Fifteen minutes in limbo: on the intricacies of rapport in multi-sited fieldwork on tourism

Introduction

The anthropological study of tourists is generally characterized by a somewhat ambivalent attitude of the researcher towards his or her subjects. There is a tendency among tourism scholars to treat tourists as ‘part-persons’ (Graburn and Barthel-Bouchier, 2001: 149), who, as a result of the focus of our analyses, are often reduced to a sociologically systematized category within the interplay of the ‘tourist gaze’ (Urry, 1990). Moreover, as Veijola and Jokinen have argued, it is not only the tourist who ‘has lacked a body’, the analyst too is presented as a ‘pure mind, free from bodily and social subjectivity’, implicitly indicating that in the analysis of field experiences ‘the distance required by the so-called scientific objectivity’ is taken up (1994: 149; italics in original). However, not only may anthropologists and tourists be seen as ‘distant relatives’ (Crick, 1995: 205), the experiences of tourists also ‘are not fixed, self-contained entities’ (Bruner, 2005: 23) but merge with our ethnography in the field. Following Bruner, the borders between tourism and ethnography are rather hazy, and the line between subject and object becomes obscure (Bruner, 2005: 23).

In this article I discuss a particular interval of 15 minutes that occurred during my fieldwork on the cultural meeting between tourists and Indigenous people in Northern Australia. The incident serves to illustrate how it was only through recognition of my own bodily and social subjectivity in shaping the evolving ethnography (cf. Fabian, 1990), that I could finally see beyond the part-personhood tourists are habitually granted. I will argue that in order to understand the intercultural meeting between tourists and their ‘hosts’, we need to bring into view the performances of both Indigenous people and tourists, not as part-persons but as fully embodied individuals. Indeed, precisely through an analysis ‘of embodiment and the sensory modalities of experiencing the particularity of the world through the travel encounter’, we may come to perceive the affective potential of their meeting (Fullagar, 2001: 173).

The ethnographic episode, on which this article is based, is taken from one of the sites where I have carried out my fieldwork (Tonnaer, 2008). Between 2004 and 2006 I conducted, during several periods, a total of approximately 11 months of fieldwork in and around Katherine, a small tourist town in North Australia. Manyallaluk Cultural Tours was one of three Indigenous tourism enterprises I studied, and was situated about 100 km southeast of Katherine. Since its beginning in the early 1990s, Manyallaluk Cultural Tours has developed into an iconic Aboriginal cultural tourist experience, owing to the (at that time uniquely) homely and intimate manner of presenting ‘culture’, as well as the enterprise’s (comparative) endurance in the fragile field of Aboriginal cultural tourism.

Starting from the premise that, hitherto, touristic encounters had been studied either from the side of the ‘hosts’ or that of the tourist ‘guests’, the focus in my research was on the interactive features of the encounter, taking the face-to-face meeting as the basis for my research. My approach resulted in a multi-sited as well as multi-sided view, following Marcus’s notion of a strategically situated fieldwork (1998: 95). The complexities of the ensuing multi-situated engagements I was faced with in the field led towards the following revelatory moment about the nature of the field and my position in it.

To buy or not to buy

It was early October 2004 and business as usual at Manyallaluk. The community’s small-scale tourism enterprise was expecting visitors for another cultural day tour. I had been doing fieldwork there since the start of the tourist high season in May. Slowly, the tourist season was drawing to a close. The ‘build up’ to the wet season had commenced: as the temperatures were rising, tourists were leaving the Top End. However, this particular morning there was still a small group of visitors who had come through another travel company; the day tour at Manyallaluk was part of a larger luxury style camping tour. The group consisted of a young German-French couple on their honeymoon, an elderly man from Bavaria in Germany, two enthusiastic pensioners from Perth and Tim, a middle-aged man from Melbourne. ¹

Their tour started, after an introductory tea, with a guided walk during which they would be told about the traditional use of plants and trees for bush foods, medicine and tools. The walk was followed by a copious lunch. During lunch I sat at the same table as the visitors, listening to their travel stories – a favourite, recurring topic between fellow tourists. The group was at the start of their camping tour, and in the process of getting to know each other as temporary travel companions. Like the rest of the group I listened to Tim, the tourist from Melbourne, who was loudly expanding on his abundant travel experiences. He was presenting himself as a man who understood the ways of the world. I observed how the others at the table were, non-verbally, bracing themselves for having to listen to more of such boasting during the rest of their trip.

At one point, I was queried about my presence there. As I habitually did during each tour, I duly explained who I was and what kind of research I was trying to do at Manyallaluk, including my interest in their – the tourists’ – experiences. Tim did not hesitate one moment to enlighten me. He said he had seized the opportunity to join the tour when it arose. He and his wife had travelled a lot and visited many countries related to their university jobs. Travelling appeared almost a matter of course – it was part of their lifestyle.

However, by mentioning his wife I suddenly became aware of her absence. I realized that upon the group’s arrival in the morning I had taken him for a married man. Indeed, reflexively I had noted his being alone. Tim mentioned that they had made their last journey together in January of that year. And then, a few months later, she had passed away. As he told of her passing I saw how he had to fight back his tears. He stated that he did not want to stay at home alone. He was, he said, determined to continue travelling in the way he had done with her. Clearly, at that moment, the decision appeared more a matter of the mind than of the heart. The tour of which the day at Manyallaluk was part, was his first as a widowed man.

I did not know what to say. Tim seemed to have a need to make his status as recently widowed known to me on the one hand, yet simultaneously he did not want to draw further attention to his personal situation and, obviously, he did not want to be pitied. The slight irritation that I had felt towards him up until then made way for a more layered sentiment; even though I still did not appreciate his somewhat pedantic posturing, I empathized with his unwanted solitude as well as with his efforts to overcome it by going on this tour. In other words, Tim had suddenly gained a more multifaceted individuality beyond that of a mere, slightly conceited tourist.

After lunch I followed the group in their cultural activities during the rest of the day. Accordingly, I watched them paint with traditional brushes, throw spears at an imaginary target, learn how to weave a basket and try to light a fire by rubbing two sticks together. As part of the programme, at the end of each tour day, Jimmy, one of the Indigenous guides, took them to the art and crafts centre, so as to give them the opportunity to buy a small souvenir or a piece of art. The group dispersed to different corners of the exhibition room. The enthusiastic pensioners from Perth bought a small painting of a turtle so that they, as they explained, would have a good example of how traditional painting should be done, as compared to their own sorry attempts earlier in the afternoon. The rest of the group left after a quick look around.

Tim, however, was drawn to a large painting, which was made by Jimmy. I observed Tim’s lingering in front of it rather uneasily. What Tim did not know was that a few months earlier a new tour coordinator had been appointed at Manyallaluk, who in my view had a somewhat capricious nature in relation to his work. For instance, towards the tourists whom he had to drive back and forth between Manyallaluk and Katherine, he often assumed an expert role, which bordered on a rather unlikeable mixture of overzealousness and outright hostility. He treated tourists (and the anthropologist) as typically insensitive non-locals. Furthermore, being responsible for pricing the artwork, the pieces had seen a steep and rather unfounded increase in price as compared to the pricing done by the previous tour coordinator. In the case of this particular painting, his calculation had been based more on Jimmy’s relentless efforts as a tour guide than on a consideration of the complex dynamics of supply and demand that determine the valuation of Aboriginal artwork. He was working hard, and in the coordinator’s view deserved some extra income as an appropriate acknowledgement. Although I did not disagree about Jimmy’s devotion to his work as a tour guide, I had my doubts about the coordinator’s strategy of showing his appreciation. More to the point, Jimmy’s painting was a fair piece of work, but in view of the supply in the shop and at other arts and craft galleries in the region considerably overpriced.

Both the tour coordinator and Jimmy were in the art and crafts room whilst Tim was contemplating aloud whether or not to buy the painting. I found it difficult to accept that Tim, who was proudly displaying his worldly wise view one last time by praising the artwork and in doing so exposing his lack of knowledge, would be paying too much. What was I to do? Should I stealthily inform Tim that the painting was overpriced, at the risk of being seen as an annoying know-it-all or nosy meddler? Or should I remain silent; thus granting Jimmy a little extra money? My engagement to the field was pushed into a tight corner. Shortly, Tim would disappear from my fieldwork stage, whereas I would meet and work with Jimmy again. So, whose side was I on? Should I be on anyone’s side in the first place? To what extent was my fieldwork about strategically safeguarding my entrance to relevant data and to what extent did I allow for an embodied intersubjectivity and, accordingly, my own sense of justice to interfere here? How could I connect with both the affluent but uninformed tourist and the underprivileged tour guide? For 15 long minutes Tim kept deliberating.

The trouble with multi-sided engagements

Before I turn to the conclusion of my 15 minutes in doubt, I want to discuss first why I consider this event crucial to the development of my understanding of my field of research. First, my response to Tim revealed that the field in my case consisted in practice of multiple interconnected fields, which posed serious questions for my positioning as a researcher and the possibilities for establishing rapport. Conducting fieldwork on such a mobile subject matter as tourism required a ‘willingness to “shift positions” ’ (Harrison, 2008: 56). Indeed, others (e.g. Frohlick and Harrison, 2008) have suggested that one of the problems inherent in doing ethnography on tourism arises from the difficulty of physically situating ourselves in the field, which generally leads to an ‘either/or approach’: either ‘hosts’ or ‘guests’ are our primary research subjects (see also Stronza, 2001; Tonnaer, 2008, 2010).

Second, whether or not my observations of Tim’s grief were accurate is irrelevant. As Hastrup (1993: 181) writes, ‘we can never “know” individuals as subjects; nor can we “understand” them, as if they were truly objects; what we, as ethnographers, can know, is the space which they are prepared to share with us.’ In this social space, however, it was my personal experience of a growing empathy for Tim, initiated by an ‘intimacy of embodiment’ (Swain, 2004: 112), that formed an important step towards my understanding of the field and a pointer for the theoretical direction of my study. Before elaborating on this, I will expand somewhat more on my study and related fieldwork; both set off as part of a PhD project.

My research focused on the interactive encounters between Australian Aborigines and tourists – domestic as well as international – in Indigenously owned and operated tourism enterprises in North Australia. In the contemporary Australian context, Indigenous cultural tourism is presented as a treasure trove of economic and sociocultural opportunities, both in alleviating the plight of Aborigines in socioeconomic and cultural terms and in encouraging cross-cultural dialogue. In this upbeat rhetoric the trope of ‘culture sharing’ is omnipresent. I however questioned what it means to share culture, what it is that is actually being shared and also how one shares such a complex and contested notion as culture, at least as seen from the common anthropological interest.

In approaching the social field of tourism, I took the actual interactive encounter as my starting point. It is only through studying the diversity of interests and interpretations with which the tourist encounter is endowed that one can obtain an appropriate grasp of the vibrant field of tourism. This methodological stance effectively implicates a departure from slotting both tourists and Indigenous actors into cultural stereotypes that largely inform their input in the cultural interface. More to the point, tourists in particular bear the brunt of anthropological scepticism and sometimes even disdain. As Crick (1995) has pointed out, anthropologists are reluctant to recognize their kinship with tourists. Yet, he also writes that as anthropologists we

. . . cannot caricature all tourists as being ignorant of the world in which they move and as uninterested in learning more. To do so, in fact, is to indulge in that form of loathing and snobbery which very much forms part of the tourism world itself, whereby every type of tourist feels superior to some other supposedly less sophisticated type of tourist. (Crick, 1995: 209)

In other words, precisely the kind of snobbery that Cricks describes is thus revealing of our mutual affiliation.

But the common response to tourists bears another aspect of an anthropological ‘culture of research’. Part of the anthropological inability to associate oneself to tourists as research subjects comes from our preference for what Marcus (1998) has called the ‘subaltern’. Indeed, much earlier, Nader (1972: 303) noted already ‘that anthropologists value studying what they like and liking what they study and, in general, we prefer the underdog’. There is an inclination endemic to our discipline – Forsey (2004: 68) suggests it is almost a cultural imperative – to critique the ‘bourgeois middle-class life of liberal societies (Marcus and Fisher, 198: 111)’ and privilege the perspectives of the domineered and the powerless. Forsey, in writing on his fieldwork positioning in a high school setting, also clearly shows how this inclination to harbour a certain disdain for the bourgeois middle class may in fact be impeding, as he puts it, the ‘development of productive research in home settings’ (Forsey, 2004: 68). In her study on Aboriginality in the outer suburbs of Sydney, Cowlishaw wonders too whether the anthropological desire to side with subalterns is not based on obsolete and obstructive assumptions. She suggests that ‘the fear of being “complicit” in colonial or neo-colonial power’ may lead to a habitual positioning of the powerful ‘as the enemy of those we are researching’ (Cowlishaw, 2009: 226). As Nader points out, studying up does not exclude studying down; rather, the chosen strategy, i.e. studying up, down or sideways, depends on the research problem at hand (Nader, 1972: 292).

In the case of Indigenous cultural tourism in Australia the dynamic of this privileging of the subaltern perspective has been predominantly expressed by viewing the tourist encounters through the prism of the power inequity embedded in the tourism industry. In effect, we as researchers seem to have placed ourselves ‘safely’ outside the analytical frame. Moreover, this approach has, to some extent, resulted in a disregard of the meanings Aborigines themselves bestow on the encounter (Tonnaer, 2008). In addition, in looking at Indigenous–non-Indigenous relations, the ethnographic emphasis has thus far largely been on Indigenous subjectivity. Yet, to understand the nature of this particular type of tourist encounter it is necessary to look at the roles of the other actors as well, including tourists.

Consequently, using a multi-sited as well as a multi-sided approach I set out to study the encounter from various perspectives. This implied that my focus of attention had to shift to other perspectives than merely that of the subaltern. Apart from looking at Aboriginal views on working in tourism as well as the role and performance of the cultural brokers, my interest was in what tourists make of their encounter with a cultural Other.

However, comparable to Muir’s (2004: 187) experience during his fieldwork on the New Age in Australia, there is a difference between the concept of multi-sited ethnography and its implied practice of actual multi-local fieldwork. In particular, the traditional notion of building special rapport with your informants during a lengthy period of cohabitation becomes an intimidating ideal, which is often beyond reach in multi-sited fieldwork. In the case of a transient group of research subjects such as tourists this becomes an even more pressing issue, since the tourist field site is not a fixed geographical space (Kaul, 2004: 34). The challenge is, according to Frohlick and Harrison (2008: 5–6), ‘to situate ourselves strategically and unobtrusively in a “contact zone” where meaningful and at least somewhat sustained encounters will transpire’. Accordingly, some anthropologists take up work in the tourism industry to get close to tourists (e.g. Kaul, 2004); some become tourists temporarily (e.g. Harrison, 2008); others travel along as tour guides or as researchers openly disguised as tourists (e.g. Bruner, 2005). During my fieldwork, I began by participating in the tours as a tourist. After a couple of months, as a matter of course, I slid into a role that positioned me in a nexus between the Indigenous tour guides and the cultural brokers. In Marcus’s categorization, I conducted a ‘strategically situated’ fieldwork, which should be ‘thought of as a foreshortened multi-sited project’ (1998: 95).

But although I was aware of persistent preconceptions of tourists and determined not to step into that pitfall, it was only during my encounter with Tim that I realized that up until then I had, in fact, treated tourists as ‘part-persons’. Indeed, Graburn and Barthel-Bouchier write that it is no wonder that many researchers have concluded that tourists do not look like ‘us’, as in many studies tourists have been observed ‘like swimmers off the beach’, locating only the visible parts, those above the water (2001: 149). In other words, we tend to forget that ‘ “tourist” is a situational transitory term, as well as an identity. Being a tourist is not a fixed category; it is something adopted episodically in people’s lives’ (Frohlick and Harrison, 2008: 6).

As Graburn and Barthel-Bouchier have argued, one way out of this lopsided perception is to re-embody tourists in our analysis. They point to new research in which tourists are allowed a more holistic personification, by going beyond the notion of the ‘tourist gaze’ and relocating the tourist in his or her body (Swain, 2004; see also Fullagar, 2001; Veijola and Jokinen, 1994). Particularly relevant has been the use of the notion of performativity for looking at tourism practices (e.g. Adler, 1989; Bærenholdt et al., 2004; Coleman and Crang, 2002; Edensor, 1998, 2000; Tonnaer, 2008, 2010). Bruner, in particular, has suggested that the basic metaphor of tourism should be theatre (Bruner, 2005: 209). He points to the creative, cultural production that occurs in what he terms ‘the touristic borderzone’. He compares the ‘touristic borderzone’ to an empty stage waiting for performance time’ (p. 192). Both tourists and ‘natives’ move in and out of the borderzone; however, whereas for tourists the zone is a space of ‘leisure and exoticization’, the natives regard it as a ‘site of work and cash income’ (p. 192).

Indeed, the idea that ‘locals’ involved in tourism may retain certain performative strategies in their cultural representations towards tourists is well accepted (e.g. Bunten, 2008; Senft, 1999). However, elaborating on Bruner I propose that we see this cultural production as an interactive process involving both locals and tourists. Indeed, when we position travel, as Fullagar argues (2001: 172), ‘as a performative space where the conventional morality and rules of western culture and exchange are rendered uncertain, negotiable and full of possibility’, we may see beyond tourists as clichéd ‘cardboard cut-out’ images and allow for their creative, sensual contribution to the establishment of a successful encounter. They are, in fact, complicit in establishing the interaction.

Furthermore, and this is where my shared social experience with Tim has been specifically insightful, recognizing the performativity of tourists also opens up the possibility of imagining life beyond the holiday. This may seem stating the obvious, but whereas numerous life histories have been recorded for and with Indigenous people (e.g. Shostak, 1981), the label ‘tourist’ has been, culturally, a rather narrow straightjacket. Yet, tourists’ performances, just like that of their hosts, may be inspired by other values that relate to their particular histories external to the immediate tourist experience. Indeed, even though Tim’s values were not similar to those of Jimmy the tour guide or the antagonistic tour coordinator, and their meeting may have been perceived differently, it was deemed successful by all parties nonetheless.

Additionally, elaborating on Graburn and Barthel-Bouchier (2001), apart from re-embodying tourists, I suggest we need to recognize our own bodily and emotional engagement and performance as researchers in the field. Fabian’s (1990) distinction between informative and performative ethnography is particularly apposite here. Rather than viewing the ethnographer as collecting and decoding data in isolation from the sociality in which they are embedded, the notion of performative ethnography recognizes that ‘cultural knowledge is always mediated by “acting” ’ (1990: 7). An emphasis on performance thus shows that the anthropologist is part of the situation he or she wants to report on, ‘he or she is but a provider of occasions, a catalyst in the weakest sense, and a producer (in analogy to a theatrical producer) in the strongest’ (Fabian, 1990). Further, as Longhurst et al. (2008: 213) rightly argue, by ‘discussing our own bodies as researchers and our participants’ bodies, we can begin to establish relationships’. Indeed, they note that there is ‘a political imperative in recognising the Other within the Self’ (p. 214; see also Tamisari, 2006). Conceding and writing our own bodily and social subjectivity into the analysis of the messiness of ethnography may be particularly pointed for tourism studies, in which the sceptic, purportedly scientific objective gaze always looms large to demarcate ‘us’ anthropologists from ‘them’ – the tourists (see Veijola and Jokinen, 1994). Precisely my corporeal sense of discomfort of experiencing a somewhat split allegiance, having to observe Tim deliberate purchasing the painting, gave me valuable insight into my position in the field as well as into the intercultural nature of that field. The conclusion of my encounter with Tim may illustrate this.

Conclusion: ‘Keeping money moving’

As both the artist of the painting and the person who had priced it were in the same room, I obviously felt I could not openly question the price. However, subtly I tried to divert Tim’s attention, proposing that he would not have to decide now; he could have the piece put aside for him for a few days, and always send a cheque later when he had made up his mind. Tim did not pick up on my hint. He firmly replied that money was not the issue, rather the fear of regretting not having bought it, was what disturbed him.

So after another five minutes of lingering in front of the painting, he decided to purchase it. Jimmy, the artist and tour guide, responded in his usual unassuming way. The tour coordinator however happily announced that Jimmy could finally bring his motorcycle to the workshop for repairs. In so doing revealing the rather instrumental role Tim had been assigned as well as the unusual high price of the piece. Tim seemed not to mind: you only live once.

During my training as an anthropologist, teachers would point out time as a factor of fieldwork. They would recall hours of sitting and waiting for something to happen. When first entering the field in 2001 my supervisor told me to shift gears – ‘shift to the lower ones – the fieldwork gears’; in other words: be very patient. However, multi-sidedness and multi-sitedness in fieldwork pose their own intricacies on the time factor, especially in relation to the establishment of rapport or ‘friendships’; with students being granted ever smaller amounts of time in the field, it is difficult not to hear the clock ticking constantly. This typical ‘anxiety over the assumption that we do not spend enough time with our subjects’ is in fact heightened when being in the ‘compressed timeframe characteristic of work with tourists’ (Frohlick and Harrison, 2008: 14).

But then there are moments like Tim’s deliberation, 15 dense minutes that helped determine the course of my analysis and shaped my reflexive understanding of the field I was in. To me the effect of conducting multi-sited fieldwork on our fieldwork engagements became painfully palpable in those minutes that it took Tim to decide that ‘money had to keep moving’. My ‘mobile positioning’ (Forsey, 2004) thwarted the establishment of enduring relations with my informants. Yet, as it emerged in this case, it would not have made sense to ‘speak up’ for Tim, when he did not want to be spoken for. Ultimately, it was not a matter of financial cost, or whose side I was on as a researcher. However, the often derisive and sometimes even hostile anonymity in which people are caught once they are labelled as tourists, both by other tourists and academics, was breached when I allowed Tim – this particular tourist – to enter into the ethnographic limelight as an individual. An embodied ethnographic intimacy, which Frohlick and Harrison (2008: 16) describe as the messy and often awkward ‘everyday, sensory, and proximate relations with others’, applied here in a double sense. I recognized the whole of Tim the tourist, by seeing beyond his temporary identity as tourist. And this could only happen by including myself in the performative research frame. It was not a matter of befriending Tim, and nor did I become close friends with my Indigenous informants. ² However, through including my affective responses I allowed for a simultaneous and vital empathy for people who differed in various complex ways.