The Anthropology of Tourism

The village headman padded over to greet us, his bare feet slapping the ground, his soles as furrowed as the African earth. The mud huts of the Maasai people stood behind him, corralled by a thorn fence to discourage lions. I expected the headman to make some tribal gesture of welcome, and he held up two fingers. It reminded me of Winston Churchill’s “Victory” sign. Could this be a universal signal of political leadership? 

“Two dollars American,” said the chief. “Each person.”

Aha! It was the universal sign of tourism. Apparently, our small safari of Americans and Europeans were not the first foreigners to come upon the village. Inside, slender Maasai women lined up at elegant attention, each handsome face framed by beaded necklaces and earrings, each wrist adorned with bracelets – all for sale. Warriors held out their spears: “Good price!”

A bit of bargaining ensued, with the Maasai and foreign women giggling because they couldn’t speak each other’s languages well enough to even set prices. It was all friendly, because happily enough the village hadn’t gone full commercial, like the tourist shops in Nairobi. Still, because we were far from Kenya’s tourist hubs, I was surprised to find this phenomenon of native people living their lives, yet charging admission. 

As I strolled around the village, trying to put it all in perspective, I met another traveler in our group, a vacationing California anthropologist. It was pure serendipity that she specialized in studying the effects of tourists on the cultures they visit. Author of the classic book Hosts and Guests, Valene Smith told me her field was “the anthropology of tourism” – a phrase that would forever alter my way of seeing things.

I realized that a traveler could benefit by adopting the approach of a field researcher, with eyes open and notebook in hand. I saw that in Kenya traditional people stood at the crucial crossroads where pastoral African life meets western commercialism. I started to view them, myself, and my fellow tourists in a fresh light. Why did we want to go home to Ohio or Brooklyn dressed up like Maasai warriors and carrying spears through airport customs? And why did the Maasai want American logo T-shirts?

The “anthropology of tourism” seemed like a helpful study tool. I let a circuit in my mind crackle over to a new channel, changing my perspective to that of an anthropologist looking at human society.

The Age of Overtourism

Not only must a traveler try to understand the people they visit, they must also be sensitive to their impact on those they visit and on the places where they live. 

These days overtourism – a term for the spiraling numbers of visitors who take a toll on cities, landmarks, and landscapes – is discussed not just in newspaper travel sections but on the front page. Every day, Paris’s Louvre Museum, for example, sees 30,000 people make a beeline to view the Mona Lisa. Some queue up for hours to spend an allotted thirty seconds in front of the famous painting. In contrast, I wistfully remember being a student traveler decades ago, wandering into the Louvre and having the Mona Lisa virtually to myself.

In Athens the same was true at the Acropolis, where in my youth there’d been only a handful of other travelers. Today, for crowd control, Greek authorities have had to set a limit of 20,000 visitors per day, their time slots reserved online. (If you have a spare $5,500, you can book a private off-hours tour.)

This surge in tourism has been driven by the end of pandemic travel restrictions, the boom in short-term rentals, and the rise of large cruise ships. The monstrous Icon of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship at 1,197 feet, boasts 20 decks, six water slides, an ice-skating rink, an ersatz “Central Park” complete with trees, and more than 40 restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues. When the ship disgorges its 7,600 passengers at once, they swamp the towns the ship visits.

Moreover, tourists are often woefully ignorant about the cultures they’ve come to experience. That’s why visitors to Japan sometimes transgress local customs, running after geishas to take photographs or eating while walking, a taboo among the Japanese. 

National Geographic points out how overtourism also saps the joy of travel. “It can ruin the experience of sightseeing for those trapped in long queues, unable to visit museums, galleries, and sites without advance booking, incurring escalating costs for basics like food, drink, and hotels, and faced with the inability to experience the wonder of a place in relative solitude.”

Can anything solve the problems of overtourism? You can choose less-visited spots to discover for yourself. It also helps to avoid viewing travel as consumption, like wine tasting; there’s more to the world than fine hotels, spas, and premium dining. And most particularly you can adopt the sensitivity of an anthropologist and tune in to other cultures. In this way you can make your visit a positive experience both for your hosts and for yourself as a guest.

Fences and Friends

Years ago I spent seven weeks with my wife, Merry, in Sri Lanka, a green paradise of mango trees and tea plantations, warm tropical seas and gentle Buddhist people. In the resort town of Hikkaduwa we stayed – cheaply, at off-season rates – at an oceanfront hotel. A low fence marked off the hotel’s portion of beach as private property. 

Vendors walked along outside the fence, selling colorful clothing and handcrafts. But the hotel manager forbade them to come inside. The idea, I suppose, was to prevent souvenir peddlers from bothering guests, but the unfortunate effect was to seal off foreign travelers from contact with Sri Lankans. To us, the fence symbolized the barrier that often rises between hosts and guests.

Merry and I jumped this barrier simply by leaving the hotel grounds and strolling down the beach a few miles. As we walked, sea turtles swam in the jade Indian Ocean and coconut palms swayed as if they were auditioning for parts in Blue Lagoon. Children scooted over to giggle hellos. 

We came to a river that emptied into the ocean. Two men were sitting in a small boat. Because nothing is more fascinating than the mouth of a river – through what hidden provinces has it come? – we asked if they’d ferry us upstream and arrived at a fair price. 

Our fingers trailed in the warm water as we glided upriver under a sapphire sky. The boatmen pointed out passing birds and told us their melodious names in Sinhalese. After a while the river entered a lake that shimmered with the iridescent colors of peacock feathers. 

But wait: What was that big lizard doing in the water near our boat? (“The breaststroke,” said Merry.) Our guides said it was a goanna, a four-foot-long monitor that’s common in Sri Lanka’s waters. 

They pointed the canoe toward a wooded island at the center of the lake. We saw that someone had spread out laundry – all of it orange, for some reason – on bushes to dry. People lived out here! Our boatmen explained that the island was populated by Buddhist monks, who all wear saffron robes. 

I asked if we could go ashore and visit. That’s impossible, they said – couldn’t we see the sign? “NO FOREIGNERS.” A few months earlier, it seemed, young German travelers had also found their way to this hidden lake, and the heavenly water enticed them to strip-off their clothes and go skinny-dipping. The monks got an eye-popping view of naked European girls, and this apparently haunted their meditations for some time. After that, the head monk outlawed visits from foreigners.

For an old anthropologist like me it was, as they say, a teachable moment. The same way our hotel fenced out Sri Lankan locals to stop them from “bothering” foreign travelers, this remote island was declared off-limits to ensure that travelers didn’t disturb the Sri Lankans. 

The situation might have been dismaying unless viewed through the focused lens of anthropology. I saw that the reverent Buddhist culture of Sri Lanka couldn’t encounter the freewheeling society of the West without some head-on collisions. 

I felt lucky to be there to log the crash. And by assimilating what I learned here, maybe I could ease the negative impacts of my own travels.

Our boat floated back down the river to the ocean. As Merry and I started walking home along the beach, a little girl of about six scampered up to us and, smiling shyly, took Merry’s hand and gently tugged her toward a nearby house. 

The house had no fence to keep strangers away. Her mother came outside, introducing herself as Amitha, and invited us to sit in her garden. 

A tall palm tree grew there and she gestured to her eight-year-old boy, who climbed it easily with a machete in one hand. At the top he cut off the biggest fruit, known as the “king coconut.” Back down in the garden he hacked off the top and offered us a drink from nature’s own punchbowl. Our hosts thereby honored their guests.

Amitha’s house was painted in tropical pastels and decorated with photographs of her and her family standing alongside visitors from all over the world. We sat talking and laughing and becoming friends. At last we had to say goodbye, but not before taking pictures and trading addresses. We thanked Amitha and her children for the travelers’ treasure of their open door. 

When we got home to California, Merry and Amitha wrote letters, their words winging through the air more than 9,000 miles to speak from one world to another. 

As a fledgling anthropologist of tourism, I had learned the most important lesson in the whole curriculum: Friendship is a magic key for travelers. It doesn’t simply open doors; it opens hearts.