Culture: The West's Biggest Export?

Culture The West's Biggest Export?

I spent a month over the summer of 2002 trekking in Borneo with a team of 15 other boys from my school. This was the first time that I had traveled outside England, my home, to a destination that was not geared towards hosting tourists. The expedition provided me with a very interesting perspective on the march of developed culture across the globe. The tourism industry is simply one example of this expansion, but it is an interesting example because it is the industry that takes the public to these “exotic” lands.

The 20th century has seen the creation and rapid expansion of the tourism industry, fuelled by our ability to travel faster and more conveniently to remote places on the planet. Tourism describes a huge variety of different activities, all falling under the banner of people traveling for pleasure. I think of tourists as falling into two main categories, those people who travel to find somewhere to relax, and those who travel to experience new cultures. The first category has less direct effect on the spread of tourism, as these people prefer to travel to places in developed countries, where they can relax in comfort. The second category likes to travel to experience new cultures and environments without necessarily having a relaxing trip. It is these people who are constantly pushing the tourist industry into new areas. Once the tourist industry realizes a region is becoming popular with adventurous tourists, big resort hotels appear, and the wild is tamed for the benefit of the tourist who likes to feel adventurous without having to endure the hardship of dingy, cockroach-ridden hotels. The location is now ruined for the adventurous tourist. These westernized resorts can be found all over the world, giving a highly sanitized version of the local culture. This leaves the adventurers to go in search of a new location to visit, an even more remote and exotic place is visited, and so the cycle continues until we will have a resort hotel next to every lake, mountain, forest and beach on the planet.

I have been lucky enough to see this expansion of tourism firsthand during my trip to Malaysian Borneo in the summer of 2002. This was a very interesting place to visit because different parts of the country are at different points in the transition between untouched wilderness and popular tourist spots.