be lost to outsiders. You
can then have a great holiday and not take a guilt
trip!” (Pattullo and Minelli 2006, viii).
Yet, the ease with which one can supposedly be ethical
in one’s travels has been met with much skepticism. At
the heart of this suspicion of ethical tourism is the seeming mismatch between tourism—seen to represent leisure, pleasure, and hedonism—with an ethical
imperative concerned with social and environmental
concerns (Wheeler 1991). Hedonism, once considered a
virtue and hallmark of what made tourism desirable, has
now become a sin and the bane of tourism (Butcher
2003). MacCannell (2011) argued that tourists “want to
‘get away from it all,’ including, presumably, ethical concerns. But they are unable to leave many questions
behind” (46). The study of actual tourism experiences,
however, revealed that in today’s world, as much as some
tourists want to get away from ethical concerns in their
vacations, there are others who might desire to get away
from the unethical circumstances that are embedded in
their day-to-day lives. Sin (2014), for example, illustrated
that volunteer tourists hesitated in switching on the air
conditioners in their accommodations because they were
being ethical in this part of their vacation and hence concerned about energy wastage, even as they had no qualms
in doing so in mainstream hotels or at home. What is
being raised here is a question about reconciling pleasure
and ethics. Obviously, these should not be viewed as
mutually exclusive terms, yet scholarship often tends to
treat them as such. Caton (2012) hence argued that tourism is a field ripe for addressing morality and responsibility
precisely because its practices run the gamut of moral and
responsible to immoral and irresponsible.
The messy nature of pleasure versus ethics is further
highlighted in Hutnyk’s (1996) work, where he argued
that in appearing to address issues of poverty in their
travels, backpackers are in fact constructing themselves as middle class (and privileged compared to
those they aid) and morally better travelers (compared
to regular tourists), while reinforcing their vision of
Calcutta as a place of poverty and hence justifying
Selling Ethics: Discourses of Responsibility in Tourism
slum tourism, volunteer tourism, or justice tourism
(see also Frenzel and Koens 2012; Frenzel, Koens, and
Steinbrink 2012; Sin 2014). At the same time, Salazar
(2004) pointed out that despite seemingly emphasizing
the needs of the locals in tourism destinations, (ethical) tourists continue to favor the development of
their selves rather than the development of places or
peoples they visit (see also Sin 2006, 2010). Such critiques highlight the postcolonial character of underlying discourses and imaginaries in much of what is
considered to be ethical tourism (Simpson 2004) and
show precisely the danger of pursuing a set of actions
deemed to be responsible (e.g., volunteer or justice
tourism); in assuming the moral high ground and failing to consider what or why an action is ethical or not,
their practices unquestioningly replicate the uneven
biases of the (post)colonial world.
The Tourism Guidebook
How, then, does a particular set of actions become
known or deemed to be responsible? In examining the
mobilities of ideas and notions about responsibility, we
now turn toward the tourism guidebook. The last
decade has seen a proliferation of how-to guides that
have focused particularly on ethical consumption.
Clarke et al. (2007), for example, highlighted how
popular publications such as the Rough Guide to Ethical
Shopping and magazines like The New Consumer and
The Ecologist have been making headway as mass-market media. This trend is also significant within travel
media, where sections on how to be responsible or ethical in one’s travels are increasingly prevalent within
travel guidebooks, and entire volumes such as the
Lonely Planet Code Green (Lorrimer 2006), The Good
Tourist: An Ethical Traveler’s Guide (Popescu 2008),
and The Green Travel Guide (Jenner and Smith 2008)
have emerged.
One, however, does not regularly pick up a book for
advice on how to shop in a supermarket; in contrast, the
likelihood of doing so for advice on how to travel or tour
is much more prevalent.4 The tourism guidebook is typically presented as a volume of advice for the tourist, with
maps, important sites, accommodation, transportation,
and often one or more suggested itineraries—all of which
are written in an authoritative and self-confident tone.
Tourism guidebooks therefore have the potential of
informing and instructing particular sets of practices in or
beyond ideas of responsibility. Despite guidebooks writing
in an imposing language of “you must” or “you have to,” it
5
is important to realize that guidebooks are contested circulators of knowledge: What sorts of information become
selected and enter the guidebook? How do these impress
particular ideas on the (potential) tourist? How do they
influence actual practices on the ground by tourists? Gilbert (1999), in his study on guidebook representations of
imperial London, argued that “[t]ourism has played a significant but often unacknowledged role in the construction of the modern city as a place to be seen and
experienced” (279) and that “[g]uidebooks must be seen
as examples of transcultural texts: as writings which help
to establish popular understandings of the meanings of
other cultures” (282).
At the same time, guidebooks are physical objects that
traverse the material world of tourism. Although tourism
is often touted as an experience economy or industry, it is
supported by a huge assembly of specific objects and material things. Of these, Morgan and Pritchard’s (2005),
Hitchcock and Teague’s (2000), and Littrell, Anderson,
and Brown’s (1993) examinations of tourism souvenirs
and Walsh and Tucker’s (2009) study on the backpack
highlight the materiality and embodied interactions
between “all kinds of things that contribute to the minutiae and sentience of the social world” (Walsh and
Tucker 2009, 224). The nature of the guidebook as a
physical book that is sought out and read and then
brought along on the tourism journey to be consulted at
various points thus needs to be considered as well. Much
as how Morgan and Pritchard (2005) suggested that souvenirs have the ability to help consumers (re-)create their
tourism experience long after their actual travels, the
guidebook can also be used prior to a travel experience to
create an imagination or itinerary of a would-be tourism
experience. At times, it can also be used as a signal of a
particular social status and ideology about tourism. As the
backpack is used by tourists to distinguish themselves
from mass tourists alongside ideas of traveling off the
beaten track (Walsh and Tucker 2009), when one is seen
holding a guidebook (especially the Lonely Planet series)
in the streets, he or she is immediately identified variously
as a nonlocal or as a particular sort of tourist (i.e., the
Lonely Planet guidebooks are typically associated with
the budget or student traveler).
(Postcolonial) Responsibilities
Looking at discourses of responsibilities within
travel guidebooks therefore advances research on the
moral or ethical nature of human geography (Proctor
1998; M. Smith 2000; Cloke 2002; Barnett et al.
6
Sin
2005; Barnett and Land 2007; Lawson 2009;
Raghuram, Madge, and Noxolo 2009; Jazeel and
McFarlane 2010; Barnett et al. 2011). Geographers
(and other social scientists) have sought to engage
moral philosophy and political theory, in a bid to highlight the moral and ethical implications of geographical research, representations, discourses, and practices
in various fields. This scholarship has illuminated the
often implicit and yet taken-for-granted ethical implications of academic theory. Discussions in geographies
of responsibility (see, e.g., Popke 2003; Massey 2004;
Lawson 2007) were therefore based on the idea(l) that
our lives are radically entwined with the lives of distant
strangers . . . [so] there is no logical reason to suppose
that moral boundaries should coincide with the boundaries of our everyday community; not least because these
latter boundaries are in themselves not closed, but rather
are defined in part by an increasing set of exchanges with
distant strangers. (Corbridge 1993, 463)
Geographers have contended that the fundamental
imperative for one to extend obligations over distance
stems from their understanding of complex causal relationships that connect people living in different places
through transnational networks such as market transactions, supply chains, and displaced pollution effects (see
Bergmann 2013). In spatializing our senses of responsibility, both D. M. Smith (1998) and Massey (2004, 2005)
therefore suggested that responsibilities and care should
not be reserved only for those nearest to us but should
instead be extended beyond our immediate territorial
boundaries. Central to this discussion is a widening of our
geographical scope of concern, not so much due to the
recognition of sameness among humankind but due to
the “relations [we have] with one another” in this increasingly connected world. Massey (2004, 2005) hence called
for the recognition of the relational politics of place. This
suggested that places that might be considered local today
(and perhaps also in the past, since the days of imperialism) are heterogeneously connected to and constituted
by other global places. Using London as an example, Massey (2005) argued that the acknowledgment of how a city
is connected to the rest of the world through its colonial
legacy and today’s physical trade, service industries, and
manufacturing industries means that London ought to
take up responsibility toward those places within these
networks that sustain the city.
Barnett and Land (2007) and Barnett et al. (2011),
however, argued that this approach of geographies of
responsibility is misguided, as it is based on the flawed
assumption, first, that ordinary people are not at all
involved in any kinds of caring or responsible activity
and, second, that people are otherwise unaware of the
network of causal effects of their day-to-day actions
and live in a world of veiled relations. Inherent in
these assumptions and the drive to highlight causal
relationships through geography is that as long as individuals are then made aware of the causal relationships
of their actions on distant places, this supposedly newfound knowledge will inevitably compel them to act
ethically and morally. Such assumptions are perhaps
na€ıve, as daily observations will inform us that knowledge of poverty, inequality, social injustices, and so
on, put together with an understanding of the causal
relationships between us and various distant places,
has hardly ensured that all of us will act in ethical or
moral terms to correct such injustices. The fixation
among geographers to establish chains of causality has
the tendency to lead us to forget that “responsible, caring action is motivated not in monological reflection
on one’s own obligations, but by encounters with others” (Barnett and Land 2007, 1069). At the same time,
Noxolo, Raghuram, and Madge (2011) highlighted
the gap between knowledge and action in responsibilities, where,
theories of responsibility may recognize the interconnections that make up the modern world, implicating all
people irrespective of location equally in responsible
action is problematic because in practice responsible
action is located in an unequal political world that complicates both the practice and the ethics of responsibility.
(420)
Looking at the emergence of how-to guides relating to
ethical consumption and tourism therefore highlights
an important point: Although ethical consumption
campaigns and research have typically focused on the
consumer as an individual, this fixation masks the role
of other parties, such as campaign organizations and
information providers, of which travel guidebooks can
be considered a part.
This article therefore takes inspiration from a number of Barnett et al.’s (2011) arguments, the first being
the notion of shared responsibility (I. M. Young 2007,
179) where
taking responsibility is not just an individualized action
taken by a single person or by some collective agent. It
is theorized in terms of how distributed actions join
actors together, feeding into wider networks of cooperation that reach out and influence events elsewhere. (Barnett et al. 2011, 9; see also Kuper 2005; Barnett,
Robinson, and Rose 2008)
Selling Ethics: Discourses of Responsibility in Tourism
Barnett et al. (2011) suggested that ethical consumption is not only about the consumer but also results
from the organized activities by strategic actors,
including campaign organizations, the state, corporations, and so on. At the same time, Barnett et al. contributed to our understanding of responsibilities by
highlighting that the act of consumption is often
ingrained in ordinary practices of banal and everyday
life and that to understand ethical consumption, one
has to keep in mind the politics of this ordinariness
(Hilton 2007). Therefore, it is important to think
about consumption in practice terms, where “the consumer is not necessarily interpellated as an agent of
‘consumer choice,’ but is an entry point into problematizing the conventions, routines and habits which
bind people into these distributed systems of
provisioning” (Barnett et al. 2011, 70–71).
Although the focus on real and actual practices is
helpful in grounding research and avoiding an abstract
rhetoric of morality and responsibility, this still seems
to miss an important point: What exactly does being
ethical or responsible mean and constitute? Their
vivid discussions that ranged from consumer practices
in purchasing fair-trade products, to how companies
and organizations like Traidcraft, Oxfam, or Christian
Aid exert influence over governments and corporations are indeed interesting accounts that sought to
highlight the political rationalities of ethical consumption, but neglected in these are important negotiations and questions about whether and how any of
these practices are ethical or responsible in the first
place. In doing so we continue to fail in bridging the
gap between ideologies and practices of responsibility.
As it stands, it is not unlike popular ethical consumption campaigns or travel guidebooks and Web sites
asking tourists to take on their responsibilities, where
what is perpetuated is an unspoken assumption that a
particular set of practices (e.g., buying goods labeled as
fair trade or boycotting sweatshop-produced clothing)
is undeniably responsible. This research therefore
reverses the prevailing critique in geographies of care
and responsibility. Rather than simply adding to works
that have since emphasized the need to look at practices of responsibilities, this article highlights an important consideration: As long as questions on what
constitutes being ethical and by whose standards this
is evaluated are neglected, there is a danger of pursuing
practices deemed irrefutably responsible, although
they are not responsible or ethical at all.
Indeed, pursuing a set of practices that is still largely
predetermined and premeditated by various figures of
7
assumed authority in the Global North suggests that
we continue to fail to appreciate the power differentials in a profoundly unequal postcolonial world (see
also Blunt and McEwan 2002; Robinson 2003; Power,
Mohan, and Mercer 2006). Instead, taking responsibility needs to focus our attentions on how social relations—many of which are taken for granted within
ethical tourism—structure inequality and injustice. A
consideration of arguments put forth by postcolonial
scholars is therefore useful at this point. Set out to
expose binaries of the Global North and Global South,
postcolonialism has contributed greatly to the decentering of forms of knowledges and social identities
authored and authorized by colonialism and Western
domination, and instead has revealed plural societies
in their complex heterogeneities (see Said 1978; for
comprehensive volumes discussing postcolonialism see
R. J. C. Young 2001, 2003; Sharp 2008). These offered
a nuanced understanding of locals’ human agency and
subjective knowledges and perceptions and moved
beyond an ideology of development and responsibility
based on Western contexts that has been imposed
onto different parts of the Global South as if it were
homogeneously understood (see R. J. C. Young 2001;
Sharp 2008). They advocated for the plurality in the
voices of the subaltern, and examples of localization
and locality-based antiglobalization agendas became
pivotal in deconstructing and reconstructing notions
of development and responsibility (see, e.g., Escobar
2001; Escobar, Rochelau, and Kothari 2002). The
postcolonial approach also stressed a spatial genealogy
that highlighted the multiple sites and heterogeneity
of knowledge, space, and politics, resulting in an
emphasis on “the role of circulations in constituting
networks and bringing some sites and forms of knowledge together while distancing others. This circulation
is generally not one of seamless travel, but of contested
travelling discourses and knowledges” (McFarlane
2006, 40). This, perhaps, is a more theoretically
informed way of saying that what is regarded as the
norm or absolute rule of the game in one geographic
locale or time period might not necessarily hold in
another.
In his critique of Western-centric theory and understanding of reality, Quijano (2000) argued that theoretical positioning in studies regarding places other
than the Western world has tended to treat these as an
episode or some particularity within a general or universal pattern based on the Eurocentric experience in
history—where the Western experience is considered
the norm and any other places are regarded only in
8
comparison to this, and research sought to present and
explain deviations from this norm. Such a perspective
led to an evolutionist historical perspective, “so that
all non-Europeans could be placed vis-a-vis Europeans
in a continuous historical chain from ‘primitive’ to
‘civilized,’ from ‘irrational’ to ‘rational,’ from
‘traditional’ to ‘modern,’ from ‘magic-mythic’ to
‘scientific’” (Quijano 2000, 221). Historical experience, however, clearly shows that the world, whether
“Europe” or “the rest,” is itself far from being a homogenous, continuous totality. On the contrary, an examination into the heterogeneous and plural natures of
the world (West or the rest) highlighted the need to
have a “consciousness of a radical ignorance” (Santos
2009, 114), where the aim is not to control or master
this ignorance “but to acknowledge it in a twofold
way: through our total ignorance of it; and through
the limitations it imposes on the accuracy of the
knowledge we have of finite things” (Santos 2009,
114–15).
In the case of ethical consumption and tourism,
then, how are considerations of responsibilities
and ethics actually translated into heightened
reflexivities, the plurality of voices, or the recognition of our ignorance as advocated by postcolonialism? Here, it is important to consider
criticisms toward neocolonialism in development
and international aid projects, as ethical consumerism is similarly largely consumer- or donordriven and less initiated by subjects of responsibility (whether human or nonhuman). As Spivak
(1988) suggested, such practice is “promoted as
benevolent, but forecloses various complicities and
desires. It is championed and propagated by development institutions, which nonetheless seek to
obscure their own participation” (cited in Kapoor
2005, 1206). Responsibility campaigns, whether
targeted toward governments, corporations, or consumers, tend to seek responsible practices toward
one party (e.g., the locals in tourism destinations),
because of the desire to appease another party.
This can be tourists’ or consumers’ expectations of
responsibility or to fulfill particular state regulations and requirements surrounding development
in the industry. Although recent works in the
social sciences have highlighted how “complex
relationalities of a postcolonial world mean that
relations of responsibility are not always cozy but
are contested, complicated and productively
unsettling” (Noxolo, Raghuram, and Madge 2011,
8; see also Jazeel and McFarlane 2010), such messy
Sin
and uncertain natures of practicing responsibilities
are largely underrepresented when one looks at
ethics and responsibilities as promoted by travel
literature such as guidebooks. Indeed, works on
responsibility, especially within works relating the
ethical and moral responsibility in tourism, have
often continued to take the perspective of a typical Global North, rich, and privileged position,
being responsible for the well-being for a Global
South, poor, and marginalized subject. Embedded
in this discourse, however, is the notion that the
world is divided into a more affluent Global North
and a much poorer Global South, and the latter is
incapable of extricating itself from problems and
poverty and (the lack of sustained) development
and therefore needs the privileged North’s assistance and resources to care for them adequately
(see also Friedman 1991; Silk 2004). This pervasive tendency to take on a Global North perspective is easily observed in travel guidebooks as the
rest of this article presents, and it is here argued
that it is not only important to (re)present postcolonial opinions and the subaltern in academic
research but also essential to realize that the lack
of responsibilities given to the Global South might
also mean that they (or we) continue to be marginalized and disempowered. Indeed, the continued
supposition of a dichotomous relationship between
the Global North and the Global South, which
parallels the relationship of one with responsibilities and one without responsibilities, would inevitably ensure that continuation of dependencies
and unequal relationships.
Discourse Analysis of Travel Guidebooks
To address these issues, a discourse analysis of travel
guidebooks is conducted, as guidebooks are often the
first point of contact and information an individual
tourist will get when he or she decides to go on a holiday and, at times, they can also be the key sources of
information for what constitutes responsible behavior
in tourism. Similar to ethical consumption campaign
material, travel guidebooks hence serve the role of
propagating particular idea(l)s of what constitute
responsibilities and build a normative account of how
a good and responsible tourist should behave. Looking
at such travel materials is an important piece in the
puzzle in understanding how responsibility is (re)presented to consumers and tourists, where, like
Selling Ethics: Discourses of Responsibility in Tourism
landmarks and tourist attractions, issues of responsibilities could (or not) become signposted as what tourists
should observe or look out for during their holidays.
Guidebooks therefore allow us to trace one step back
from the point at which a tourist comes into contact
with those for whom they are supposedly responsible
in the destination they choose, to understand how
ideals of responsibility are circulated through objects
like guidebooks before, after, and during the actual act
of traveling or touring.
The selection of which material to be analyzed was
determined based on what were the most widely used
travel resources and can be subdivided into two
categories:
Guidebooks on Thailand (contemporary editions)
Williams et al. (2010)
Ridout and Gray (2009)
Shalgosky (2008)
Guidebooks on Thailand (published between fifteen
and twenty-six years ago)
Cummings (1984)
Gray and Ridout (1992)
Levy and McCarthy (1994)
Notably, official Thailand tourism promotion campaigns in recent years have been downplaying Thailand as an exotic destination. Thailand no longer
wants to be known to the world as a destination for
exotic vices such as drugs or sex tourism or as a place
where one can easily purchase exotic animals such as
endangered macaques or gibbons. Rather, other than
continuing to portray the country as a rich cultural,
natural, and historical destination (see Rittichainuwat,
Qu, and Brown 2001; Henkel et al. 2006), the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) also wished to
promote “Thailand’s sophisticated present: its supermodern, state-of-the-art facilities, such as the new
airport, luxury accommodations and services, entertainment and shopping opportunities, advanced medical institutions, and the international character of its
urban culture, art, and cuisine” (Cohen 2008, 10).
This new positioning includes what TAT labeled
green tourism, an “initiative to protect and preserve
the environment and restore environmental quality by
raising environmental awareness and by promoting
increased Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)”
(TAT 2011). Choosing to focus on guidebooks on
Thailand therefore adds a dimension of a destination
with mature tourism industry and marketing—where
responsibilities in tourism are not divorced from
9
existing circumstances—and what happens when it
attempts to refresh and reinvent its images of tourism.
The selection of which guidebooks to include then
was based on established and popular usage (notably
usage in English), and the actual year of publication of
the older guidebooks used depended mostly on which
volumes were available. All sources selected are in the
English language, and this again introduces certain
cultural nuances and biases in what is represented.
Notably, two (those in the Rough Guide series) were
published in London, two (Lonely Planet series) were
published in Victoria, Australia, and two (Frommer’s)
were published in New York and New Jersey. The places of production, as well as authors of these guidebooks, therefore originate from largely Englishspeaking and developed country contexts and target
audiences of similar backgrounds. Although it would
have been interesting to consider guidebooks and Web
sites in different languages—for example, in Thai (to
understand local constructions of responsibility) or in
Chinese or Korean (two of the largest growing tourist
markets to Thailand)—due to practical language constraints and the limited scope of this research, the
focus here remains on English-language resources,
although further research encompassing these sources
would provide helpful comparative studies.
Guidebooks from the Rough Guide, Lonely Planet,
and Frommer’s range have also tended to be associated
with independent travel and are at times considered to
promote budget or shoestring travel. Indeed, all three
publishers’ first and founding volumes, namely, The
Rough Guide to Greece (Ellingham 1982), Lonely
Planet: Across Asia on the Cheap (Wheeler 1975), and
Frommer’s Europe on $5 a Day (Frommer [1957] 2007)
targeted low-budget backpackers, highlighting the
notion of independent travel and adventure. Lonely
Planet (2011) states that “the company is still driven
by the philosophy in Across Asia on the Cheap: ‘All
you’ve got to do is decide to go and the hardest part is
over. So go!’” I made the conscious choice to analyze
this range of guidebooks, rather than choosing, for
example, higher end luxury guidebooks such as Luxx
or Conde Nast, because backpackers or budget-conscious independent travelers were originally seen as
explorers or alternative tourists, but such forms of
independent travel have become increasingly mass
market. Many tourists today simply arm themselves
with one of the guidebooks from these publishers (or
other popular guidebooks or information sourced from
the Internet) and make their travel arrangements and
plans based on information provided in such guides.
10
At the same time, backpackers, youth, or budget travelers have been criticized for generating little positive
impact. Instead, they are said to drive prices down,
thereby restricting the development of higher end
tourism due to the lack of capital, and eventually
establishing destinations as potential areas for takeover by mainstream tourism (which at present is still
often considered to be irresponsible; see, e.g., Cohen
1982; Firth and Hing 1999; Westerhausen 2002;
Richards and Wilson 2004). Hence, looking at guidebooks that specifically target budget-conscious independent travelers is useful in seeing how (or whether)
notions of responsibilities are conveyed.
The actual analysis is framed around a semantic
scrutiny of political rhetoric and how certain issues are
framed with the exclusion of others (Lees 2004). Here
constructions of particular tourist activities across
guidebooks—for example, seeing or riding elephants
in Thailand or trekking in rural hill tribe areas—are
placed side by side for comparative purposes. This is
useful in sieving out the various sources’ stands toward
whether such activities are considered ethical or not
and what nuances make, for example, particular trekking tours to see the Northern hill tribes or ethnic
minorities celebrated as responsible, at the same time
condemning tourist villages showcasing the ethnic
long-necked Padaung women.
Green Places
What one ought to be responsible for is often positioned around how tourism and tourists can rectify irresponsibility observed on the ground. In many instances
among sources examined, it can be observed that tourism is often blamed for causing all sorts of problems. Set
within such rhetoric, then, is the causal network of
responsibilities as suggested in the literature on geographies of responsibility—where as an individual, you
might not have been the one whose immediate actions
resulted in the irresponsible development in tourism,
but when you are now a tourist and hence dependent
on the larger networks of production and labor in tourism, you are implicated in aspects of the industry that
are considered less desirable.
Commonly depicted in travel guidebooks are environmental concerns in tourism. Typical concerns
include the conservation of national parks or forestry,
conservation of wildlife considered native and threatened in Thailand, and green practices such as efficient
use of energy and water and appropriate waste
Sin
management. The ways in which tourists are encouraged to go green vary from simply seeing and enjoying
nature, to putting pressure on destinations’ communities and businesses, including tour companies and
hotels, to adopt environmentally friendly practices,
protect the environment and wildlife, or eradicate animal cruelty.
Most commonly, guidebooks focusing on responsible travel showed trends of how certain places are
increasingly labeled as green or not. For example, in
Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways to See the World (Hammond and Smith 2009), special sections on Green
Amsterdam, Copenhagen, New York, Patagonia,
Tokyo, Luang Phabang, Mumbai, and Sydney told
readers and potential tourists about how to holiday in
these places while supporting green movements like
eco-friendly hotels, restaurants, or innovative setups
such as Club Surya in London that has “technology fitted into the dance floor, the more clubbers shake their
stuff, the more energy is transferred into a dynamo
powering the club” (Hammond and Smith 2009, 25).
Just as how places and tours are increasingly seen to be
ethical or not, alongside the discourse of such green
places is a comparison with places that one should not
visit while on holiday. In Thailand’s case, different
destinations were often compared within guidebooks,
suggesting that newer and typically less visited destinations are greener and hence more worth a visit. A typical account would be what was written in Frommer’s
Thailand, which suggested that “for many tourists,
Krabi has become a popular, more eco-friendly alternative to the heavily commercialized Phuket and
backpacker boomtown of Koh Phi Phi” (Shalgosky
2008, 260). In this example, it should be noted that
Koh Phi Phi is actually zoned as a marine park under
conservation in Thailand, but guidebooks actively
reclassified what are considered green places that one
should or should not visit despite their official status as
national or marine parks. At the same time, definitions
within guidebooks pointed toward an uneasy trend:
Like the backpacker, youth, or alternative traveler,
responsible travel could indeed be seeking out places
that are seemingly untouched and, in time to come, if
and when such places become established tourism destinations, responsible tourists then move on to newer
places that are yet considered green again. Although
the green cities listed earlier showed a wide selection
of very established and mature urban tourism destinations like London or New York, the example of Koh
Phi Phi showed otherwise. In earlier editions, guidebooks had zoomed in on the natural and pristine
Selling Ethics: Discourses of Responsibility in Tourism
beauty of Koh Phi Phi in comparison to Phuket, but in
current editions, as just seen, Krabi is now favored as
the place to go over Koh Phi Phi.
The numerous examples of once pristine destinations that have since become degraded through
poorly managed and unsustainable development
clearly showed the concern with overdevelopment.
Indeed, the majority of mature and popular destinations in Thailand were labeled as such:
The once charming city center of Chiang Mai suffers from
not just acute pollution, but also seasonal flooding and
deadly smoke haze in the dry season. On the southern
coast and on resort islands, luxury villa and condominium developments are devouring the last of the prime
beachfront land. As a result, places like Koh Samui are
facing problems with water shortages, trash disposal, and
wastewater. (Shalgosky 2008, 1, italics added)
[In Phuket] pollution is becoming a problem as the big
hotels persist in dumping their sewage straight into the
sea. (Gray and Ridout 1992, 380, italics added)
Ko Phangan [at Koh Samui] . . . is one of the most beautiful
white powder beaches, arched in a gentle cove enclosed
by rocky cliffs, that we’ve ever seen. It’s covered with
garbage. (Levy and McCarthy 1994, 191, italics added)
The irony of this situation is that instead of correcting
the problems of overdevelopment, guidebooks were
encouraging tourists to go off the beaten track and this
could in turn result in exactly what they are criticizing.
For example, the 1992 edition of Thailand: The Rough
Guide described Ko Phi Phi as “encircled by water so
clear you can see almost to the sea bed from the surface
. . . Ko Phi Phi Leh, whose sheer cliff faces get national
marine park protection, on account of the lucrative
birds’ nest business” (Gray and Ridout 1992, 395). In
the later edition, it was said that “by the early 1990s,
Phi Phi’s . . . beaches began to lose their looks under
the weight of unrestricted development and non-existent infrastructure . . . floundering under unregulated,
unsightly and unsustainable development” (Ridout
and Gray 2009, 739). Although sources examined
mostly criticize overdevelopment and positions it as
tourism’s responsibility to rectify, there exists an inherent and often unsaid perception that tourism development will lead to some sort of degradation at the very
least:
For years it [Koh Chang] was purely a foreign backpacker
and Thai weekend getaway, but now, with the opening
of Amari Emerald Cove in 2005, a more upscale international clientele is visiting . . . [this is] bound to bring
more visitors, so the environmental impact on the waste
11
disposal system and dry-season water supply is a concern.
(Shalgosky 2008, 165)
In this situation, then, what is observed within sources
is a paradoxical love–hate relationship between tourism
and responsibility: On one hand, guidebooks mostly
seemed aware of and presented a vision of tourism and
tourists actively addressing a range of (ir)responsibilities
that tourism can bring, whether this was toward the
local, the green, or in terms of the problems created
and sustained by tourism in Thailand. Indeed, although
tourism is often positioned as the opening up of new
destinations in otherwise rural and poor communities
alongside notions of economic development, the ageold notion that tourists are bound to negatively affect
the environment and also create all sorts of social problems continues to surface. All of these messages are
embedded within travel guidebooks that aim to attract
and whose profits depend on attracting more people to
travel and tour in featured destinations. Their vested
interest in presenting an image that reflects their fulfillment of popularly imagined responsibilities should
therefore be taken into account.
Tourism and Sex
Although responsible tourism typically applauded
forming close relationships with locals in tourism destinations and suggested that intimacy is something of
positive value (Conran 2011), the line is seemingly
drawn once sex between tourists and locals are
involved. Perhaps as a result of the country’s history
and reputation for sex tourism for U.S. soldiers during
the Vietnam War, guidebooks on Thailand typically
included special sections on sex tourism, and these
were often made in disparaging terms. Typical descriptions included those that painted prostitutes as
“tawdry” or “lifeless” (Ridout and Gray 2009, 169–70)
or destinations with sex tourism easily available like
Pattaya as “the epitome of exploitative tourism gone
mad” (Ridout and Gray 2009, 435). Pattaya was further described as “the once infamous red-light capital
of Thailand, promiscuous Pattaya invites adulation as
much as disdain with the dubious flacon of some of its
late-night shenanigans” (Shalgosky 2008, 10), and
Bangkok is said to be the “sin capital of Asia”
(Shalgosky 2008, 146).
This, however, was not always the case, and as
recently as in 1994, Frommer’s Comprehensive Travel
Guide Thailand showed an uneasy acceptance toward
12
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tourists who migh be interested in engaging the services of commercial sex workers. An excerpt from the
guidebook highlighted this: “Patpong’s Asian mystique
and anything-goes sexuality [has] become a standard
stop on the ‘Bangkok By Night’ bus tours” (Levy and
McCarthy 1994, 122). The same guidebook listed
“one night in Patpong’s sex clubs, cabarets, massage
parlors, and bustling Night Market for unrivalled
entertainment and shopping bargains” (Levy and
McCarthy 1994, 38) in its section on “What’s so special about Bangkok.” It also provided a section on
“Massage Parlors/Adult Entertainment” that read:
Bangkok has hundreds of “modern” or “physical” massage
parlors, which are heavily advertised, and offer something
not meant to relax your limbs. Physical massage usually
involves the masseuse using her entire body, thoroughly
oiled to massage the customer, a “body-body” massage. If
one wishes, a “sandwich,” with two masseuses, can also be
ordered . . . Rates for physical massage start at about 500B
(US$20). (Levy and McCarthy 1994, 127)
A look at current guidebooks, however, showed a clear
and outward disapproval toward tourists engaging in
commercial sex in Thailand, and The Rough Guide to
Thailand clearly stated its position: “As with the
straight sex scene, we do not list commercial gay sex
bars in the guide” (Ridout and Gray 2009, 77).
Although this research does not commit to a judgment
of whether sex tourism is morally responsible or not,
what constitutes responsibilities can and does often
vary across sources and also over time.
At times, what is not said also clearly showed a
guidebook’s inclinations. In Discover Thailand’s case,
the entire guidebook did not mention Pattaya or Patpong in Bangkok, even though they are popular destinations for tourists, and also did not make any
reference to sex tourism in Thailand (Williams et al.
2010). It seems very possible that such destinations
were excluded precisely because both are well known
places that cater to commercial sex seekers (both tourists and locals). In The Rough Guide to Thailand and
Frommer’s Thailand, which did elaborate on places like
Pattaya and Patpong, however, additional notes detailing the plight of sex workers or the dangers of engaging
in commercial sex in Thailand (especially with
minors) accompanied the write-ups. Rough Guide to
Thailand, for example, referred to the women working
in go-go bars and “bar-beers” as “economic refugees . . .
to help pay off family debts and improve the living
conditions of parents stuck in the poverty trap . . .
[and] often endure exploitation and violence from
pimps and customers” (Ridout and Gray 2009, 168).
Underlying such discourse is the moralizing against
any form of engagement with sex workers and a seeming attempt to correct misjudgments and ignorance
toward sex workers.
In these respects then, (contemporary) guidebooks’
position toward tourism and the sex industry went
beyond what moral risks a typical consumer faces:
Tourists who do engage commercial sex workers are
not just implicated in the reproduction of harm but
are considered to be the cause itself—whether this
harm was deemed to be toward women, rural communities, prepubescent children, or themselves. This
example shows how notions of what is considered
responsible behavior or not (in tourism and beyond) is
often subject to greater changes of perceptions of problems and moral responsibility both within Thailand
and internationally.
The guidebooks examined, however, do little to
challenge the reasons why the commercial sex industry
continues to prevail (other than suggesting that it is
the ignorant tourism clientele that supports it) and
fails to recognize how the sex industry in Thailand is
as much related to a local clientele. Indeed, studies
have highlighted that within the Thai society, men,
including married men, “consider occasional excursions to prostitutes to be ordinary and even acceptable
under certain circumstances” (Knodel et al. 1996,
191), and such practice is also accepted by some Thai
women, who suggest that commercial sex “exists to
protect ‘good women’ from being raped” and is a preferred alternative to men having extramarital affairs
and relationships and hence a “practical solution for
married men whose greater sexual demand cannot be
met by their wives” (Taywaditep, Coleman, and Dumronggittigule 1997–2001).5 Neglecting such broader
aspects of the commercial sex industry therefore places
too much agency on tourism and tourists and creates a
false impression among guidebooks that once tourists
stop patronizing commercial sex workers, the industry
and any associated problems will cease to exist. Also,
there is little discussion on the social trends and
changes that make the sex industry something that
was once promoted as a tourism attraction or at least
condoned in the past and deemed immoral now.
Instead, guidebooks only provided warnings and little
is mentioned about what can be done or what is
already in place to tackle the issues of prostitution in
Thailand. Indeed, despite guidebooks’ outright contempt for places like Pattaya, which is well known for
Selling Ethics: Discourses of Responsibility in Tourism
sex tourism, little is discussed that Pattaya was actually
declared a “City of Peace” at the Third Global Summit
on Peace through Tourism in 2005 (Koumelis 2007)
because of its efforts and successes in tackling child
prostitution. At the same time, other works have suggested that sexual relationships in tourism are not limited to prostitution and paid sex and that these create
equally problematic situations. Jacobs (2010), for
example, detailed the ethnosexual relationships
between Western women (tourists) and local men in
Sinai, Egypt, and Malam (2008) and suggested that
Thai men working in the tourism industry articulate
their heterosexual masculinity, through, for example,
sexually attaining women tourists. These accounts
challenge the normative descriptions and moralization
of irresponsible men (tourists) paying for sex with local
women, as presented in guidebooks and all sorts of
responsible travel material, and highlight that issues
related to sex tourism are not as straightforward and
simple as avoiding the commercial sex industry.
Concluding Remarks
This article has highlighted several key observations
when responsibilities are discussed in popular media.
As the typical first (formal) points of contact and
information for many individual tourists, guidebooks
have a potentially large role to play in regulating ideas
of responsibility and irresponsibility within the tourism context. Unlike other forms of consumption where
consumers can easily choose to ignore ethical consumption campaign materials, the dominance of tourists seeking out information from travel guidebooks or
Internet sources prior to their travels suggests that
these are in a unique position to set the expectations
and agendas of tourists and can become key resources
in instructing potential tourists on the dos and don’ts
of how to behave when on vacation. These can sometimes be directly related to responsibilities, but in
numerous other instances, they could very well be cultivating a general sense of what was considered to be a
normative behavior of tourists—for example, through
directing the attention and gaze of their readers toward
what is pictured as attractive destinations and enjoyable experiences and making clear (and sometimes
authoritative) suggestions for readers to replicate such
routes, itineraries, and activities in their own vacations. Guidebooks, therefore, have a potential ability
to influence behaviors of tourists in general, and an
extension of this means that they can also have an
13
impact on regulating ideas and behaviors about
responsibility and irresponsibility in tourism spaces.
Yet, although tourism has tended to be seen as an
extraordinary part of life differentiated from the mundane and day-to-day living, this study has highlighted
the very ordinary decisions and banal actions that continue to pervade how responsibility comes into play:
As Hilton’s (2007) works called for the recognition of
the ordinariness of consumption choices, people can
attempt to be responsible especially in their tours and
travels yet remain entrenched in all sorts of irresponsibilities both consciously and subconsciously. The same
can be said of all sorts of social responsibility within or
beyond tourism—one is always simultaneously and
continuously responsible and irresponsible—and only
when academic and popular literature acknowledges
and appreciates this and moves beyond such binary
presentations can we begin to truly comprehend that
being responsible is a process that involves both
abstract ideals and real practices.
At the crux of this research, then, is that it is not
at all simple or easy to be responsible. Rather, we
can learn a lot about our responsibility and yet continue to have difficulty pursuing a course of action
that is deemed to be suitably responsible. Here, like
Barnett et al. (2011), I argue that existing works in
both popular media and academic literature too
often hold the assumption that increasing awareness
is the key to changing behaviors toward adopting
responsibilities. This starting point is flawed.
Although many sources in the popular media rush
into providing guidelines on how to be responsible,
often little consideration is presented on what
exactly responsibility is and why this is so. Sources
examined typically position their readers (and
potential tourists) as individuals who are ready and
willing to make the change to become more responsible in their travels and seem to assume that with
just a few guidelines, instructions, special mentions,
or case boxes in guidebooks, potential tourists will
then be armed with enough information to now
make a difference, veer away from irresponsible
practices in tourism, or spot such irresponsibility in
tourism and hence bring about changes in the industry. This is much like what has also been observed
in studies on ethical consumption, where educating
the public appears to be the key objective (see
Warde 2005; Clarke et al. 2007; Green 2008). In a
bid to address this issue, Barnett et al. (2011) made
a significant call to focus our attentions on the practices of responsibilities but, as is evident in this
14
article, the efforts to ground research in real and
actual practices continue to mask important negotiations on whether and how particular practices, especially those well regarded to be responsible, are in
fact ethical, responsible, or at all beneficial to those
one claims to take on responsibility for. Instead, it
perpetuates the danger of pursuing practices deemed
irrefutably responsible, while not being responsible
or ethical at all.
At the same time, it is vital to consider this question:
Where are such universalized notions of what practices
are considered responsible or irresponsible coming
from? The dominance of English-language tourism
guidebooks detailing and instructing what is considered
responsible or not within tourism spaces in Thailand
highlights what Quijano (2000) argued to be a positioning that emphasizes that Eurocentric experience in
history is the normative account toward which all other
places will tend. Any difference is at best regarded as
some particularity that will in time resolve and confirm
what has happened in the European context, as these
places are assumed to become “Europeanized” or
“modernized” over time. Issues examined in this article,
however, highlight precisely the opposite: Tourism destinations do not progress to become more sustainable or
green over time as more is done to raise awareness of
the environmental impacts of tourism. Rather, despite
efforts to increase awareness, tourism destinations
become less green, and tourists are instead directed to
newer, less explored, and hence less environmentally
damaged destinations over time. Tourism’s uncomfortable relationship with the commercial sex industry in
Thailand also highlights the changing notions of
responsibility over time and that what is deemed
responsible or not is highly plural and contextual and
needs to adopt a postcolonial decentering of knowledges and social identities authored and authorized by
colonialism and Western domination (see Said 1978;
R. J. C. Young 2003; Sharp 2008).
To this end, I would like to challenge academics to
acknowledge that it is no longer enough to pursue an
awareness campaign toward responsibility and instead
focus on thinking and talking about responsibility in a
postcolonial and nuanced manner (see Blunt and McEwan 2002; Robinson 2003; McFarlane 2006; Power,
Mohan, and Mercer 2006) that looks not only at what
are celebrated as responsible practices but also why and
what makes a practice responsible or not in the specific
contexts in which these practices are being carried out.
This article therefore intervenes at this point, as I suggest that when we as academics begin to think of and
Sin
talk about responsibility beyond binaries and position it
as a process of becoming, perhaps we can inspire the popular media to follow suit. We need to first speak of
responsibility in such nuanced manner for it to be understood in the same way. Then, perhaps, guidebooks will
begin to present their dos and don’ts in ways that recognize that responsibilities in tourism cannot be reduced
to a universal set of instructions despite contextual
situations.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Claudio Minca and Katie Willis for advising the PhD thesis and research presented
in this article, as well as Tim Oakes, the editors, and
three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.
Notes
1. Who are we? In the first instance, we refers to consumers from the Global North. Although we may
take on various roles as academics or industry professionals, we are, at the end of the day, almost always
also consumers dependent on the capitalist mode of
production. At the same time, if one were to walk
through the retail spaces of different cities, it would
be immediately obvious that messages of responsibilities can be just as prevalent whether one is in London or in Bangkok. This article thus takes this
position, where who we/I are/am is constantly fluctuating between varying standpoints and where there is
a pertinent need to understand matters beyond such
binaries, even as this article seeks to unravel the bias
in what has typically been presented as a universal
understanding of responsibility.
2. For example, it could be argued that whereas a typical
ethical consumer buys and consumes a good or a product, the ethical tourist consumes an experience that is
often less tangible than an ethical product.
3. It should be noted, though, that responsibility can be
personified as an object; for example, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has successfully used the panda as an
object or symbol to signal the need to be responsible
toward wildlife in general.
4. Although the usage of tourism guidebooks is now increasingly replaced by Internet-based resources like travel blogs
and Web sites, the likelihood of a potential tourist searching for and reading extensively in preparation for his or
her travels is very high compared to a potential consumer
reading in preparation for his or her supermarket purchases. Hence, even though this article looks specifically
at tourist guidebooks, it views online material in a similar
light, with a similar potential of informing and instructing
practices and ideas of responsibility on the ground.
5. Again, it is important to note that sentiments regarding
locals’ visits to commercial sex workers might have
Selling Ethics: Discourses of Responsibility in Tourism
changed since research was done to support these
articles’ conclusions.
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HARNG LUH SIN is an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Geography at National University of
Singapore, Singapore 119260. E-mail: [email protected].
Her research interests revolve around the mobilities of
people—in the broad spectrum from tourism to migration, as well as the mobilities and fluidities of abstract
ideas such as moral and social responsibilities, ethics,
and care (at a distance) and how these translate through
discursive platforms like social media and into real practices on the ground.