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Neo-Tribes and Traditional Tribes: Identity Construction and Interaction of Tourists and Highland People in a Village in Northern Thailand
Abstract
"The construction of identities is a social practice performed to provide identification with or opposition to the identity of other people during a process of social interaction. Individuals within groups express similar identities to identify with the others in a group, and as a group to express a difference to other groups in order to differentiate themselves, create boundaries, and otherwise separate themselves for particular purposes. Groups form their identity from the individuals within the group. And the individuals construct their identities from the wealth of their particular experience, knowledge and creativity, from the past, present and expected future. Added to this they draw from aspects of identity in their environment, selecting, expressing, discarding, choosing and adopting those that are appropriate for a particular time and place. The construction of identities is an ongoing enterprise that comes into play continuously as an action or reaction in a social context. Examining the expressed identities during a specific interaction can lead to the understanding of the reasons for the expression of those identities, and thus illuminate not only the interaction itself but also the processes at work that have brought the individual or group to a specific point in time and place whereby the expressed identities are entirely appropriate to those expressing them. "This study concerns two diverse groups of people, tourists and highland people. In order to understand why tourists go trekking into the hills of northern Thailand to see the highland people who live there, the specific point of interaction between the two groups within a highland village was examined. The two groups of people involved are very different. For the purpose of this study, the tourists are conceptualised as a neo-tribe, and the highland people as a traditional tribe."
... This is, at least, the pessimistic view sustained by some scholars who consider the trekking economy to be highly destructive of the natural and social environment and who compare it to a form of slash-and-burn agriculture. 3 However, other scholars hold a more nuanced view and underline that the trekking economy can also offer real opportunities for villagers, despite the unavoidable pitfalls that need to be mitigated (McKerron 2003;Chupinit and Kulawadee 1995;Bartsch 2000). How can such mitigation be realistically conducted in a context where private interests far outstrip the regulatory capacity of the local authorities? ...
... The homology of these tourists is such that specific individuals (self) are interchangeable within the collective (crowd) (McKerron, 2003). Their shared experiences of RV camping help shape their identity and 'lead some to newly identify as freedom campers, "swinging" away from traditional camping production to freedom sites for some of their camping consumption' (Caldicott et al., 2014, p. 422). ...
Rapid growth of recreational vehicle (RV)-based camping is challenging traditional models centred on caravan park stays. Self-contained RV technology and social change facilitate stays outside of regulated commercial caravan park environments, shifting use into unregulated contexts. This disruption fuels heated stakeholder and political discourse in local to national jurisdictions. A current lack of conceptual clarity around camping allows ideological differences to dominate such discourse and conceals significant changes in practice. The RV camping framework purposely addresses this by providing conceptual clarity and facilitating semantic transparency to mitigate camping's growing complexity. Centred on the mobilities paradigm, it embeds the theories of panoptic gaze, recreation specialisation and networked sociality to explain RV camping's temporal, spatial and social dimensions. The four practice-based pre-trip and in-trip determinants and two key environments reveal relevant traits and indicators for a holistic consideration of the phenomenon. The framework provides a foundational reference for future discourse and study of the RV camping phenomenon.
... This is, at least, the pessimistic view sustained by some scholars who consider the trekking economy to be highly destructive of the natural and social environment and who compare it to a form of slash-and-burn agriculture. 3 However, other scholars hold a more nuanced view and underline that the trekking economy can also offer real opportunities for villagers, despite the unavoidable pitfalls that need to be mitigated (McKerron 2003;Chupinit and Kulawadee 1995;Bartsch 2000). How can such mitigation be realistically conducted in a context where private interests far outstrip the regulatory capacity of the local authorities? ...
... It is a way for individual members to connect, engage, and relate to one another, and develop a type of "affective nebula", or aesthetic collective consciousness . McKerron (2003) cites the scene of a roadside café in northern Thailand, bustling with tourists. By identifying each other as tourists through the evident extraneous trademarks such as cameras and a shared foreign language, interchangeable conversation and connection develops and grows before they disperse into the tropical greenery of the Thai landscape. ...
This collection brings together perspectives drawn from a range of international scholars who have conducted research into the applications of neo-tribal theory. The concept of the neo-tribe was first introduced by the French sociologist Michel Mafessoli (1996) to describe new forms of social bonds in the context of late modernity. This book critically explores the concepts that underpin neo-tribal theory, using perspectives from different disciplines, through a series of theoretically informed and empirically rich chapters. This innovative approach draws together a recently emergent body of work in cultural consumption, tourism and recreation studies. In doing so, the book critically progresses the concept of neo-tribe and highlights the strengths, weaknesses and the opportunities for the application of neo-tribal theory in an interdisciplinary way.
... It is a way for individual members to connect, engage, and relate to one another, and develop a type of "affective nebula", or aesthetic collective consciousness (Maffesoli 1996). McKerron (2003) cites the scene of a roadside café in northern Thailand, bustling with tourists. Through identifying each other as tourists through the evident extraneous trademarks such as cameras and a shared foreign language, interchangeable conversation and connection develops and grows before they disperse into the tropical greenery of the Thai landscape. ...
The purpose of this chapter is to explore how users of the popular geo-spatial networking app, Grindr, approach and engage with a function in the interface called ‘Tribes’. This function allows users to select which Tribe they identify with and to search for others of a specific Tribe, and reference a unique set of subcultures and subgroups replete within the gay community. Through the use of interview data, it becomes clear that Tribes as a function on Grindr’s interface is a very rigid and exclusionary method of expressing one’s identity, and has problematic implications for those exploring their sexual identity. However, participants also described the creative way in which they approach Tribal identity, the deeper connections that it assists them in forging with the community, and the social and cultural importance that Tribes possess. Maffesoli’s conception of neo-tribes assists in unpacking this interesting duality, and highlights that as a form of social/personal identity, Tribes on Grindr are inherently neo-tribal in nature; however, Grindr’s approach to incorporating this form of identity into the interface is at heavy odds with neo-tribalism.
... 7 Así, la vida de éstas es frágil, surgen en un momento de condensación instantánea, pero enfrentan constantemente el peligro de evaporarse, junto con la energía y dedicación que durante cierto tiempo dio la apariencia de solidez. Este peligro de rápida evapo ración es también notado e l c a s o D e l c lu b M o r e l i a por McKerron (2003) al contrastar las tribus tradicionales, atadas éstas de cierta forma a un territorio determinado y con una cierta perdurabilidad en tiempo y espacio, con las neotribus, entendidas éstas como comunidades de sentimiento (extraterritoriales), empatía, y en todo momento formando comunidades (con lazos de corta temporalidad) intencionales. Para efectos de este trabajo, la comunidad político-identitaria que ofrece el Estado-nación, se trataría de un estadio intermedio entre la tribu tradicional y las neotribus florecientes en la era de la posmodernidad. ...
La Modernidad ha tenido como una doble característica, por un lado, la creencia en el progreso y, por otro, la aniquilación de los acuerdos societales y económicos “tradicionales”. Sin embargo, dentro de esta incesante revolución el individuo moderno encontró en el Estado-nación un reemplazo o anclaje. La volatilidad de la modernidad sólida fue controlada o limitada por medio de la identidad y la pertenencia “nacional”. Dentro de la modernidad líquida, el anclaje moderno del Estado-nación es cuestionado. Un estudio de caso sobre el Club Morelia del fútbol mexicano analiza el anclaje-volatilidad en el fútbol desde 1981, estudiando al jugador, a las plantillas de jugadores, a los directores técnicos y al aficionado. El objetivo es analizar las consecuencias que la volatilidad de los principales actores del fútbol tiene no sólo para el fútbol sino para la sociedad posmoderna en general.
In today’s saturated media environment, advertising messages populate every part of the landscape, causing advertisers to seek new ways to break through the clutter and reach potential consumers. Against this backdrop, a renewed form of selling messages emerges, which continues to develop in pace with ongoing shifts within the advertising and mass media landscapes. This article analyzes the evolving phenomenon of human billboarding. Beginning with an examination of the history of this practice, the paper moves beyond the usual “end of the world as we know it” position of related research and seeks more productive ways to understand this new form of corporate messaging as a strategy for addressing social realities through carnivalesque performance.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000 This dissertation is an ethnography that offers a critical analysis of issues in contemporary conservation politics in Thailand. By examining the development of the dominant nature conservation ideology and the response by the Karen, a group of ethnic hill people, to changing patterns of environmental control, the dissertation focuses on two main themes. The first part covers the Thai forest history and the role of development of scientific forestry in shaping discourses and practices of Thai nature conservation. The latter part explores Karen ecological knowledge and its challenge to the modern conservation paradigm.Central to the dissertation is the argument that "hill tribes," "nature" and "conservation" in Thailand are not only constructions but are also constantly "under construction." The questions of how the dominant nature conservation ideology has been constructed and how this ideology has been contested are the key issues of this dissertation. By tracing the historical development of forestry in Thailand, this study shows how Thai nature conservation is a product of a social and political economic transformation in which shifting conceptions of the forest represents an essential part of the modernization of the Thai nation. The colonial legacy of commercial forestry, the desire for modernization, and the use of natural resources for developmental purposes are fundamental to the establishment of nature conservation in urban Thai society. The making of nature conservation represents a significant form of technology of government that involves the creation of certain institutions, knowledge, and bureaucratic rationality. As the state is not an undifferentiated entity, internal bureaucratic politics have also significantly shaped the ways resources have been differently viewed and utilized by different state agencies. In analyzing the mentality shared among foresters and some nature conservationists, this study suggests that the efficacy of conservation ideology lies not only in the power of scientific forestry to transform perceptions of landscape and the relationships linking landscape with certain groups of people, but also in the capability to blend such perceptions into the existing structure of class and ethnic inequality. As a result, class differentiation and ethnic discrimination have become an integral part of the structure of nature conservation ideology in Thai society.The second part of this dissertation examines the ways in which Karen knowledge has problematized the construction and centralization of the state's modern conservation paradigm. In encounters with contemporary conservation politics, Karen ecological knowledge represents a dynamic and responsive mode of conceptualizing nature developed out of interactions among competing discourses and knowledge of various social groups. Local challenge to dominant forestry ideologies has therefore been constituted through the appropriation of foreign knowledge such as mapping and the invention of local tradition in resource management. This study shows that the Karen adoption of certain terminologies, such as community forest and rotational swidden agriculture, manifested in local maps has provided them with a communicative device for use in dialogues with forestry officials as well as with non-government organizations. These counter-discourses have been employed by the Karen as a strategic tool to defend their resources and to re-situate the marginal space and identity of the Karen within the dominant Thai society. In this respect, reinvented forms of local knowledge are generated through ongoing encounters between the dominating and dominated ideas and practices with regard to nature conservation in the Karen struggle for recognition within the dominant Thai society.
'Imagined Communities' examines the creation & function of the 'imagined communities' of nationality & the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism & printing & the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.
These essays chart the cultural constraints of 'ethnicity' in American history and culture. Sollors' introductory essay sets the framework for the discussion of ethnicity and the individual essays cover a wide range of topics: Native American, Latin-American, historical Jewish, nineteenth-century American German, American Jewish, Italian, and Afro-American.
This collection of papers by sociologists and anthropologists focuses on the effect of tourism on the maintenance, transformation, and re-creation of ethnic boundaries. Tourism is seen as a special form of ethnic relations, particularly that form of tourism in which the cultural exoticism of the host population is the principal attraction for the tourist. This type of tourism leads to the formation of three main roles: tourist, touree, and middleman. The authors address different aspects of the marketing of ethnicity, such as the role of the state in the development of ethnic tourism; the modification and recreation of ethnic attributes and consciousness as the result of tourism; the transformation of art forms through the tourist trade; the role of the tourist agent; and the formation of ethnic stereotypes in tourist interactions.RésuméIntroduction: le tourisme et l'ethnicité recréée. Un groupe de sociologues et d'ethnologues examine l'effet du tourisme sur le maintien, la transformation et la recréation des frontières ethniques. Ils considèrent le tourisme comme un cas spécial de rapports ethniques, en particulier cette forme de tourisme dans laquelle l'exotisme culturel de la population autochtone constitue la principale attraction touristique. Ce type tourisme produit trois rǒles principaux: touriste, “touree,” et intermédiaire. Les auteurs de cette collection d'articles se consacrent à différents aspects du “marché de l'ethnicité”, tels que le rǒle de l'état dans le dévelopment du tourisme ethnique; la modification et la re-création d'attributs et de la conscience ethniques en conséquence du tourisme; la transformation des formes artistques par le commerce touristique; le rǒle de l'agent de tourisme; et la formation de stéréotypes ethniques dans les interactions touristiques.
About the book: This innovative book sets out to question what we understand by the term `new social movements'. By examining a range of issues associated with identity politics and alternative lifestyles, the author challenges those who treat new social movements as instances of wider social change while often ignoring their more `local' and `dispersed' importance. This book questions what it means to adopt an identity that is organised around issues of expressivism - and offers a series of non-reductionist ways of looking at identity politics. Hetherington analyzes expressive identities through issues of performance, spaces of identity and `the occasion'. This important work shows how the significance of identity politics are at once local, plural, situated and topologically complex.
This radical new analysis of international politics reveals the crucial role of women in implementing governmental foreign policies, be it Soviet Glasnost, Britain's dealings in the EEC, or the NATO alliance. Cynthia Enloe pulls back the curtain on the familiar scenes - governments restricting imported goods, bankers negotiating foreign loans, soldiers serving overseas - and shows that the real landscape is less exclusively male. "Bananas, Beaches and Bases" shows how thousands of women tailor their marriages to fit the demands of state secrecy; how foreign policy would grind to a halt without secretaries to handle money transfers or arms shipments; and how women are working in hotels and factories around the world in order to service their governments' debts. Enloe also challenges common assumptions about what constitutes "international politics."She explains, for example, how turning tacos and sushi into bland fast foods affects relations between affluent and developing countries, and why a multinational banana company needs the brothel outside its gates. And she argues that shopping at Benneton, wearing Levis, working as a nanny (or employing one) or planning a vacation are all examples of foreign policy in action. Bananas, Beaches and Bases does not ignore our curiosity about arms dealers, the President's men or official secrets. But it shows why these conventional clues are not sufficient for understanding how the international political system works. In exposing policymakers' reliance on false notions of "feminity" and "masculinity," Enloe dismantles a seemingly overwhelming world system, exposing it to be much more fragile and open to change than we are usually led to believe.
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