[From the Archives] How Do We Become Better World Travelers?
The Challenges and Ethics of Wandering in the Modern World
The following is an excerpt from An Anthropology of Wandering: How Adventure Can Alleviate a Fearful Culture. You can read an overview of the book, which includes another excerpt, in my recent post: Summoning the Anthropology of Wandering: A Primer to My Forthcoming Book
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(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
- Article XIII of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
What is the harm done in the name of adventure and travel? What are the arguments against travel? And does an ethical middle ground exist for travel and adventure to continue in the face of its negative consequences? Before setting foot on the path of adventure and travel, we are obliged to reflect on the ugly side of traveling and the impacts of global tourism. These consequences are often overlooked because adventure and travel have a positive connotation, and contemplating the negative aspects of our actions can be somewhat disheartening.
However, large numbers of people moving around the globe can have numerous unintended consequences, and when large numbers of people do anything, it has significance and therefore matters. The effects of global tourism can be multifaceted and sometimes detrimental socially, culturally, politically, ecologically, and economically for many of the world’s geographic settings and the indigenous and local people living there.
Unlike the carefree adventurers of previous centuries, the role of the adventurer in the 21st century comes with demanding moral considerations. Today’s travelers are asked to be conscious of their actions and the consequences of their behavior if they wish to retain something of the place that originally attracted them there. We are compelled to educate ourselves about the complex and sometimes harmful relationships the tourism industry has with local communities in host countries. As 21st-century travelers, we are asked to become better stewards of lands and cultures and perhaps demand change where injustice exists. We may even be required to forego our most destined and longed-for adventures altogether.
This is a lot to take in for someone who simply wants to chase after some wanderlust or just needs to catch a break on a vacation. Being a mindful adventurer in today’s world comes with some important, often conflicting demands. We’re asked to understand something about ecology and why things like biodiversity, preservation, and conservation are critical for sustainability and mitigating climate change. We’re asked to reduce our rates of consumerism, development, and pollution that can cripple local, regional, or even the global environment or impoverish local people in unexpected ways. We’re asked to understand local economies and their relationship with the tourist industry so that we can be informed on how to prevent such inexcusable things as the exploitation of child labor, forced displacement, mass human migration, the spreading of disease, prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction, human trafficking, and other human rights abuses. These are, unfortunately, things some travelers’ money and presence unwittingly support.
Two texts that give a much more in-depth look into the impacts of global tourism and the ethics involved in world travel are social ecologist Deborah McLaren’s Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel and a well-known anthology, Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, edited by anthropologist Valene L. Smith.
Most countries subscribe, at least on paper, to fighting for and upholding human rights. Of the 195 countries of the world, 192 subscribe to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Article XIII grants freedom of movement to and from one’s country of birth or residence. Although this is often invoked to argue for the human rights of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), political dissidents, and asylum seekers, does this also grant everyone the right to openly explore any country as they please? Strictly speaking, yes, it does. In other words, we all have the right to travel but can be legally restricted based on things like public health, national security, and other safety justifications. That said, common sense and deferring to ethical considerations are also paramount when deciding where and how to travel.
Wandering and travel take on various meanings in various contexts. As the contemporary forced migrations of more than 108 million people and the refugee crises become all too apparent, wandering comes to mean very different things to different people. Wandering is about a specific kind of adventure, one often of luxury and privilege. Many of us are only gifted these opportunities to freely explore our world with relative ease and comfort because of an incredibly complex and tumultuous history that is both dark and beautiful. That history, despite all the misgivings, has provided those of us living in the United States with an unbelievable bounty of liberty and security. And it is a history we ultimately inherited, both the good and the bad. We owe it to ourselves and the generations past to always be learning more about it so that we can appreciate the fortune we’ve been gifted and hopefully learn not to take things for granted. Nevertheless, much of our travels and adventures are a form of luxury.
While it may be a luxury, it is a unique type of luxury. Adventure and the art of wandering have the potential to bring incredible meaning and experience to our lives, to open our eyes wider, to fill us with humility, and to take greater control over our lives. And it should be granted to everyone.
This is why this singular ideal of striving for the human right to travel is so significant in my mind: If we eventually build a world where virtually everyone is granted the ability to move around the globe how they please, that means we solved some major problems on this planet. Living up to the right of everyone to travel comes with solving many of our current crises in energy, resource allocation, climate, migration, and conflict.
Adventuring opens a world that is more perplexing and bizarre than we could have ever imagined if we were merely “vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime,” as Mark Twain put it. Extensive travel opens up the doors of perception and makes us realize just how much there is to learn about the only habitable world we can know at this moment in time. We still need to see firsthand how volatile and fragile our planet is, how vulnerable we are, how limited our resources are, and how immense the knowledge we still have yet to possess as a collective species. These are just a few things exploring our world has to offer us, and we desperately need more of us to realize all this and more. With our lifestyles currently undergoing radical and bewildering changes as we transition to a more media and technology-saturated culture, it would be wise to bear in mind the potential impacts on our physical and cognitive well-being as well.
What we tend to gain when we venture is an enhanced physical and psychological well-being that allows us to tune into the world in a more pleasing and tranquil way. It gives us a chance to heal and cope with life’s most unwelcome tragedies. We’re granted opportunities to discover our adaptability, self-reliance, and ways of being in the world in a less constricted fashion. And we can uncover a renewed appreciation for life that reveals a deeper connection with the natural world and with others found wandering in its midst.
But traveling presents us with a paradox. We travel to far-off places with hopes of experiencing something new and foreign, yet we often desire that things not be “too foreign” or “too exotic.” We still demand some of the conveniences of home, and the travel industry is more than happy to provide such products and services. Before long, a once-balanced environment and culture can become uprooted and sabotaged right before a local community’s eyes. This breeds conflict, resistance, and unnecessary violence, something none of us wants. All the while, we remain ignorant of the social, cultural, economic, and environmental depredations our demands brought about. The elimination of natural and cultural landscapes is an unfortunate and serious matter, and we should give pause and consideration to how we may be contributing and how we can help alleviate the damage.
What, you may ask, is wrong with a tourism industry that provides comfort in the form of splendid hotels, cruises, resorts, and endless luxuries and services to prospective tourists? Don’t local communities inevitably benefit from jobs and increased wages? Not necessarily. What do the people who live “over there” think of others visiting and developing in their homelands? Do they welcome the change or abhor it? Shouldn’t we know what they desire first and foremost? What right do we have to have an adventure in these places to begin with?
On the other hand, things are more complicated by the fact that there are arguments for tourism–some locals genuinely want economic development from tourism and see many benefits to it. In the preface to Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, the authors report that from the late 1970s to the late 1980s:
[P]ervasive indigenous demands for modernization, for the materialism and gadgetry that make human lives physically more comfortable and easier, the labor-intensive tourist industry has progressively served as an economically viable and socially permissible vehicle to provide wage employment. Tourism is especially favored where significant segments of the population have minimal education or technical skills, inasmuch as other industries may require extensive training.[1]
Needless to say, all this is complicated, but we should not simply assume that tourism inevitably destroys culture and ecology, nor should we assume it is always a purely benevolent economic engine. Perhaps the best policy is to listen and learn the desires of those living in a given culture and not assume what people want or don’t want. How do they feel about globalization and certain corporations taking root in their backyard? Is it something they wish to be a part of, or would they rather be left alone? There’s much more nuance to be found in these debates.
In 1996, author and mountaineer Jon Krakauer illustrated the commercialization and aesthetic degradation of the region surrounding Everest in his book Into Thin Air:
[T]o handle the growing traffic from Western climbers and trekkers, new lodges and teahouses are springing up across the Kumbu region…longtime visitors…are saddened by the boom in tourism and the change it has wrought on what early Western climbers regarded as an earthly paradise, a real-life Shangri-La. Entire valleys have been denuded of trees to meet the increased demand for firewood. Teens hanging out in Namche carrom parlors are more likely to be wearing jeans and Chicago Bulls T-shirts than quaint traditional robes. Families are apt to spend their evenings huddled around video players viewing the latest Schwarzenegger opus.[2]
Then again, the issue is not so one-sided, as Krakauer further points out: “I didn’t hear many Sherpas bemoaning changes.” Due to the money brought in by climbers to economically uplift such things as schools and medical clinics, reduce infant mortality, and help boost critical infrastructure projects,
[I]t seems more than a little patronizing for Westerners to lament the loss of the good old days when life in the Kumbu was so much simpler and more picturesque. Most of the people who live in this rugged country seem to have no desire to be severed from the modern world or the untidy flow of human progress. The last thing Sherpas want is to be preserved as specimens in an anthropological museum.[3]
Thus, perhaps the best policy is to listen and learn from the local inhabitants of a given area as to what their aspirations are for their country, not assume we know what is best for them, and turn a blind eye to the actions of private corporations setting up shop abroad. But to do this thoroughly, we have to make the treks ourselves, learn the languages and customs, and befriend others to know their true hopes and desires. Modern travelers can heed the advice and practice of anthropologists “out there,” facilitating this kind of wor,k and in a sense, the modern adventurer becomes a kind of anthropologist themselves through the process of their travels.
A final ethical consideration is that adventure is not necessarily open to all. We still unfortunately live in a world of haves and have-nots despite notable progress. There are lingering and entrenched socioeconomic, gender, and racial barriers that still prevent many of us from enjoying the extensive outdoor adventures that many of us take for granted. Even the Appalachian Trail, a space praised for being open, free, and democratic, is still only frequented by a predominantly white middle class, though trends in the last decade are showing improvements in making such outdoor experiences more accessible and affordable. As author and ecologist of The Spirit of the Appalachian Trail, Susan Power Bratton reported in her 2012 sociological analysis of the demographics, ethics, and spirituality of the Appalachian Trail,
The trail itself is also free—there are no admission fees, and the emphasis is on public ownership and use. The trail and related events have an “everyone belongs” atmosphere, which is in itself an ethical statement. Because of relatively low ethnic and socioeconomic diversity on the trail, however, this democracy and openness to others operates within a largely white middle-and professional-class framework. Intended as a respite for urban residents and industrial laborers, today’s trail is, if anything, less accessible by public transportation than it was immediately following World War II, when most medium-sized Appalachian towns still had daily bus and rail service. Although many AT thru-hikers consider themselves to be of limited means, and some borrow money to make the trip, the majority are financially buffered by generous parents, a retirement account, savings from a well-paying job, or college-age exemption from fiscal obligations.[4]
Thus, there are still many barriers in our society that can prevent many of us from experiencing these empowering forms of adventure and travel. We’re asked to take note of the ethical consequences of wandering and reflect on them, not to feel guilty but to simply be more aware, considerate, and help contribute to democratizing the outdoors when and if we can.
When traveling, we also encounter some personal challenges and tradeoffs. For instance, the more time we spend traversing the world, the less time we may spend with friends, family, and our communities at home. Adventures sometimes require greater risks and potential dangers. It’s not a sure thing that we won’t suffer serious injuries, long-lasting ailments, or even death as a result of living adventurously.
How do we become better world travelers? I believe it must start with being more mindful of how our actions can have unintended consequences. Now, we shouldn’t tie ourselves in knots deliberating on every single action out of fear of causing harm; we’d never venture anywhere that way. We can’t predict the results of every action. But we can put our best foot forward by doing the proper research on our destinations, asking a series of introspective questions, and making a good-faith effort to do good in a new place. How will the money you spend abroad mutually benefit you and the locals in a community? In what ways are you willing to give back to a place and community, even if you do not receive anything in return? Does visiting a place contribute to the gradual destruction of someone’s way of life or the local ecology? Are the places you are staying and visiting demonstrating goodwill to the local community and economy?
We face many challenges in the 21st century, and many of those problems intersect with those of us wanting to be “out there” in the wider world. These tasks are not easy to understand, much less mitigate or prevent, so we must also be humble and patient with ourselves and others as well as we all try to learn and adapt to rapidly changing times. Becoming a better world traveler means that we are asked to learn something vital about culture and develop meaningful relationships in an ever-globalizing world. This list of demands can be overwhelming and burdensome for someone who merely wishes to “see the world.”
Although it may seem like we face more insurmountable problems than ever before, this is probably not the case, and this sense we all have of impending doom is likely due to our increased awareness of problems around the globe, given the mass surveillance of human activity and tireless 24-hour news cycles. After all, humans managed to make it through endless centuries of the Ice Age and numerous years of devastating plagues, famines, and wars. That’s not meant to gloss over all that history and say it was easy, but we are an incredibly resilient species, and we all have it in us to be better. As challenging as it may seem, becoming more conscious of these issues can make our adventures more wholesome and inspiring when we are mindful of the ethics involved in the places we venture to.
Questions and Considerations
How do we become better stewards of our planet and respectful of other cultures when we travel?
In what ways have you become a more mindful world traveler? What are some general tips you can provide?
If you enjoyed this article, consider these related articles from Those Who Wander:
Ethnic Tourism and the Modern Traveler’s Dilemma: What if Your Life Became a Tourist Attraction?
The Road Too Often Taken: A Return to the Ethics of Wandering
The Hope of Travel, Part II: Does Travel Have the Power to Piece the World Together?
I would like to take a moment to make a special offer for anyone wanting to upgrade and support my writing. Running through the end of July, you can get 25% off my newsletter, which amounts to only $3.75 per month or $37.50 a year.
Or, consider a one-time tip or donation. If you liked this article or a previous one and want to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee at whatever amount you prefer.
Thanks for being a fellow traveler with me through this read. Please consider subscribing, sharing, and supporting this project—much more to follow.
Cheers!
-JSB
Notes
[1] Smith, Valene L., ed. Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1989) pp. x-xi.
[2] Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air (New York: Anchor Books, 1997), pp. 47-8
[3] Ibid., p. 48.
[4] Bratton, Susan Power. The Spirit of the Appalachian Trail: Community, Environment, and Belief on a Long Distance Hiking Path (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012) pp. 140-141.
Of all the things I could say about being a responsible, ethical visitor, the most important would be to have some understanding of the place you want to visit and what harm tourism may have already wrought upon it. This means homework. Tour companies and national tourism promoters will, of course, not reveal this. Other foreign visitors you speak to may or may not have a clue. But for most destinations, there is an abundance of online information, presented by people not in the business of 'influencing', that can help. Unfortunately, my personal experience is that sometimes it takes going there to really see the problems, at which point I've already contributed to it. Of course, there are plenty of ways to act responsibly once having arrived, which is a whole other topic.