The End of Tourism

On this episode, my guest is Craig Slee, a disabled writer, consultant and theorist dealing with mythology, folklore, magic and culture, exploring life through the lens of landscape, disability and fugitive embodiments.

He has contributed essays and poetry focusing on the numinous and disability to various anthologies including The Dark Mountain Journal. Craig has also co-facilitated multiple seminar series at the Dresden Academy for Fine Arts, regarding ableism in the arts, as well as how ableism affects our relationship to space. 

In 2023 he was one of the speakers at the World Futures Studies Federation 50th Anniversary Conference, introducing the concept of (Dis)abling Futures. Craig resides in the northwest of England.

Show Notes

Cornwall and the Seasons 

Who Gets to Decide What it Means to Know a Place?

The Folding in of Identity to Tourism

A Question of Productive vs Generative Ability

Ableism and Attention

Finger Bending and the Freedom of Movement

Redefining and Remembering Other Forms of Movement

What is Stillness?

The Dance of Mountains

Obeying Limits

Homework

Cold Albion (Craig’s Blog)

Goetic Atavisms (Hadean Press)

Craig’s Blue Sky Page | Facebook Page

Transcript

Chris: Welcome to the End of Tourism, Craig.

Craig: Thank you for having me.

Chris: Yes, it's great to be able to speak with you today. I've been ruminating for a couple of years now as to the themes that we might speak of. And I was introduced to you via a mutual friend and have come closer to your work via the Emergence Network's online gathering, We Will Dance With Mountains, in the last quarter of 2023.

And so, to begin, I'd like to ask you first where you find yourself today and what the world looks like for you, where you are.

Craig: Where I find myself today is by the canal in my flat, looking out the window, just as evenings coming in, in the northwest of England, in Lancaster, and it's chilly here which is actually a good thing, I guess, these days.

Chris: Perhaps I could ask you to elaborate a little bit on what Lancaster looks like, but I know that, you know, from our conversations previous that you grew up [00:01:00] in Cornwall, a place that was previously, a town, an area devoted to fishing and mining, and from what you've told me, it's also become a massive tourist trap that you know, from the little that I've seen online, that the area receives around 5 million visitors a year, and tourism makes up about a quarter of the local economy.

So I'm curious what you've seen change there and what do you think has happened to Cornwall and its people as a result and maybe there's something in there as well regarding Lancaster.

Craig: Yeah, so I should emphasize this. I was born in Cornwall. My family has been lived down there for many many generations anyway and my father's side of the family actually, at various points, worked in the tourist trade as well before they went on to other things.

And, [00:02:00] yeah, I mean, I left because, frankly, there was no jobs that weren't tourism. I came to Lancaster to study because one, I have a physical disability which means that Cornwall is a very rural area, so you need to drive everywhere, and that's fine, I drove at that point, but for good or ill, a more urban center was better for me later in life as I left.

But the way that it shifted, even in the years when I was growing up, was that, you know, essentially was a rural area where nothing really happened socially or culturally that much until the summer seasons. So, you were very, very aware of the seasons in terms of, you'd have visitors [00:03:00] starting, and that was when the town would wake up, and then it was kind of dead for the rest of the year, so it was very much one of those things where the tourist trade has actually made me more aware of human rhythms in the natural world than perhaps I would have been, because it's so based on seasonal stuff.

And just looking at the way the infrastructure because a lot of the towns and areas, they boomed a little bit well, quite a lot in certain areas with the tin mining of the 19th century. But a lot of the architecture and things like that was 19th century. So you had small villages and slightly larger towns, and they have very, well, I guess some people, if they were tourists, would call "quaint, narrow streets."

And when you have that many visitors, in the summer, you can't get down the streets. [00:04:00] You can't drive it because it's full of people walking. You know, there's an interesting anecdote I'd like to recount of when my father, he was a vicar, he was a priest, moved to a new area he would go to the local pub and all the locals would greet him as the priest and be like, very polite.

And then when it would come out that my dad was actually a local, that he was born down there and part of the family, everybody would relax. And there was this real sort of strange thing where people came and stayed because it was a lovely area, but there was still that whole issue with second homes and certainly keeping an eye on things from a distance here during the pandemic when people left cities during the pandemic, they went down there amongst places in Britain.

And that meant that, [00:05:00] literally, there were no houses for newly starting teachers, you know, teachers who had got jobs and were moving down there, couldn't find places to live because during the 2020 and sort of 2022 period, everything was just opening up either as Airbnb because there was this influx from the cities to the more rural areas because it was supposedly safer.

You know, and I feel like that's a reflex that is really interesting because most people think of it as, oh, "a tourist area," people go there for leisure, they go there to relax and get away from their lives, which is true, but under a stressful situation like a pandemic, people also flee to beautiful quotes isolated areas, so there's that real sense of pressure, I think and this idea that we weren't entirely sure, growing up, [00:06:00] whether we would have a place to live because a lot of the housing was taken up by people with second homes. And plenty of people I went to school with because it's a surfing area took the knowledge that they learned in the tourism trade, and actually left and went to Australia. And they live on the Gold Coast now. So it's this self perpetuating thing, you know?

Chris: Well, that leads me to my next question, which kind of centers around belonging and being rooted and learning to root, maybe even becoming a neighbor or some might say a citizen of a place.

And with tourism or a touristic worldview, we seem to be largely stunted in our ability to know a place, to become part of that place in any significant or enduring sense of the word. And so, I'm curious what your thoughts are on what it means to know a place, [00:07:00] and perhaps on the often mad rush to say I know a place for the sake of social capital, you know, given the context of the kind of relative difficulties that one might incur, or in a place like Cornwall, and the relative degree of exile that forces people out.

What do you think it means to know a place in the context of all of these economic pressures denying us that possibility, or at least making it really, really difficult.

Craig: I think we have a real problem in modernity with the idea of knowing as a sense of capture, right? So if I know you, I have this boundary of this shape, this outline of Chris, right, that I can hold, that I can grasp. And I think sometimes when we say, "oh, I know a place," or, "oh, I know a person" there's no concept of the [00:08:00] ongoing relationality. You know, you capture the image and then you keep it. And it's a whole construct of extractive knowledge that really, I think, comes down to the idea that the humans are the ones who get to decide what a place is, right?

So. I could say in the standard sense, "Oh, I know Cornwall because I, you know, I grew up there for nearly 20 years." My family has been there since about the 1500s. You know, "I know a place, it's in my bones." Yada yada yada. All the metaphors you want to use. But the fact of the matter is, the place itself influences me more than I influence it. So there's this strange sense of belonging in which modernity [00:09:00] says "I belong" or "it belongs to me" rather than perhaps the place has extended hospitality to me and allowed me to grow and I could live/work in a place for 30 years and never know it because we're not comfortable as a culture with the idea of going, "I don't know this place."

And it's a variety. It's always changing. And I think about all the times I used to watch the sea and talk to folks whose parents were fishermen or lifeboatmen, and they'd be like, "Yeah, we know the waters, but the waters can change. We know roughly what they do under certain conditions, but we don't know them completely, because they can always surprise us."

And So, when somebody says, "oh, you're from Cornwall, you're a Cornishman," and all that sense of identity, [00:10:00] I'm like, "yeah, but that's, that's both really fluid for me, because, you know, there's a lot of history." Is it the tourist world of the 20th and 21st century, or is it the farming and the mining that goes back to the Neolithic?

How we relate to a place purely in a modern sense isn't, to my mind anyway, the only way to conceive of belonging because, even though I'm now 300 miles away from there, I have its isotopes, its minerals from drinking the water in my teeth, you know. So, on some level, the idea that you have to be in a place also to belong to a place is something that I'm curious about because, there's this whole notion, [00:11:00] "you're only in the place and you've been in a place for this long and that means you know it and you're local." Whereas growing up, there was this sort of weird thing where it was like, "yeah, you might have been here 30 years and everybody knows you, but you're not a local." Right? You still belong, but there was this other category of " you're not local or something like that."

And so it's complicated, but I really do, for my personal take, tend to look at it as a, the landscape, or wherever it is, influences my sense of belonging in a non human context, or more than human context, if that makes sense.

Chris: Hmm. Yeah, there's so much there. Yeah. I mean, I'm also, in the context of identity, also wondering in what ways, not only has the tourism industry shaped one's identity of being local, which [00:12:00] is, I think, a huge issue in over touristed places in the last, you know, 10 or 20 years, as identity politics rises into the mainstream, and but then also not just the industry and the interaction with foreigners or, or guests, or tourists, but the way in which the image of that place is crafted through, often, ministries of culture or heritage, you know, so you could grow up in a place that isn't necessarily overly touristed or anything like that. But then have your identity crafted by these ideas of culture or heritage that the government's, federal and otherwise, have placed on people.

Craig: And especially because where I come from, Cornwall, actually had its own language, which died out, which was on the verge of dying out in the 19th century. And slowly there are more speakers of it now. And you go back there now and you'll find, [00:13:00] even when I was growing up it wasn't so prevalent, but you'll find a lot of the signs for the street signs will have the English and the Cornish.

So that's where the government has embraced this identity and enhanced it after people have been saying, you know, "this is a language we've rebuilt it. It's cousin to Welsh and Breton. We should use it. It's part of our identity and it's got folded into that." And so the infrastructure itself is now been part of that.

You know, those very same streets have a name that wasn't known for like, 50, 60, maybe to 80 years, and suddenly people are now deliberately using the old names in non English languages because of that. And it's very strange because, especially in the UK, what with all [00:14:00] of Brexit and all that, there is a very weird sense wherein the rest of England, i. e. North and London and those sort of areas don't understand because Cornwall was a peripheral area and much like Wales, there's a lot of distrust of central government. Hmm. So, you've got this whole construction of a personal identity of nobody actually really understands what goes on outside.

Either they're incomers, either they're emmets. You know, which "emmets" is the old English for "ants." Referring to tourists as ants in a kind of, yeah, they get everywhere. And the whole notion of who we are is always constructed. But in that case, going away and coming back to visit, I'm going, "Well that street didn't [00:15:00] have that label on it when I left. But it does now. And so in a certain sense it's the same place, but it's got this overlay of somewhere different that really enhances that sense of layers for me of "which Cornwall?" "Which of any of these places are we talking about?"

Like you say, is it the one you see on a picture postcard or an Instagram or is it the ones who sat there as kids going, right, 'there's nothing to do, let's go and drink in a field?' You know and all of these things can co exist.

Chris: Hmm, right. Yeah, I just interviewed a friend of mine, Christos Galanis, who did his PhD on hillwalkers, as well as homecomers in the Scottish Highlands, so people who spend their weekends climbing, summiting the Highland Mountains, and also the Canadian or Americans who travel to Scotland on heritage trips or ancestral [00:16:00] journeys. And he mentioned how in the Highlands that the governments have placed the original Gaelic place names on all of the the signs there, whether you're entering a village or perhaps on the street signs as well.

And that he said that something like "only three percent of the of the people in Scotland actually speak, speak Gaelic," so they see the sign, they see the name, the vast majority of people, and they have no idea what it means. And I also remember the last time I was in Toronto, which is where I'm from originally, or where I grew up.

And my family grew up in the east end of town, and the main thoroughfare in the east end of town is largely referred to as "Greek Town." You know, when I was a kid it was certainly Greek Town. The Greek letters, the Greek alphabet names as well as the English names of the street signs in that area.

But it's much, much, much less Greek than it was 25 years ago, right? So again, [00:17:00] this question of like, is that to some extent trying to solidify the kind of cultural geography of a place. That people come to that street and that neighborhood because they want to experience Greekness in its diasporic kind of context.

And yet, so many of those people, so many of those families have moved on or moved along or become more Canadian in their own sense of the word, so.

Craig: Yeah. It's very strange as well because things like that attract... there's a loop obviously, because you'll get people coming to experience the greekness or the cornishes, and people will be like, oh, we should open a business that will enhance the greekness or the Cornish of the place, and that will draw, and it just becomes this thing and, yeah.

Yeah, it's very strange. And I would totally agree with you on that one.

Chris: Yeah. [00:18:00] Yeah. Until like a Greek person from Greece or a Cornish grandmother comes into town and says like, what? No, that's not Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I'd like to shift the conversation, Craig, a little bit towards ableism, and begin with this question that comes from our dear mutual friend Aerin and who admits that she's happily robbed it directly from Fiona Kumari Campbell.

Yes.

So, you might have heard this question before but she she felt the need to kind of pose it anew and and so the question is this. How does disability productively color our lives and Aerin wanted to ask it, to modify it slightly and ask, how does disability generatively or creatively color our lives?

Craig: I can't speak to anybody's life other than my own really. But I would say that for me disability has, [00:19:00] one, given me a real sort of ability to look at the world and go, "you guys think this is how everything works and it clearly doesn't."

You know, it has given me a generative gift of going, "hold on, what people think of the default really isn't the default, because I was never born as the default, and so I've had to find my own way of relating to the world" and that means that anybody goes anytime anybody goes "Oh, well, everybody knows..." or "the only way to do it is this?"

I am always going "are you absolutely sure about that?" You know, "are you absolutely sure that what you're looking at or experiencing or noticing is only perceivable in one way, it's only ever [00:20:00] frameable, in one context?" But also this idea for me that disability is simply a fact.

It's not good or bad. It is a thing that exists in the world and ableism is essentially the urge to measure against the vast field of disability and impairment and go, "We don't want that. That's the worst thing to be. So, we will strive to not be that." As Fiona Kumari Campbell would say, " It sets up a ranking and notification and prioritization of sentient life."

So, this is why we, to a certain extent, we have such a obsession with youth culture. Young, healthy, fit folks are in some way better than the elderly. Oh god, nobody wants [00:21:00] to get old cause, if you're of white extraction, "oh, they'll probably stick you in a home."

Nobody wants to conceive of the idea that actually you can have a generative and intimate relationship with somebody, not necessarily a romantic one, but a deep, deep friendship that also involves, frankly to put it crudely, perhaps wiping somebody's arse, right? There's this whole notion of messiness and failure and why Aerin reworded it from "productive" to "generative" is that whole idea of being productive, of having capitalist use, to produce, to make for purposes. And for me, disability and the field of disability in which I exist says "I exist and I don't have to be productive." it really [00:22:00] challenges the capitalist framework for me.

And also, ableism, because it's set up to rank things like speed, mobility, all kinds of things like that, having a disability where you're sitting there going, but there are other ways to do this. There are other ways to exist. To notice the way our bodies move that are mostly ignored in the sense of "yeah, we don't pay attention to our posture or our muscle structure or what our guts are doing because we're all already forced along to the next thing.

You know, we're already touring from, "okay, I've got up in the morning. Next thing I've got to do is have breakfast," right? And if you can easily shift between those stages, so you get up in the morning, start your breakfast, put your clothes on easily. [00:23:00] You don't think about it as much, but if it takes you 10, 20 minutes to even get out of bed and you have to do specific things, maybe exercises, maybe things like that, the whole process thickens.

And in a sense, for me, it's an antithesis to escapism because there are things you cannot escape. There are things you have to deal with. And because there are things you have to deal with, you have to pay attention to them more. And that means the most ordinary mundane thing becomes or can become, if you're willing to gently sense it, a lot richer.

So, this is one of those interesting things where if people want to go places to experience new things, Okay, that's a whole issue that you've obviously talked about throughout the podcast, but there is a certain sense in [00:24:00] which we don't even know where we started from. We've not explored our own bodies.

I mean, I wrote a piece in 2020 when all the lockdowns hit that got shared around various bits of the internet and I think even in the newspaper at one point in, but I got a request to syndicate it, of how to exist when you're stuck in your house. You know, what do you do to "keep," in inverted commas, "sane," which, of course, is an ableist framework, but what do you do to stop yourself from losing mental health? How do you function?

And I broke it down and I sort of made practical suggestions of, this is how I, as somebody that doesn't actually have a, quotes, "normal life," and spends a lot of his time unable to travel or go out much, stops myself from feeling isolated, [00:25:00] because I've ended up having to learn to explore what some might regard as a limited domain.

But to me, that limited area, that limited domain has given me this sense of vastness that's, you know, I can't remember which philosopher it is, but there is a philosopher who basically says, I think it is a Camus, who says "you just need to reopen when you're in your room and the whole world will reveal itself to you."

And when you don't have a choice, when you're stuck in chronic pain, or sickness, or something like that and you have to work out what to do with your limited energy, to embrace life, there becomes a sort of challenge, to go, "okay, how can I feel like things are enriching? How can I, almost metabolize the things that other people would reject.

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You know, [00:26:00] because disability is so "Oh, it's so sad he's disabled. Or we've got the cure for this and that. And we've got to cure it." And it's not really about ameliorating suffering. Which is a good thing. It's an analoid good to ameliorate any form of suffering. But there is this sense that the only way to perceive the world is through a so called "non disabled" abled body.

The only way to experience a rich world, and again, I'm not knocking people who do a lot of travelling per se, but the only way to experience the world is to go on long journeys, and backpack and explore you know, new ways of thinking. That's great. And I'm not saying you can do exactly the same at home, but you can also become radically hospitable to yourself and to the environment in which you find [00:27:00] yourself.

And that opens a whole lot of doors that I think I would regard as generatively colouring life and revealing life. In a way that was possibly occluded before.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, so much of what I've come to in the research around tourism and hypermobility is this question of limits.

And that certainly comes up in other themes, in other contexts. But not just the limits to one's place. Like, where does your place end? But also the limits of the human body. And, when we talk about freedom generally in the West, or in, in the context of modernity, it's so often pinned or underpinned via the freedom of movement, in part, because I know you're coming from the other side of the Atlantic, but certainly in, in this part of the [00:28:00] world, in the Americas and especially North America, freedom is understood as freedom of movement because that's in part how, the states and, and the nation's existences are justified.

And so, I would just ask you what you think of that in the context of freedom being, of course a synonym for liberation. And how so many of our western notions of freedom are attached to movement and have. To a large degree become glorified in the hyper mobility of our times.

Craig: I would agree with you. I think it was always there because of the colonial urge, but I think North American notions of freedom have, through a certain cultural hegemony, filtered back. You get it in the media, even Star Trek, you know, the final frontier, you know. Things like that. Or wide open spaces. There's still this notion of, freedom to move, room to live. It has its own European context and [00:29:00] horrors, unfortunately.

But also, I think the notion of freedom as freedom to move. There is a question there for me, because I'm not sure we know what we're doing when we move. Right? And one of the questions that always was raised for me is, if I raise my finger, as I'm doing now, and I bend it so it's 90 degrees, how did I do that?

What did I do? Well, science would say, okay, you used all your tendons and so on and so forth, and I'm like, yeah, "okay, those are nice descriptors. But what did I actually do?" Where's the connection between the impulse and the urge to bend my finger? Right. I don't know what I did there. I just thought I'm gonna bend my finger and the [00:30:00] finger bent But there's a whole bunch of stuff going on.

So when I'm thinking about freedom of movement First the question is, "freedom to move in what way?" Right? So the the classic example is, in perhaps North America and and English speaking countries is "to go where I want, when I want, with none to to gainsay me, none to say you can't go there," which has been problematized thanks to the history of enclosure of land and capture by state and political actors, but also this notion that if you get into a city and you can go and people go, "Oh, I'm free to go wherever I want."

I always sit there and I'm going, "yes, but you can go wherever you want, but if a place has stairs and no lift..." right? I [00:31:00] can't go there. So do I have less freedom? Well, according to the traditional notions of freedom, yes. I am less free. When I grew up, as an example in the UK I went to America when I was about four or five, and I was absolutely stunned by the amount of public toilets that had a disabled toilet.

Right? Because virtually nowhere where I grew up at that point had a disabled toilet. This was due to the fact that the U. S. has a disability rights movement that was slightly ahead of the U. K. 's. So I was freer to go about my holiday in the U. S. than I was technically at home. I couldn't go certain places because there weren't toilets, or there weren't ramps, because that had not been legalized. You know, there'd been no legislation.

In the UK, there was [00:32:00] no disability legislation until 1995. You know, so technically, I was born in 1981. I had no specific extra legal rights that I needed for 14 years. Now some would say, "oh, that, you've got freedom there... the law has given you freedom.

It's giving you the ability to move, but it's only given me the ability to move in approved ways, right? And so every single time somebody talks about room to move, my query is always, okay. "One, as I said, move in what way? And two, who taught you what method of movement is approved or disproved?" So, particularly in Europe, we have folks like the Romani, the Irish travellers, [00:33:00] even the so called New Age travellers, right, who are nomadic folks.

And despite this obsession with freedom, the idea that people are nomadic, are shiftless and rootless, still exists.

Yes, a degree. The degree of privilege, the degree that I could be, quote, "more confident going into public spaces." And you'll see this in American history and throughout European history as well.

And when I was talking about the nomadic folks, I was saying, you know, there are only certain people who are allowed to move in certain ways, to travel in certain ways that are approved. In similar ways with disability there were only certain kinds of people who were allowed into public spaces.

They might not have been legislated against in the mid twentieth century. They might have struck those off the books, but at [00:34:00] various points, at least in the US, if you look up the Chicago Ugly Laws, people who were regarded as vagrants or unsightly, were not allowed in public spaces. They could be jailed for that.

It's not just loitering. It was very much anything that could give offense because they were physically disabled. Or, the idea that the physically disabled are more likely to be begging or doing things like that. That was all folded in. So, this notion of freedom as the ability to move and move in space.

Despite the North American urge to be like, "well, nobody can tell me what to do." There's still a certain level of certain forms of movement are privileged or regarded as normal versus others. So, you know it's weird if you don't stay [00:35:00] in one place or perhaps, it's weird if you don't have a reason for your seasonal job, right?

When I was a kid and a teenager... like I said, where I grew up was kind of known for surfing, right? And I met folks who would come from places like Australia and live in Volkswagen transporter vans and work in the seasonal hotels and then go surfing. And then sometimes in the winter they disappear off to Morocco.

And you wouldn't see them for six months and they'd come back and there's all this kind of idea of Differing rhythms, which has really influenced my entire life because those folks, they were there there were hundreds of them you could see them parked on every road and I knew several of them very very well, but the fact of those seasonal rhythms, which weren't [00:36:00] approved. It wasn't approved that they didn't stay in one place and pay taxes.

To some that might be, you know, "Oh, that's freedom! That's telling the government, I don't have to pay your taxes or I don't have to stay in one place and be a registered visible citizen. I can be a free spirit and go to Morocco whenever I want. But, the fact of it is, if you walked on the, on the roads, people would look at you funny, right?

If you look at people who do long distance walking in areas that are drivable, I mean, especially I guess in North America, that's looked at as very, very, very strange, because you guys don't have the infrastructure. So, for me, it's this really strange notion that we're fixated on particular kinds of movement to do with agency and power, right?

And we, we will say, "oh, [00:37:00] that's mobile, that's fast, that's quick, that's agile." And I'm always curious about what criteria we're using to say, "oh, that's fast, that's agile, that's nimble," when you look at the so called natural world, and you've got plants that are seemingly immobile, but they actually turn to the sun.

You just don't notice it until you stick it on a stop motion camera. And then you're like, "wow, they move." But you could go past that plant every single day and be like, "yeah, it doesn't move. It's a plant. It just stays there." Right? Because our perception of what movement is and what is approved is based around one, what we're taught and two, what we see every day.

But also three. What we can't notice unless we're forced to look at the same thing over and over again, right? [00:38:00] Because our tendency is to see one thing, think, "Oh, I know it. I've spotted it. I know what it is. I've identified it. It's fitted into my matrix of identity. I can move on now. It's all sorted." But the whole ethos, I guess, that I'm coming at is

what if you don't know? What if you don't know? What if that microphone that I'm speaking into and you're speaking into it looks like a particular thing and you think you could describe a microphone to somebody but go down to say the flows of the electrons and it's a context issue. You know? And, and So, I'm interested in thinking about what are the contexts are in the room with us right now that we're not even paying any attention to, and not even in the room, in our own bodies, in our own language.

Chris: Wow. Yeah, again, there's so much there. My [00:39:00] my thoughts just flew off into a million different directions. And I feel like it would probably take me a while to to gather them in.

Craig: No problem. You do what you need to do. I mean, that's, that's the whole point.

Chris: Yeah. So I had a queer crip travel writer named Bani Amor on the podcast in season three.

And we were talking about the fallout and the consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic. And she said something like, you know, "the settler can't stay still. That the pandemic showed us that we can't stay still." In the context of that time that so many people who had been engaged in and who glorify or who simply have been taught to live a hyper mobile life, that there was this opportunity to question [00:40:00] that, to bring it into a different context.

And I know a lot of people, couldn't necessarily leave their houses in the quote unquote lockdowns. But I don't think that wouldn't necessarily stop people from tending to or allowing themselves to witness the more than human world in that way. And so, my question is, assuming we have the opportunity, in some manner, in any manner, how do you think we might have our understandings of movements subverted, or at least challenged, by virtue of looking at the movement in the more than human world.

Craig: Great question. I think one of the biggest notions, and I just want to return to that phrase, "the settler can't stay still." And really, agree with that, and so add to secondary things of what actually is stillness, right? We have [00:41:00] this idea of stillness as immobility, as, as, as perhaps staying in one place.

Not moving, but actually, if we look at what we're doing when we're actually apparently still, there's still movement going on, right? There's still movement going on in our bodies. There's still a different kind of mobility going. And we're not the only ones, right? The more than human does this exactly as well.

If you look at a rock, oh, you think a rock doesn't move? I mean, it doesn't move, but then you have erosion, right? Then you have the rain, and the way that particles are shaved off it, and it shifts. So, when we're thinking about outside, when we're thinking about... and when I say "more than [00:42:00] human," I'm not saying "better than human," I'm saying "exceeding the human," I just want to make that clear, it exceeds the boundaries of the human.

Disability as mutual friend Bayo would define it is, I believe he said "it's a failure of power to contain itself." So, that's Bayo Akomolafe. And this notion that the world and the modern human flows through and beyond any sort of boundary, right? So, any outline we form is not immune in the sense of there's no boardwalk, right?

A wall is not an untouchable upright edifice. It's actually touched and permeated, right? So everything in the more than human context interrelates and is, to a certain extent, degrees of [00:43:00] permeable. So, yeah, our cells keep certain things out, and let certain things in, but even the things they keep out, they're in contact with.

They're relating to. Right? Because in the same way, with COVID 19 vaccine, people think, "oh, it's a vaccine. It's immunity, right? It'll stop me getting COVID. Or it'll stop me getting this, or stop me getting that." What it actually does is it has an interaction with your, the vaccine has an interaction with your immune system.

There's a dialogue, there's a discussion, a call and response, which then engenders further responses in your body, right? So, there's constant relation that is ongoing. So, nothing is one and done, right? To borrow from Stefano Hani and Fred Moten No motion is ever completed, right? Nothing's [00:44:00] ever finished.

It's not like we're gonna get off this and, and you'll be like, "oh, I've finished recording the podcast." Sure, you've hit the stop recording button, but the recording of the podcast is still ongoing. And there's this fundamental ongoingness, which is a product of the world.

The world is worlding, right? And that means the most ordinary, mundane thing you can think of is ongoing. The mug I have right in front of me right now with tea in it. It's ceramic. It's been painted, but it's still ongoing, right? It still has the relation to the machines that shaped it. And it also has this ongoingness with the human history of pottery.

Right? And people go, Oh, that's ridiculous. That's not practical. You know, "it's a mug," but I always [00:45:00] think. Isn't that just commodification? Like, is that not just saying it's a commodity, it doesn't have a story? Like, I don't want to get all Marxist here, but there's that real alienation from ongoingness and the fact that we also are ongoing attempts at relation.

We're not even fixed identities. Our movements cannot be technically circumscribed because I have a disability which means I can't dance. Right? I use a wheelchair. I can't dance. I can't do the tango. Right? Okay. But everybody uses dance in a context of bopping to the music and doing all this thing and it's a bit like freedom. You know, everybody assumes that dance is a particular thing.

But as Bayo and We Will Dance with Mountains, the course, the whole point of it being [00:46:00] called We Will Dance with Mountains is the fact that mountains don't dance like humans. Mountains dance like mountains. And the only way we spot how mountains dance is to actually pay attention to them and attempt to relate to them.

We can't get out of our framework completely, but we can be open to say, what does our framework for a mountain miss about those massive landforms? What are we missing when we say a mountain doesn't move? And that's where you have references to indigenous and local stories that actually talk about these landforms, these places, these folklore places, as the living, moving beings that they actually are.

Hmm. You know. Yeah, "okay, that stone circle over there was because a bunch of women were dancing on a [00:47:00] Sunday and in a Christian country, that's bad, so they got turned to stone," or in Scandinavia, "that rock there, it's actually a troll that got caught out in the sun."

that these are living, ongoing beings and events, which it's not woo, it's actual or intellectual, I think.

If you look at anything for long enough, you start to notice what's ongoing with it, even something that's solid and fixed. And that, to me, the gripping is the bending of the perception, right? That is queering, but crip-queering is that point where you have the restriction involved. People will talk about queer liberation, and yeah, we want crip liberation. That's cool. But if you think about crip liberation as, it might actually be the limits that bring us liberation.

And then, if you track back [00:48:00] into mythologies long enough. You've got figures like Dionysus or then poetic gods who say, they're the ones that fetter you. They can bind you, but they can also set you free. And that is really interesting to me that a lot of these liberational figures also have a side that they can tie you up.

And I don't just mean in a bondage sense. It's this notion that the two things, the two complexes are part of a whole thing, and you can't divide it into restricted and free and you can't escape. You can't pull a Harry Houdini from existence, which, to a certain extent, some people, when they go on holiday, engage in tourism, they're trying to escape for a little while, their other lives. But we all know you can't escape them.

Mm-Hmm. But the inescapability of it is not bad. Right. By default, it's not [00:49:00] bad. It can be, but the assumption something is inescapable, just like, oh, something is disabling. Mm-Hmm. the assumption of good and bad. If you can hold that in abeyance and actually look at it for a second and go, Okay, what's going on here?

Maybe our conceptions of this need reevaluating. Now the reason we don't do this on the regular, even in modernity, is because it takes a lot of effort and time to focus. And that's another benefit that I get as a disabled person, right? Because I can't use my time for a whole bunch of things that non disabled folks can.

So I've got more time, I've got a different relationship to time and space, which means that I can sit and look at things with that differing relation to time and space, and be like "Huh, I never noticed that." And then I get to talk [00:50:00] about this stuff to folks like you, and people get surprised.

And they're like, "you think about this all the day." I'm like, "no, I don't think about this. This is my life. This is how I live. This is my embrace of life, right? And this is my freedom to literally, Be like, " well, okay, my restrictions. How do they actually open me to the world?" And I'm not offering a prescription here, because everybody's different.

But it strikes me that even the most nomadic person always carry stuff with them, right? And to borrow from Ursula K. Le Guin with her "Carrier Bag Story of Fiction," which Bayo talked about in We Will Dance The Mountains, the idea of what we're carrying is really interesting, but how often do we rummage in our own bags?

Hmm. [00:51:00] Right? How often do we take off our backpacks and rummage just for the sake of it? Often we just look in the backpacks for something specific. Hmm. Right? Oh, I need a map. Oh, I need a chocolate bar. Oh, I need my, you know my iPad. We rarely stick our hands in and notice the way our clothing might shift around our fingers or the way, you know, the waterproofing is possibly coming off and means that the fabric has these different textures because we don't take the time and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's the fact that we don't have that relationship to time and space.

And babies, kids do. It's why kids put things in their mouth. All those things where you're like, "Oh no, don't put that in your mouth, it's bad for you." They don't know that. But the whole point of putting it in their mouth and feeling it is to try and not [00:52:00] understand it, not get it.

There's nothing there in a baby in its early function that says, "I must understand what that is." The understanding comes upon you through experience. But there's no bit, at least as far as I can work out, that's like, "I must understand what it is that I'm putting in my mouth."

It's more like, "hmm, that tastes interesting, it has some interesting textures," and then your brain does all the work or your brain and your body mind do all the work, but the personhood isn't also doing all the work, just like the "I" of my body, right, my relationship with the "I", as in my sense of self, I have to expand that to my entire body, You know, because there's so much going on right now in this conversation that I'm not aware of, right?

There's stuff going on in my room that I'm [00:53:00] not aware of, but it's going on now. And so I have to expand and that expansiveness also means I sometimes have to venture into realms of pain, right? Because I have chronic pain. And in order to fully experience that, sometimes I have to encounter that pain.

I have to slow down and focus and go, "Oh, the chronic pain that I was mostly ignoring because just in the background, it suddenly leaped to the fore because I'm paying attention." Now, modernity says you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do stuff that causes you pain. Understandable in a certain context, but If I didn't understand that the pain was also part of the experience and changes how I move, if I didn't understand that chronic pain changes how time stretches, then I wouldn't be where I am.

So the more than human permeates the human in ways [00:54:00] that the human is either deliberately trained to deny or doesn't even know is going on and the pandemic basically was, in my eyes, the more than human kind of knocking on the door going you are not this completely hermetically sealed box, right? Your society is not a hermetically sealed box.

Chris: Amen. Amen. I mean, could have gone in a lot of different directions, but here we are, at least being able to reflect on it in a good way, and I'm reminded, this notion of abeyance and attention and, and the expansion of the I.

I'm reminded of this, this line from Simone Weil who said that "absolutely unmixed attention is prayer." And so, I think that it, something like that is worthy of the times we, we wish to live in and perhaps sometimes do.

Craig: [00:55:00] Definitely.

Chris: And so, you know, I wish we had more time, Craig really getting into some beautiful black holes there. But hopefully we get the opportunity to speak again sometime.

Craig: I'd be, be happy to. Be happy to.

Chris: And so before we depart, I'd just like to ask the kind of token question that always comes at the end of interviews, which is where can our listeners find your work?

And I'm pretty sure you had a book that came out last year entitled, Goetic Atavisms, if I'm not mistaken.

Craig: Yes, I did. So you can find me on my mostly moribund, but strange little blog at cold-albion.net. And you can also pick up the book, which is, to be clear, more of an occult angle on this, but it also brings in the disability angle directly from the publisher Hadean Press or you could get it from, you know, the Bezos Behemoth, if you really [00:56:00] wanted. I am also not really on social media as a project, but I'm also on you know Blue Sky, so you can search me up there, or Mastodon, which you could always search me up there, and I occasionally post things on there.

Chris: Wonderful. Well, I'll make sure that all those links and connections are available for our listeners once the episode launches. And I very much look forward to reading Goetic Activisms myself. So, thank you so much, Craig.

Chris: Thank you, Chris.

On this episode, my guests are Jesse Mann (editor-director) and Tyson Sadler (director), the brains behind the documentary The Last Tourist.

Jesse is both a picture editor and director whose professional work has spanned commercial, tv and film projects. The Last Tourist is her second feature film as editor. Her first film, as both editor and director, Material Success, screened internationally and won the Audience Choice at the Canadian Film Festival and Best Film at the Canadian Film Festival (2012). Most recently, she both directed and edited the online horror mini-series “The Confinement” (2021). She is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada and an associate member of the Canadian Cinema Editors. Jesse has an B.F.A. from Ryerson University's School of Image Arts.

Tyson Sadler is an explorer, traveller and award-winning filmmaker. He has directed video content and documentaries for The New York Times, Associated Press, and The Huffington Post. His films have been screened at festivals around the world including Tribeca Film Festival, South by Southwest, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival. An early pioneer i virtual reality documentary, he has worked tirelessly to use cutting edge technology to tell stories that build empathy around causes such as climate change, forced migration, and human rights.

Show Notes:

The Film’s Inception

Industry Polarity

Regulating Travel

Addressing the Root Problems

Greenwashing Animal and Child Welfare Tourism

How the Wealth Gap Increased During COVID

What was Left on the Cutting Room Floor

Homework:

WATCH THE FILM HERE

The Last Tourist Film Website | Instagram | Facebook

The Last Tourist Trailer

Jesse Mann's Website | Instagram

Tyson Sadler’s Website | Instagram

Transcript:

Chris: Welcome Jesse and Tyson to the End of Tourism Podcast.

Jesse: Thanks Chris for having us.

Tyson: Thanks for having us.

Chris: Thank you so much for joining me today to talk about your documentary film, The Last Tourist. So, it was released in 2022 to great reception.

And as you might imagine, many of my listeners have pointed me in its direction. And after watching the film, I found myself really grateful that people finally approached these themes in the medium of documentary filmmaking and with what seemed to be a budget to do justice to what those themes confront.

And so first I'd like to ask you two how The Last Tourist got started and what the inspiration behind the film's creation was and how did you decide to write a treatment for it?

Tyson: Ultimately, you know, I think the inspiration for The Last Tourist came from a combination of personal shared experience and a shared passion for travel and particularly responsible travel.

You know, in early 2018, I was approached [00:01:00] by the executive producers to write a treatment, for a short film around responsible tourism in the country of Peru. And through, you know, some follow up conversations, we sort of quickly realized that we had an opportunity because, a large scale documentary, on the subject of responsible tourism just didn't exist yet.

I mean, we have wonderful films out there which challenge our conversations with our relationship with climate change and our relationship with our food source like An Inconvenient Truth or like Food Inc., but we didn't at that time yet have a documentary which really challenged our perceptions of the global impact of the travel and tourism industry and so over conversations with with our team and the producers we quickly realized that we had a unique opportunity to make "An Inconvenient Truth" for the travel industry and in early 2018, we seized on that opportunity to explore the positive and negative impacts of tourism on destinations.

Jesse: And I think just to add to what Tyson was saying, I think originally [00:02:00] it started off as a short project and yourself and the executive producers who brought us together kind of pushed for it to become the large scale project that had ended up being filmed in 15 different countries or 16 with 400 hours of footage.

So, sometimes you don't know, especially myself as a co-writer and editor, when you come on to a project, in the initial stages, you think, "Oh, you know, this is wonderful. It sounds like a great project." I had been an avid traveler, lived in a few different countries over 20 years and I thought, yeah, this is a story that needs to be told, but I will say in no way in the beginning, did I ever think it was going to be, and I think Tyson didn't either, was it going to be such a huge project.

And you comment, Chris, on the expansiveness of the subject and the different kind of facets of the tourism [00:03:00] industry we were able to look at.

And really I have to say that I'm happy that we got to touch on all those points and to the chagrin of my personal sleep and Tyson's as well, but it started off small, I have to say that, and it grew into something tremendous that I think we're very proud of.

Tyson: It really was a natural progression of our desire to raise awareness about responsible tourism and its consequences. We had our world premiere, honestly, I think it was about two years ago now at the Vancouver International Film Festival, two years ago. And a little over two years ago, a little over two years ago.

And the film is still doing a festival run. Just last weekend, Jesse was at the the Innsbruck Film Festival and it's still been getting a wonderful response, great conversations around it. And we're streaming on platforms around the world, you know, Crave in Canada, Hulu in the U.S., Amazon Prime in other countries. I was just in French Polynesia and was able to find our film on Amazon Prime, which was really delightful [00:04:00] to see that.

Jesse: Yeah, it makes us happy as filmmakers to know that the story that we spent a lot of time trying to create in a way that we thought would connect with audiences worldwide is actually getting out there. And so it's really nice to be speaking to you on your podcast as well and kind of extend that out to potentially more people who haven't seen the film or some who just want to talk more about the topics.

Chris: And I wanted to ask you two, given the fact that the film was released, you know, still very much in a pandemic during the, the COVID 19 times what the reactions were given the fact that tourism had ground to a halt in that time you know, I received a lot of Mail regarding your film, like, ah, you have to check this out.

You have to watch this, right? And so a lot of people really excited about the project, about the film. But then I guess I'm also curious about[00:05:00] if there was much of an industry backlash in regards to the degree of sincerity perhaps around which the film exhibited these kind of deep and sometimes dire consequences that visit themselves on places and people in the name of tourism.

Tyson: Yeah. I think the reactions to the film have been in my experience, almost entirely positive. But people don't come to me with criticism, they come to me with congratulations, but I think there's a lot of individuals in the tourism industry and sponsors that have really welcomed our film, The Last Tourist, as a necessary and eye opening piece of work.

It sparked a lot of interesting conversations and prompted the industry to, in many ways, I think, reevaluate some of their practices. You

Jesse: If we back it up to when we were just when we were meeting with all of the different professionals that we interviewed across the different facets of the tourism industry, I mean, when you and I were writing the story, there were so [00:06:00] many different conflicting opinions on how to solve one issue that we still come across that sometimes when we meet those industry experts outside of, let's say, film audiences.

Because When we were writing it, we had to kind of decide which side of the coin we were going to follow through our story with, and whether it's a topic of let's say regulation, that was a topic that Tyson and I had a lot of conversations about when we were making the film because the industry in itself is kind of very polarized in terms of regulation.

There's some strong proponents within the tourism industry who want regulation. And then there's some who are very against it. And Tyson and I had a lot of conversations about that. And I think we still do when we meet certain industry professionals out there and I think that's a really important topic as well.

[00:07:00] Now that you are bringing up, post covid and the pandemic where we saw kind of what happens when things are shut down. You know, we see both the positive and the negative. I mean we mentioned it in the film, but almost every single person that we interviewed in our film lost their means of income during that time. Gone.

And at the same time, the world experienced kind of you know, a refuge from, you know, airplane emissions and damage to destinations. And, you know, these were calculable things like we could see that this was a definite impact. So, I think there's these kind of topics and these conversations are where we see a lot of polarity.

And I think that we tried our best to focus on the people and the developing nations in our story. But, there are a lot [00:08:00] of stories that were left on the cutting room floor and so it is good to discuss them after in a podcast like this. I know that's kind of a long winded interjection, but I do believe that we do have some polarity for sure Tyson and I have come across, but just not in terms of what Tyson is talking about, in terms of not not so much with the audiences It is more a bit in the industry.

Tyson: I'll share an observation. During the process of creating this film, we interviewed literally dozens of travel experts, you know from academics to tour operators across the industry.

It's universally recognized that responsible tourism and sustainable tourism is a good thing. But then when we dive a little bit deeper I found a very fractured kind of industry because everybody believes that they know how to do responsible tourism, right. And everybody else, often, isn't executing responsible tourism correctly.

And so, on a foundational level, sure, we all believe in responsible tourism, but I think, the approach at how we get there isn't universally accepted, throughout the industry, and I think [00:09:00] that that's, on a basic level, we kind of explore those themes in the film as well as we interview people who kind of take different approaches to how to engage responsibly with tourists and host communities.

Jesse: And we had to make some hard decisions, obviously based on the research that was coming in on what side we wanted to promote in the story. But sometimes I think it's fair to say, Tyson, if you agree with me that we did try to leave it a bit more open for audiences to try to make their own decision based on what we had learned, because it's not always an easy answer for every situation.

It's quite nuanced, I think.

Tyson: Absolutely.

Chris: And you mentioned Jesse, regulation. In terms of the people you interviewed and your research, generally speaking, what does that look like, or what might that look like in particular locales or within the industry?

Jesse: Well, I think we've seen quite a bit of it post pandemic because where we thought there was going to be [00:10:00] an ease back into traveling that has not happened. All the reports are coming back in that tourism is back up in droves and a lot of the same problems, if not more are back with travel again.

And so we've seen places like Machu Picchu has started regulating the amount of people that are able to visit annually. Worldwide, there's different popular tourist destinations who have decided to limit the amount of tourism and tourists that come to certain destinations.

You know, I think when it comes to destinations, we just have to be really careful that it doesn't become a tax that is elitist because that happens a lot with regulation across the board. You've seen it with cigarettes, you've seen it with airfare as well. You're paying a higher price for travel.

And although I do believe personally and Tyson, you [00:11:00] can speak to this as well, but because we haven't discussed this recently, but when you put a strong tariff or tax on travel, I think it is important, but I think it has to be calculated so that it's not elitist because if we only have people traveling in the world who can afford it, if it becomes so unaffordable, this is totally against the core value of travel, which is to unite all people of all different socioeconomic statuses and really connect with different cultures and people, and if it's just suddenly becomes for people who can afford a really overpriced flight, I think that will completely take away the value of the core value of travel.

But I do strongly believe that, and this I think is a very controversial thing to say. I do believe that things have to be regulated and there has to be something done, especially about the amount of flights that are happening on this planet. Because, you know, for instance, I don't know the statistics for Canada, but I was looking at it the other day for[00:12:00] the UK.

And I think something like 70 percent of all flights in the UK are taken by 15 percent of the population, and I don't doubt that that's very similar for a lot of the Western world without knowing all the statistics specifically, so I think that that has to be really taken into consideration when putting out regulation in terms of flights or destinations and such.

Chris: Yeah, I've thought about it quite a bit as well, and the elitization of travel, and this understanding that, well, we remove subsidies, for example, for air travel or other things, that we'll just have rich people flying around the world, which is more often than not the case already. Most flights are undertaken for business travel and that's a huge thing that I think most people don't know about, but instead of getting people with corporate backed funds or just rich people flying around the world, we're obviously looking for people with strong principles and good behavior to be the ones [00:13:00] traveling.

But then how do you measure that? How do you quantify that in a way that honors the kinds of worlds we want to live in? And it's not just this like, oh, it's impossible. Sure. And we could take that understanding that to quantify such a thing would be next to impossible, but then it could also open up these kind of doors of imagination where in like what kind of infrastructures would we want to put in place that were not maybe Government sanctioned or not maybe top down, but actually from the bottom up, creating these kind of international or intercultural bonds and practices between people that would allow not just for the kinds of people who locals in quote unquote "destinations" want to receive to be able to travel, but then also to create the conditions whereby that kind of, for lack of a better word, behavior or principles could be deepened in the world.

I mean, it'd be extremely difficult to, [00:14:00] to manage, but How would you quantify that? How would you measure that?

Jesse: Yeah, and I think that's such a, such a complicated issue and I love what you're saying though. I think it's absolutely wonderful. And I do think it's possible to move in that direction.

I'm not sure I have the answer for that and maybe Tyson wants to speak to it, but I also want to say that something that I think could be part of the solution is also promoting train travel as well. And I know that that kind of that stops at domestic. But at the same time, you know, I think governments should be allocating a lot of funds to push train travel to create and develop train travel and to also subsidize train travel more because it's just a wonderful way to reduce emissions and to actually continue allowing people to travel.

Tyson: Yeah. There are some countries here in Europe, Jesse, and I think Europe is just far beyond a lot of the rest of the world. Canada, I think we're still living in the dark ages, you know, when it comes to long [00:15:00] distance train travel.

Jesse: That's a shame. It hasn't been made a priority.

Tyson: It just doesn't exist.

Chris: Well, I'm curious also for you two how your own travels in your lives might have come to bear on your production or pre production and research in the film. Maybe you could tell us a little bit of how you've seen the world over the course of your life and your travels and if that came to bear at all in the making of the film.

Tyson: Personally for me, I traveled extensively, for 20 years prior to embarking on this film. I worked in the travel industry. I worked for an airline for many years. I was also a journalist and I've done work for several large publications, which allowed me to travel to very, some very remote and exotic destinations around the world.

This travel really exposed me to the beauty and the wonder of the world. But also the environmental and the cultural challenges that a lot of these destinations face. You know, the experiences, with travel for both work and for pleasure, I think they served as a [00:16:00] catalyst, for me just to delve deeper into this topic.

And so when I was approached about directing and writing a film on this topic, I don't think there could have been a better fit. Like it just, everything just kind of fell into place and I just felt like I was really well poised because prior to that I had traveled to 70 different countries in a number of different capacities.

I had personally engaged in a number of behaviors that we are critical of in the film in terms of animal interaction, you know, interaction with other cultures. And my travel through two decades was really an eye opening and learning experience for me. And what this film really is, I think for me and in many points in the film is a reflection of my past travels and things that have been illuminated in my mind in terms of what are some important aspects that we really need to address if we want to be more conscious and responsible travelers.

Jesse: And I think from my end I surely [00:17:00] had not traveled to as many destinations as Tyson. But I did indulge my wanderlust in my twenties and thirties. I lived in a few different countries, Holland, South Africa, Germany, Canada. And I think that the absolute best aspect for me personally of travel is meeting the people.

I absolutely love meeting people in different cultures and seeing the differences and the similarities and learning the wisdom as much as I possibly can in such a moment of my life, when I'm in a destination, if it grants me such a gift. And I think from that, I still do have such a deep, deep gratitude to my privilege and being able to travel in and meet such people.

I've made such beautiful friendships over the course of 20 years and many I still keep in touch with across the various places I've lived. And I think that when you come back, [00:18:00] perhaps from living in different cultures in different countries and you come back to your home, the place you were raised in and where you were born and where you were raised culturally, and you can note the vast differences, and it's not a negative thing, but you start to pick up on the ways in which many people can see different cultures or different countries in a way that is completely disconnected from the actual truth and and this knowledge often comes with privilege.

I was privileged enough to be able to travel to these destinations to meet certain people and to dissuade certain prejudices, but not everyone can. And so part of this film, I have to say, ironically, is that if you can't travel, this film is also a wonderful film to watch because it's something that you can meet these people [00:19:00] in these destinations.

You know, there's so many places that I've been to also that are so many places I have not been to that were featured in the film as well. And with documentary filmmaking and making, and especially as an editor, I really do feel like I get to know these people so well, and I don't think that's just exclusive to myself.

I think audiences, hopefully, if I've done it correctly, if Tyson and I have, have made the film correctly, that these people's hearts have come through in the film. And, this is something that Tyson and I really worked hard on. And I'm sorry if I'm deviating from the question a bit, but it does connect very deeply to my love of travel is is people and also my love of editing people and so it was something we worked really hard to focus on is how do we give these people a podium.

They have their voice there. They're saying their truths. How do we give them a podium [00:20:00] and as the white filmmakers who are coming into different countries, how do we take a step back and really let them preach their wisdom? And so it was a balance for us really in finding the right voices, obviously speaking to the right professionals and speaking to professionals within different cultures that you see featured in the film and really making sure that their knowledge, their voice, their direction was giving us direction on how we edited and formulated the story and stories of everyone that we met in the travels of the production as well.

Chris: And on that note, I'm curious for each of you, what was the most important topic or theme that came up in the film for you personally?

Tyson: For me, maybe it's an echo of Jesse's sentiments there, but really it comes down to the impact on the communities that so graciously host us when we when we do travel. Travel you know has you know has an encyclopedia [00:21:00] of challenges that come with traveling responsibly unless we address the people. And I think we address this and the the film addresses this, but we can't begin to you know to start focusing on the environment unless we first focus on the communities who are there and helping them emerge from poverty. We can't begin to focus on how we can solve the problem of poaching in the African savannah unless we first address the root causes of why it's there and how it affects the host communities and how poverty affects people's decisions to be involved in this trade.

Jesse: That was something that Jane Goodall was was really adamant about speaking in the film about as well

Tyson: Yeah, and so to answer your question Chris, I mean ultimately it comes down to the communities and the people, the humanity of it all. First, we need to address the human aspect and then we can address the secondary aspects of what it means to be a responsible traveler.[00:22:00]

Jesse: So for me, personally, the most incredible voices in the film that when they came in, I just thought, "oh, wow," were definitely Lek from Elephant Nature Park and one of our contacts in Kenya Judy Kefergona, who ended up being one of the main speakers and narrators throughout a huge portion of our film.

These two women were just heroes. Like just with Judy, with the words that she was able to express for the people working in not just only the tourism industry in Kenya, but the people of Kenya who were vulnerable to unethical tourism, and then speaking to so many different subjects that were connected to so many different stories worldwide with such eloquence and such power and such knowledge [00:23:00] and encourage really, I think.

She spoke about these topics. I was just enamored, just blown away and so grateful for her coming onto our film and Lek Chailart is just a modern day hero. She is the tiniest woman with the biggest heart who when I saw her story in our film against the backdrop of these beautiful giants, these elephants that she has rescued. And essentially she's an elephant whisperer in the truest sense of the word. And it's just such a magical thing to see.

Listeners won't be able to understand this. I'm getting goosebumps when I just talk about her and this was the kind of thing that when Tyson and I were looking through footage and looking through stories that we were looking for, "Oh, that's the moment, ah! the moment. I got the goosebumps. That's it. It's there.

And we found it in the stories, not just these two women, everyone you see featured in the story and some that were left on the cutting room floor, unfortunately there that gave us beautiful insight that we still used in crafting the story, that just wasn't able to [00:24:00] make it into the actual film for timing constraints.

But really, I would have to say that these two, it's not specifically the stories, although both of them touch on really important stories, including child welfare and animal welfare, which to me, those two stories were really close to my heart. And we felt really strongly that they needed a really important part in the film.

But it was really these two women who I just felt so grateful for in the film.

Chris: I mean, the, the chapter on animal welfare was quite devastating for me in part because it had reminded me that in my early twenties, I had visited Thailand and I had gone to an elephant sanctuary. Not a zoo but a sanctuary, and had the opportunity to ride an elephant for a short time, and I felt really uncomfortable probably because I was on top of an elephant, just the kind of immediate awkwardness of such a thing, having never seen one in person, having never [00:25:00] experienced that before, but also kind of like, "what am I doing here?" And so, that part of the film really kind of opened up for me why I felt that perhaps existential discomfort, not just about being on top of an animal of that size, but in the context of the dynamic, you around how that was happening and why that was happening and not having the context for it so long ago.

And of course, this is one of the things that we touch on in the episodes, in the interviews, in the podcast, is how can we come to understand these things when our visits are so short in these places, when we are only in a place for just a very brief time and there's really no context for the history and the culture and the political dynamics that surround these things.

And then, most travelers, most tourists just end up leaving and the consequence of one's presence on the scene is kind of forgotten, at least by the tourist or traveler. Yeah, so thank you for [00:26:00] for that.

Jesse: That question did come up actually at the recent screening of the film in Innsbruck at the Nature Film Festival, whereas someone in the audience asked very specifically, even though it would be great to stay at a destination for a long time, most people are, saving up for short travel when they have time off work. And they need to take this kind of tour because they can only afford this one. And what do you say to those people who want to travel better, but feel like they're kind of stuck or don't know where to go.

But I would say in short, I think that touches on an issue that we have in the modern world with a lot of things. We are all overtired, overworked, and we don't have time to be ethical, we don't have time to do the research, we don't have time to investigate, if anything is against our core values, and we don't have time to and I get that, you know, it's not easy for everybody.

And if you do have the [00:27:00] time and you are able to really do a deep dive then you're very privileged, because you have the time, which just means that you have the money. So we did try to give a lot of smaller tips at the end of the film in terms of how you can do smaller acts of, of kindness and of conscious traveling, to travel local, to put money into local economies to make sure that you're not requesting your sheets to be washed every day, making sure that you're traveling using reusable, to make sure that you're and I guess this goes into a little bit more of the extensive questioning is to ask the destination that you're traveling to what their policies are in connection with the locals, in connections with the environment.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of greenwashing in tourism. And you know, that's in all industries right now worldwide. So it's not going to be so easy for someone who isn't an investigative [00:28:00] journalist to really find out the truth behind it all the time, but we can do our best.

And there are quite a few links on the website thelasttouristfilm.com where you can see some of the different organizations that we spoke with that have lists upon lists of different collaborating companies that you can look to that can can show you places that are not greenwashing or that are working with locals, but back to the idea of taking the time and it is about taking the time, whether it's an hour even, just to take the time and do a bit of research and this especially comes back to the topic of child welfare and people who are still, en masse, volunteering worldwide to orphanages and orphanages where children have existing family members and that these orphanages have become of monetary value to developing nations [00:29:00] because they make money and it's really easy for us to pass judgment on places that do this, and it's definitely wrong, but if we as travelers are going there and saying with our travel dollars, this is something we want to invest in, then people in developing nations are going to say, this is how I make money.

And it's the same with animal welfare. You pay for an animal sanctuary that you haven't done the research on. They're going to keep perpetuating that cycle. It's going to be the same with child welfare. So, if you do want to be ethical, you have to fit in a little bit of research in your travel time. And that's it. And I know it's not so easy for everybody.

Tyson: Yeah, I'd like to expand a little bit on a theme that sort of both of you have talked about. Jessie, you had mentioned greenwashing. Chris, you had mentioned that you had been to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. One of the most memorable takeaways that I had from this film is just the massive amount of greenwashing [00:30:00] and deception that exists within the industry.

I came to know a lot of companies that appeared to just be normal travel companies doing the same thing that has been going on in the travel industry but marketing "green" although nothing really changes. It's just their marketing strategy that's changed. If we look at, for example, in Thailand, there are a number of places that call themselves an elephant sanctuary, an elephant retirement home, an elephant rescue center.

And we can't rely on those names anymore to know that the service provider is giving us an ethical experience. We really need to ask deeper questions. It's the trend in the industry now to use this type of language, " sustainable," "responsible," "eco," all of these buzzwords.

And I've just come to find these completely meaningless, in those terms. We really need to ask some deeper, more challenging questions of these experiences and the tour operators and the service providers to actually know whether what they're doing is ethical or not because it is very easy to call yourself a [00:31:00] sanctuary, when in fact, it's the complete opposite. If it truly was an elephant sanctuary, we wouldn't be able to ride the elephants, in that place and they would be providing them a life of dignity free from exploitation.

And it's the same with children. Calling these places orphanages ,I think it's a misnomer. It's incorrect. You know, 70 percent of children who live in these quote unquote "orphanages" actually have at least one living parent.

But it's all under the guise of trying to gain sympathy from the traveler. "Oh, come see an elephant at a retirement home. Come see a child at an orphanage." It's just a piece of marketing that doesn't reflect the truth. We have a lot of companies doing the same unethical practices they've been doing for decades.

However, they've just really changed their marketing to appear more green.

Chris: Yeah, it seems to be a never ending cycle where responsible isn't good enough, that now we got to be regenerative. So many of these words just end up becoming, marketing tools.

Tyson: I'm hearing that word a [00:32:00] lot more these days as well.

Chris: Yeah, so how do we proceed, not just with a degree of dedication towards research and, and and planning, but also deep discipline as to how these words are unfortunately, as you said, becoming kind of meaningless in their significance..

I want to take a little turn with you both to ask about what happened as the film was going through post production and its release because most of the footage that you have is quote unquote pre pandemic and the COVID 19 pandemic hit, obviously, in 2020 and from what I understand your team was entering into the post production process and, of course, tourism ground to a halt almost completely, worldwide.

And throughout the film, there are people that you two interview that contend with the consequences and context of tourism and look [00:33:00] to a more honorable path that it might take. But I'm curious in regards to the people that you did interview who had found a degree of success and perhaps within a more small scale, a more honorable way of doing tourism that those flights, those trains, the reception of people in their villages went from a hundred to zero, basically overnight.

So much of the dire consequences of tourism revolve around or end up as exile, local people can't afford to produce food anymore in their places. And the education systems kind of move them towards getting jobs in the next city or even in other countries, and I'm curious in the context of the film and I guess the treatment that you put forward, you know, never perhaps thinking that something like this could happen. What was the fallout among the people that you interviewed in regards to their understandings of tourism and if it was [00:34:00] still this kind of for lack of a better word, golden goose or calf or sacred cow that they could rely on for the rest of their lives.

What did you hear kind of in the ether as you were doing that post production?

Tyson: I think it substantially expanded the wealth gap. I think during COVID the people that were hit the hardest are the people in the tourism industry that often are paid the least.

Depending on what their jobs were, they were the ones who were suffering layoffs and they were the ones whose businesses couldn't afford to sustain themselves. And so I think, for the most vulnerable populations, the pandemic was absolutely devastating.

People couldn't afford to put food on the table and pay rents, not just, I think, in developing countries, but even in the developed world. Airlines were laying off massive amounts of employees. Hotels were cutting staff. This was a global challenge that affected everyone.

However, at that same time, we did hear stories that, you know, CEOs of major airlines were taking million dollar bonuses[00:35:00] for cutting costs. And that was an observation of mine, through that experience, you know, that the people who needed tourism the most for daily sustenance and to put bread on the table were the ones who were absolutely the most affected and the people kind of at the top of the tourism industry were still fine and they were also taking bonuses, which really bothered me just because the wealth gap just seemed to get further and further apart through that.

But we do know, with the stories, that were featured in our film... there's a wonderful lodge in Ecuador, a homestay that we look at and they lost their income during that time.

The elephant sanctuary in Thailand, the one that does do great work, not one that greenwashes an elephant sanctuary but they lost a lot of revenue where it was very challenging to feed the elephants and to house the elephants because they didn't have that revenue coming in to support the project.

Jesse: We were hearing in in Africa, right?

Some of the rangers [00:36:00] were who were placed in defense of the elephants and animals and rhinos and such were just gone. They just weren't there anymore at that time because if they're not getting paid, they can't stay there. And so poaching also went up in those areas as well.

But you know, I think that in terms of what the positive was, I think a lot of people were hoping that post COVID that there was going to be hope for change, for renewal for doing things differently. And I think this was in when we were in post that this was maybe, potential to show people how things can be different by showing kind of the polar opposite and the effect and also showing how intrinsically connected people's livelihoods are to this industry and how vulnerable they are to massive change like this. I mean, the Dominican Republic that has [00:37:00] almost 90 percent of their GDP related to tourism?

Tyson: Island nations are the ones who are most affected by tourism. You know, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic. The Caribbean islands specifically. I don't know if it's as high as 90%, but the vast majority of their GDP from island nations comes from the travel and tourism industry, and they were certainly hit the hardest during the pandemic.

Jesse: And so I think that we can see from that, I think the hope for us during post production was, okay, you know, this is a horrific blow to the people most vulnerable in this industry, but if we can get this message out after the pandemic, perhaps this could be something that could really change. And to be fair, change is slow sometimes and I mean, it's wishful thinking that post pandemic right after that suddenly everyone was going to become ethical travelers but I see so much potential just in the discussions online the people that we're [00:38:00] meeting at different screenings, the interest that we're getting worldwide, just to have these conversations and see that there is an interest in change.

And when you talk about moving change, it does often come from the people, and I think, across the world over the past few decades, we've all been seeing again, I think our power as people, as citizens, as individuals, and the power that we have to come together over certain issues that we feel need radical change and even if it is slow change, I do see the inklings of that change happening within the tourism industry and I think it's really positive.

Tyson: You still have a lot of work ahead of us.

Chris: Amen. I think that's really, really important and, and perhaps fits properly inside of the context of the dominant culture, at least of North America or the quote unquote West, wherein, the pandemic also produced a deepening of the [00:39:00] culture of "everything now."

Suddenly it was like, "okay, well, I can't go out here, so everything has to be deliverable, and at the tip of your fingers, right? And what might come with that is this notion that, we also expect social change to happen overnight. Right? And that it might be overshadowed by this kind of dominant culture of wanting everything now and also the unwillingness to do the necessary work, which is sometimes generational.

Right? Not just a week or a month or a year, but generations.

In that regard, the themes of the film are extremely broad and you go into a lot of detail and depth with each. So I'm very grateful for that, but I'm also curious what might've gotten left out.

What might, one day end up on a director's cut of the film.

Jesse: Oh, so much.

Tyson: Ask the editor.

Jesse: Oh. Well, I mean, you had so many stories that you brought [00:40:00] to the table that were beautiful, beautiful stories. Forgive me. I don't remember his name and you'll remember Tyson.

But one of the.

Tyson: I know who you're talking about.

Jesse: Oh, do you? One of the men you interviewed at the UN had a really beautiful story to tell. And then we also had a really beautiful story from Costa Rica. An animal welfare and environmental story. Oh, my goodness. There were so many stories.

Tyson: We had a wonderful story from Cusco Peru with an organization that was putting the first female porters on the Inca Trail and really fighting for gender equality on the Inca Trail.

Jesse: What was that company's name again, Tyson? Well, the reason why I bring it up is because it's so unique that I just think, "oh, we should definitely highlight that to listeners" because they were taking female porters and they were reorganizing the whole industry based on their [00:41:00] precedent because they were treating porters with dignity, with safe conditions, with, valuable wages and this is something that's just not done across the industry on the Inca Trail with the male porters and there was some really, really horrific footage that we came across of the way these porters were living just not too far from where the tourists were sleeping comfortably in their tents. And this is a wide practice across the industry and Miguel from this company Evolution Treks and the gallon, do you remember his full name, tyson?

Tyson: Miguel Angel Gongora

Jesse: from Evolution Treks, yeah, a wonderful, wonderful man who was really, really passionate about changing the industry. And we spoke with many of the female porters, and yeah, that was a story that we were really, really sad to lose that [00:42:00] story.

Tyson: Yeah. Yeah. With only 90 minutes, you know, we yeah, really had to make some challenging decisions on what to be included in the film and I really feel that a 90 minute film can scratch the surface, it can spark some interest in a number of these themes, but certainly, and maybe that's next steps for us, but I certainly think that what this the subject matter, deserves is a series, you know, cause we could dive much deeper.

Jesse: Tyson and I have been talking about it.

Tyson: Yeah, we, we can dive much deeper into each of these subjects and create a 90 minute doc on each of them. And so, at some point in the future, we'll be making some pitches and writing some additional treatments into how we can make a six part series and expand on the themes in this film, you know, from the environment to gender inequality to animal welfare and everything deserves a lot more time, but hopefully, what we've done with this film is just been able to spark a number of conversations and inspire people to go and do some additional research [00:43:00] into how these themes impact these communities.

Chris: Yeah, well, thank you both so much for that. I have a lot more questions, but maybe that'll also be saved for a sequel.

Jesse: Yeah, we'd love to speak to you again, Chris, if you'd like, in the future.

Chris: That'd be great. Before we finish, I'd like to ask you what might be next for you two in your respective filmmaking and writing lives?

Tyson: My world currently revolves around photographing wildlife particularly large wildlife. Yeah, I've been spending a lot of time traveling recently and in the ocean. I mentioned to you, I mean, tomorrow I'm hopping on a flight and I'm heading to Norway to go photograph large marine mammals in Norway. So that's that's where my life is taking me right now is in pursuit of wildlife filmmaking and photography.

Jesse: Although I wish I could, I could say similarly, I right now my life is a little bit calmer. I had a baby 20 months ago. So, I've been on an extended maternity leave [00:44:00] and I'm currently just in development of projects for the future.

I finished up this project in full right before my child was born. And I still have a few projects that were finished up recently, but as of the moment I'm completely in development and yeah, I really look forward to developing something with Tyson in the future in regards to what he was talking about a series on travel and on a lot of stories that we were so passionate and so blessed to come across, but that we just didn't have the ability to give the podium to in our film, but yeah, so I'm really excited for the future and just coming from this festival that I was at recently, I'm just so invigorated with the energy of the audiences and the passion to travel better and to demand better travel from the industry and from travelers as a whole. So this just really gives me a lot of hope.

Chris: Well, congratulations on your [00:45:00] motherhood. Thank you. And having a little one in your life and this work and Tyson and the opportunity to be able to travel as you do, and to try to honor the lives of those beautiful four leggeds and no leggeds and the tailed and finned ones. So finally, how can our listeners watch The Last Tourist? Are there any screenings coming up?

Jesse: Definitely on the website, thelasttouristfilm.com, right when you go to the webpage, there's a whole list of all the different avenues you can watch the film.

But maybe Tyson could elaborate more.

Tyson: Absolutely. Yeah, you can connect with us on Instagram at Last Tourist Film, as well. We're just kind of wrapping up the fall festival season before we do some additional screenings next spring. We just wrapped up in Germany and Iceland.

I think streaming is the best way to find us, in Canada we're streaming on Crave. In the United States, we're streaming on Hulu. Delta Airlines, Emirates Airlines. In other countries around the world, you can also find us, I [00:46:00] know in France, in French Polynesia, Hong Kong on Amazon Prime. And there's a number of other markets that the film will be opening in very shortly which is really exciting.

It's not available everywhere, unfortunately, around the world, but if you have a desire to see it, you know, please get in touch with us and we'll do our best to make sure that you have an opportunity to see the film. You can host a private screening. There's a number of ways that you can see this film, but please let's keep the conversation going.

Let's get in touch. I'd love to hear from a number of the listeners, and let's find a way that we can allow everyone to see this film.

Jesse: And what's been really exciting is we've got a lot of interest from schools. So, educational screenings have been happening all across the world, and that's just been amazing.

Those are the best for us, I think. And I would just say, if any of the listeners have any further questions for us, we're always open to taking questions and chatting. Personally, Tyson and I can both be reached at our Instagram. So you can I think Tyson's is @TysonSadler, and mine is [00:47:00] @JesseMann, two S's, two N's. So if you want to leave that for your listeners, they're welcome to contact us. And anyone who's listening can contact us directly that way, who want to host a screening or find out ways to watch.

Chris: Absolutely. Yeah, I'll make sure that all the websites and handles are available for our listeners at theendoftourism. com.

And on behalf of them on behalf of myself, I'd like to thank you both for joining me today. Your film is incredibly inspirational, necessary, and deeply important for these times and I don't doubt that our listeners think the same. So, I wish you the most beautiful paths ahead on your travels with your families.

And ...We get the opportunity to speak again sometime.

Tyson: Thank you, Chris. This has really been a meaningful conversation. Thank you.

Jesse: Yeah. Thank you so much for giving us this space and I wish you all the same.

Chris: My pleasure.

On this episode, my guest is Sean P. Smith, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Much of his research has focused on the relationship between social media and tourism, and how colonial histories shape today’s ideologies and visual cultures of travel. The inequalities that result from many forms of tourism development, he argues, are intimately linked with how tourists create content for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and the ways tourists frame themselves in landscapes and alongside local residents often replay colonial hierarchies.

Show Notes:

Why Study Instagram?

The Pre-tour Narrative (Edward Bruner, Raul Salazar)

The Habitus of Tourism (or How We Got Here)

The Promontory Witness (or that photo)

The Logic of Influence

Emptying the Landscape (John Urry)

The Techno-Generational Divide

Media Ecology

Other Horizons in Oman

Homework:

Sean P. Smith - Tilburg University

Sean P. Smith: Twitter / X | Instagram | Google Scholar (Articles)

Transcript:

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Sean, to the pod. Thank you so much for being willing to join us to speak about your work.

Sean: Thanks very much for having me.

Chris: My pleasure. I'm curious, Sean where you're speaking from today and, and how the world is, how the world might be housing you there.

Sean: Well, it's very rainy and dark. I'm in the Southern Netherlands, an area called North Brebant, where I just moved less than a month ago.

So, in many places of moving around, if so, getting used to this one.

Chris: Sean, I found out about your work from one of the pod's listeners who sent in a link to one of your academic articles entitled, Instagram Abroad, Performance, Consumption, and Colonial Narrative in Tourism. Now, I've been ruminating on the effect that social media has on tourism, spectacle, surveillance, and cultures of disposability for a long time now.

So I'm really excited to speak with you today. And [00:01:00] likewise parts of the podcast are shared via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, so there's always this sense of kind of feeding the machine. unaware and perhaps more aware each time. And so first then, I'm curious why focus on Instagram in the context of critical tourism studies? What makes it different from say Facebook or Twitter?

Sean: Yeah, that's a really good question Chris. I think with Instagram, in many contexts around the world, certainly not universally, but it's the social media platform that is most readily identified with not just tourism, but the way that people represent themselves engaging in tourism. It's very image driven.

Of course, people do write captions, they do engage in other forms of storytelling, but nowadays it's mostly pictures and especially reels, arguably in the last few years. And for a long time, this [00:02:00] has been could almost say the dream work of tourism going back 200, maybe longer years. So even though today, I think you can find forms of tourism well represented TikTok to varying degrees on Facebook.

Instagram, at least in many of the places where I've conducted research, is the place that one goes to both learn about places to travel and also to show how oneself travels.

Chris: And I'm kind of imagining that we're more or less in the same age range, but I'm curious if on your travels, you mentioned just briefly that you had also spent time backpacking as a younger person and I'm curious if Instagram existed at the time and also if this dream work was evident to you in your travels.

Sean: It was. I think I was relatively young when I got my first [00:03:00] smartphone, but certainly not as young as people nowadays. I must have been maybe 22 or 23. So I did have some years of traveling before I think Instagram really reshaped the way that tourism is done, not just for people that actually use this app, but regardless of whether or not anyone's ever downloaded it on their phone, I think Instagram has had a significant impact on the way that tourism is done.

So when I first got a smartphone, I was in a period of my life where I was able to travel quite frequently and that was something that I was really pursuing at the time. And Instagram was a way that I was able to engage in a long running interest in photography, but also kind of a diary of where I had been, but certainly one that was legible and sort of visible to other people.

And it was through that, you could say "performance" of travel that began to think a bit more critically about this app and other social media [00:04:00] platforms as well. And the way that it was reshaping tourism destinations.

Chris: Mm. Mm. Yeah, you mention in your work this notion of the pre tour narrative.

And I'm wondering if we could unpack that a little bit for our listeners and what part Instagram plays in this pre tour narrative.

Sean: Yeah, I'm very happy to point that out, because I think this is, this is an important way to think about tourism, and that particular phrase I'm drawing on the work of Edward Bruner, who was an American anthropologist.

And that's also been picked up in other realms to be identified as what other people have called tourism imaginaries, such as in the work of Raúl Salazar. So what this concept of the pre-tour narrative describes is that before people travel to a particular destination, they are exposed to [00:05:00] various forms of representation.

And oftentimes this is very image based or narrative based. So we would see this maybe thinking back in the era before social media, images encountered in magazines and films, perhaps novels, other forms of storytelling, such as just talking with people who have been to places that one wants to travel.

However, in social media, as it's become more integral to the way that people conduct their everyday lives, let alone traveling. It's become the dominant engine for the way that the pre tour narrative is formed. Many people who use Instagram as a space to learn about places to travel, they will encounter images of these of these places on this app or and not just sort of the way that it's portrayed, but what people do in these spaces, the people that live [00:06:00] in the places they're going to visit. So, this process of the formation of a pre tour narrative has really always been a part of tourism. But I think it perhaps it's if not accelerated, then certainly taken a bit of a different form with the advent of social media.

Chris: So on some level, it's not just the question of what you're going to go see, but also how you're going to see it, how you're going to stand in front of that tower or restaurant and see, experience, what's there.

Sean: Yeah, that's a really good way to put it.

Chris: And I know it's a little early in the interview, but I'd like to jump into the heart of the matter and your critiques, if we can. You know, you wrote this incredible article Landscapes for Likes, capitalizing on travel with Instagram. And, in that article, you wrote that, deep breath,

"Instagram's networked architecture and affordances produce three [00:07:00] outcomes that circulate and magnify utterances about travel to a degree impossible in pre-networked media.

One, a mediated travel habitus hegemonically informs prevailing aesthetic norms.

Two, the scalability of embodied performances entrench the motif's narrative underpinnings.

And three, the monetizable market of Instagram encourages neoliberal notions of the branded self."

Now that's a beautiful mouthful. And so I'm wondering, if you might be willing and able to flesh out these three outcomes for our listeners.

Sean: No, that's brilliant. And it's nice to talk about these things, perhaps when they're written that can be quite a bit denser.

So maybe we can start with the first idea, this mediated travel habitus. And with the word habitus, I'm trying on the work of [00:08:00] the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who theorizes he's talking about class and culture and ways that people display their belonging within a particular class.

And the reason that I'm looking to Bordeaux here is tourism and travel, really, it's important to look at this as a practice that has been connected to what Bordeaux might call the pursuit of distinction, to the search for an acquisition of cultural goods. You know, we might think of cultural goods as being a painting or a taste and a particular kind of music, clothes, certain way of speaking even. And when one amasses certain, certain cultural goods, and they're recognized as being part of the upper classes, being marks of somebody who is [00:09:00] sophisticated, somebody who is typically from a fairly privileged financial background, these cultural goods are desirable.

So, this background I think is important because tourism from its modern beginnings in the 18th century has been obtaining these experiences and often physical artifacts that can be a way of claiming a certain social status. So, maybe you've discussed this in other podcasts already, but, when the Grand Tour began in the 1600s, but really took off in the 1700s there was this process in which the aristocratic men, young men, were sent on a tour around Europe, and they would go to capitals like Paris, later Vienna, and then especially places like Rome, and, where they could encounter the remnants of the Roman Empire and classical learning.

[00:10:00] And this was meant to do a few things in the first sense. It was meant to introduce them other parts of the world, to certain historical understandings. They could refine their Latin. They could get better at French and then they could go home and be recognized as a sophisticated member of the aristocracy. And this practice really became quite popular up until about the turn of the 19th century, when it stopped briefly because of wars on the European continent, and then after the Napoleonic Wars ended, it basically exploded.

So when we think about over tourism now in 2023, this was, you know, 1815, 1820s, and this was a period where all of a sudden there were more tourists than ever before.

And what that meant is this practice, which had only been done [00:11:00] by the wealthiest classes, was now something that the middle classes could engage in and that produced a kind of anxiety, where how was one able to become a distinguished or sophisticated traveller. How was one able to obtain the cultural goods provided by travel if everyone was doing it?

So, the habitus of tourism, the kind of implicitly learned practices and sensibilities that developed during the Grand Tour experienced this period of challenge where people had to look for a way to find distinction by other means. And I think this beginning led to this friction where now you see people who are trying to go places that no other tourists go, trying to take pictures that no other tourists have taken, trying to be the only person in a picture of a [00:12:00] famous place. So this way of understanding how to be a tourist has become enshrined in the kinds of images that we see in a space like, like Instagram to the extent where I think these images are circulating the ideologies of tourism.

The scalability refers to, in social media studies, the way in which a single image can achieve a degree of circulation that is not really possible in pre-networked media. So, by networked media, we can think of platforms like Instagram. We can think of Twitter, anything where the possibility of likes and retweets or reposts achieves a degree of visibility what we might call going viral.

So what I was writing about in that article was this particular composition called the "promontory witness" where you have typically one [00:13:00] person who's standing on a promontory or we can say the edge of a cliff the top of a building, in front of a waterfall and they're looking really, really small as compared to the vast scale of nature.

And people see these images and they understand through the mediation, the widespread circulation of these images, that this means something important about travel. This is what I mean by the mediated habitus of travel, that taking an image like this and being a person in a promontory witness image has a particular value. It is a way of claiming distinction, again, in Rodrigo's terms. And by taking a promontory witness image, one is able to circulate that image on Instagram in a very different way than before the social media platform existed. So, you know, we think about images circulated in tourism before Instagram.

It would either be, say, in a family photo album. That people used to have projectors. [00:14:00] People used to maybe send holiday pictures to family and friends, basically whoever they could, you know, show it to, but this is a really, really small circulation, unless somebody was able to get an image in a magazine or some sort of formal publication. But what really shifts with scalable social media is that somebody can take an image and there really is the potential to go viral.

I think in Instagram, the potential to have an image seen by a really significant number of people is less than on a platform like Tik Tok. But there remains the possibility if I post a promontory witness image and I put a geo tag in a place that is particularly trendy at this, at this moment and I put the right hashtags that thousands of people can witness this image and because of that possibility, I think there's a degree of enlistment, a degree of interest in [00:15:00] participating in this trend because taking a promontory witness picture is going to have much more possibility of going viral of leveraging these architectures, these scalable architectures.

Much more so than if it just take, if I take another image that isn't so popular on a platform like Instagram.

Chris: Thank you. Thank you, Sean. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot in there I'm going to come back to in just a little bit. But I wanted to just finish off this one last part because you kind of, you know, mentioned it a little bit.

The monetizable market of Instagram that encourages neoliberal notions of the brand itself. And, you know, I pulled this, this other sentence from one of your articles where you write that

"as a banal mediator of travel and tourism, Instagram can encourage tourists to imagine themselves as a capital generating brand."

Sean: It's really a comment on the attention economy structure of social media platforms, [00:16:00] where I want people to see my pictures and I want to get likes.

And I say that very much as being somebody who continues to study social media and tourism from a critical angle. When I post something I'm always aware of how it's going to be received. Some part of me, even when I'm very aware of the issues with thinking this way potentially is I always want it to gain more visibility.

If I post something and it has less likes than something I posted previously, this will likely incur some degree of thinking, what did I do wrong? What could I have done differently? You know, maybe I'm just produced such interesting content. And what I think is really taking place there is that we're constantly thinking about ways to achieve visibility in a way that is not dissimilar to the kind of negotiation that celebrities and [00:17:00] other public figures have to go through when managing their, what we might in today's terms, call their brand, where because there is always this metric of how popular one is or how visible one is in the form of likes or in the form of reposts or retweets or what have you it's means that we develop a way of always orienting towards this possible public. We're always thinking about the people that are going to see whatever kind of thing we say online, and we, I think much of the time, are hoping that it's going to be received.

If not, you know, people are going to like it, if it is going to maybe change the way that people think about something, if it's going to influence them in some way. And Instagram, of course, is like other social media platforms, is monetizable in the sense that when one gets a lot of followers, you know, if I continually create fantastic travel content and I get tens of thousands or more followers, then [00:18:00] that means that I am able to start making money from it. I'm going to be paid by different companies to come and stay at a resort or go on some sort of guided tour and take an image or make a reel of this experience and post it on Instagram, talk about how great it was, and then tag the company.

And that's a way of them bringing in business. This is how advertising works. So, people become advertisers. But even before that influencer level, I think those of us who are not influencers, and I am certainly not, there's a degree to which we are participating in this logic because even if we don't have any designs of becoming influencers, we still want our posts to be liked and this ultimately influences not just posts we make, but the kind of traveling we do and the kind of relationship we have with the places to which we travel.

Hmm.

Chris: Well [00:19:00] contentious at the very least. But thank you for that, Sean, for being able to flesh that out for us. And I'd like to return back to this notion of the promontory witness, and you know, because even before Instagram I remember seeing in my backpacking years, these same photos, right?

The photo of the person, of their back to the camera facing the open horizon, you know, whether it be a cliff face or a desert or whatever it is, and spreading their hands or arms and, just this kind of emanating freedom, I guess.

But you also mentioned that this kind of perspective, if you want to call it that, manufactures emptiness because there's nobody else in the photo, and this is so much a part of the kind of sometimes they're Instagram reels, or sometimes they're photos of people, what it looks like when people are at tourist destinations, actually taking the [00:20:00] photo in front of the Eiffel Tower, or the Great Wall, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or whatever, and there's actually hundreds.

And thousands of people taking the same photo or trying to, and everyone wants to have that photo without anyone else in it. And so, just a little preamble to the question again, in Landscapes for Likes, you write that

"this manufacturing of emptiness privileges tourists as the sole consumers of a landscape, and with its residents hidden from view, a landscape is voided of its human and temporal context. Thus abstracted, place is relevant as little but a visual commodity."

And then just another quote that I think brings a little something else to the picture is that

"the promontory witness motif scrubs the landscape of the tourist destination of any sign of human habitation, but that of the tourist, singularly pictured in a position of mastery that confers [00:21:00] possession over the destination."

And so there seems to be a kind of shared understanding in critical tourism studies that modern and especially social media based travel photography emphasizes empty spaces, of course, minus the Instagram user, the person photographing question. And so I'm curious, why is identifying the emptying of the landscape so important for our understanding?

What does it do to us as photo viewers?

Sean: Yeah, that's an excellent question and I think I'm very, I'm very interested in this composition, which the lone tourist and the landscape, which, mean, other people before me have pointed to, and at least John Urry.

And I think there are two things happening here. For one, it's the kind of picture that's due to the mediation of what we can think of as a travel habitus, due to the way that [00:22:00] people have learned about how to do tourism and to represent themselves doing tourism and the most sophisticated way or in the way that is the most likely to gain them social distinction. They take these images because they've seen these images before and they're attractive images as well. Maybe they're attractive because we have, through seeing so many pictures like them, we've been taught or sort of subconsciously imbibed the aesthetics as being something that we value and are attracted to.

One degree of what's of what's taking place. And to another extent, when it comes to this notion of possessing something of being the only person that that goes there, this kind of image of the tourist being the only person in a landscape or in front of some sort of cultural monument is , a way of [00:23:00] claiming a symbolic status, which links back to this ideology of getting off the beaten track. So, I imagine if you're experience backpacking and my own there's a real interest in getting off the beaten path, of going to places that aren't touristy, of being a traveler and not a tourist. And part of the way that the success in getting off the beaten track is signified is being the only person in a photograph.

You know, we as backpackers or tourists don't want to be associated with other tourists. And there's very little better way to represent not being another tourist than being the only person in a particular image.

Chris: Yeah, it [00:24:00] makes you wonder. And putting together the research for this episode, I came to this, this kind of possibility, question, consternation, And it arose in this way. And so the, the next question, which kind of relates to the last one is, do you think there might be, or is a connection here between the emptying of the photo of humans or locals and the emptying of places of humans and locals, and that is in the context of the gentrification of local people and culture in tourist destinations.

Sean: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a very good point. I think especially because gentrification is aesthetically produced through a kind of emptiness or a kind of minimalism. And this gentrified neighborhood is not something that is crowded. It is not some place that there are a lot of wayward signs, [00:25:00] wayward, quote unquote.

It is a space which is typically designed according to what might be understood as a globalized regime of clean lines and interesting fonts and a lot of white space. So thinking about the way that that works and everything from upmarket coffee shops to designing neighborhoods that are meant to attract capital on upper middle class consumers and residents.

I think that does link quite persuasively with this desire to be the only person within this landscape. I mean, what ultimately is taking place in both processes is that, no matter where somebody is going and taking a promontory witness picture, there are people who live there. There's people who've always lived there and been a part, in many ways, of the land that is being made into a landscape.

And by not including [00:26:00] them, within these pictures or in processes of gentrification, actually through state-sanctioned programs or other forms of state-sanctioned investment, local residents are being pushed out to make way for different people, the tourist in this case. There is a process of erasure and, and often what can be conceived as really a very colonial process of taking over, taking over a space and privileging the owners of capital, who in this case, typically are tourists.

And of course, it's a little bit different when you're taking a picture versus when you're taking a picture in a place that is not considered part of the Global North. But tourists typically have a lot more privilege and financial resources than local residents.

And when they're not in these images, but the places in which they are are included, then at least when we're seeing pictures of it, how [00:27:00] do we imagine who, who controls the space? How do we imagine who has a right to this space? It would be the person in the photograph, the tourist, rather than the people who actually live, work, and, and shape these landscapes.

Okay.

Chris: Since Instagram tends to be the go to medium for these images and for images in general, as far as social media is concerned, do you think that Instagram then is a tool and driver of gentrification? Could we say that with a sense of coherence?

Sean: I think it's as much a tool as, as many other tools and it is very easily leveraged to that end by actors who are seeking to mobilize processes of gentrification. And then I think this is pretty well documented for instance, in Yoo Jung oh's article Instagaze, Aesthetic Representation and Contested Transformation of Woljeong, South Korea.

Well, she was [00:28:00] writing about Jeju Island in South Korea, and how once tourists started to take particular forms of images often of being one person in a beach, then different interests were able to move in and realize the value of this image and find ways to capitalize on all of the tourists that wanted to come and take that same image. So what that led to was the beach front where, this is largely a fishing community and other sort of small scale, more artisanal economies, was remade into cafes and restaurants and guest houses in a process that.

I think it can be widely recognized in tourism development around the world. But what the author, Yu Jung Oh, is saying, is showing there, is that this was largely motivated by the ability to take this image, that [00:29:00] a tourist could go and purchase a coffee or something, and they would be able to take that image for their Instagram.

So there's a really clear linkage there and I think that linkage can be made in many other places as well. But I think in that sense, Instagram and social media is, is can be leveraged for gentrification as, as many other tools can be and are being.

Chris: Thank you, Sean. And so, know, for the rest of our time together, I'd like to kind of lean on you a little bit for your personal opinion. I know that sometimes working in and living in academic worlds that's kind of something to be left the doorstep before you walk in. But you know, you mentioned this notion of networked media and pre networked media and kind of social media falling into this wider term of networked media and since these mediums have only come to exist, in terms of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, [00:30:00] we're talking 15 years at the most, and then the extension or prototypes of those existing in the previous 10. So about 25 years, maybe.

And I'm curious in this regard you know, I imagine that you're about my age, maybe a little bit younger so I'm curious if you have a lived memory of how things were before social media and perhaps even before the internet, what do you think we might be losing by virtue of not being able to remember the world without social media

Sean: yeah, great question. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, very good question. Very, of course, fraught. So I guess for context, I was born in 1988. And. So I, got a cell phone at 16, and again, I got a smartphone and Instagram and WhatsApp. So I'm really in two minds about this. And in the first sense, I think it's important to be aware of [00:31:00] how with any new technology there's a great deal of anxiety and resistance and what might be called panic. And this isn't just social media or it's not just television, but we can go all the way back to radio, to novels.

People were worried about that, to the written word back in the ancient Greek era. People were concerned that when we start writing things down, this is going to make it very difficult to remember things, and we're going to be less successful orators and our reasoning will be diluted because we start writing things down.

So there's always this kind of fear of new technology, and part of me wants to recognize that this is just another one of those periods in which some sort of transformative technology comes along and many of [00:32:00] the generation who can remember what it was like beforehand is going to feel varying degrees of nostalgia for that period.

That said, it's also difficult to not, at the same time, say that something really significant has, has, has happened, to not feel, I mean, honestly, I do certainly feel nostalgia for periods before social media. Some of the things which I think have been changed is the interest in finding ways to represent oneself, traveling. And this isn't to say that whenever one goes somewhere, one is always sort of seeing it as if from the viewfinder or, well, it wouldn't really be a viewfinder of a camera so much as, you know, one's phone screen.

But that leads to. In being very interested in taking images that would be successful within the attention economies of a platform like Instagram, it can be difficult to [00:33:00] not see the world as if from the perspective of what would make a good picture for Instagram. There's a lot of different people who've come up with critiques of this process.

I mean, if you think about it in terms of spectacle, you know, like Guy DuBord's idea that we're no longer, and he was writing in the 60s, you know, that we are seeing relationships, not between people, but between people and images. And so some sort of fundamental human connection is being lost because all we're doing is just relating to images and using images to relate to other people.

I'm not so sure about universalizing that idea, but the ubiquity of social media and the Challenges to not somehow be on one of these platforms, in some even practical way does mean, I think, that there are significant influences in tourism as much as anything.

Chris: Yeah, my my phone died the other day, abruptly. [00:34:00] And you know, I still have this computer that thankfully allows me to have this interview with you. And I can still access Facebook and Twitter, but for whatever reason, I can't access Instagram. And you know, it's been a few days and I'm really loving it.

And then this morning I realized that I had planned to upload a post for the podcast. And then I was just like, okay, well, my best recourse of action is to just stay calm and wait, right? Yeah, and it's a big question, and I think it's something that, I wonder if young people, say people born, you know, 2000 or after would be able to answer with, with any, without having lived in a time without social media, for example.

And so this kind of like brings us a little bit towards the towards theme of media ecology, which, you know, we talked about just very briefly before we started our interview here and I had taken Andrew McLuhan's Understanding Media [00:35:00] Intensive last year.

He was also on the pod in the, in season three and just generally speaking for our listeners media ecology, within media ecology, the focus is on the medium and not just the message. It's a way of taking to task the context of our technology and not just the content.

And so this manufacturing of emptiness of people and places as brands and I'm curious, isn't this to a large extent, also contingent on our tools, on the limits and architecture of the camera, for example? You know, do we stop with Instagram or do we look at all social media and later all tools? Because these media exist within each other, right?

Instagram is a medium within the internet, I suppose, and then the internet is a medium within the phone. Maybe you could make that argument. It's not to say, if we didn't have these things, if we didn't have Instagram, if we didn't have [00:36:00] social media, would the promontory witness just disappear? I don't think it's as easy as that. But Would it be as intensely magnified in our time?

Sean: So yes, I think the question of magnification is really what sits at the heart of social media because if we're looking at the medium of Instagram, then we have to think about photography and which was invented in the 1840s.

And then if we think about photography, we have to think about painting the way that landscape has been represented in many different cultures, both in painting in the Western, Chinese and many other traditions, but then also in poetry and literature. So with all of these things, there's a precedent.

And I think if you look at something like the Promontory Witness, this composition and this the visual formation of having one person immersed within a landscape or standing at some edge of a cliff, that's been around for [00:37:00] 200 years at least. You can see some in the later 1700s that look like this, but then the desire to be the only person in a particular place to have gotten off of the beaten track and be the distinguished traveler, that's also been around for, for a very long time. So that's why I think I'm hesitant to sort of pin the blame on Instagram.

And I think my thinking around this has taken a bit of it, not exactly a turn, but it's changed a bit. So I think there's a real tendency to look at platforms like Instagram as only being spaces in which processes of gentrification can gain momentum, or only be spaces where one is almost disciplined into being a neoliberal subject who, is working sort of subconsciously thinking about how to brand oneself all the time, specifically in places of tourism, you know, that it's a way that people [00:38:00] only think about the pictures. They only want to go take a picture in these places. They don't actually want to have any experiences in this place or relationships with the people there.

And I think that really exists. That is absolutely one dimension of what takes place with social media platforms. But as many people I've spoken to say, social media is a double edged sword. And where that's really been driven home to me has been where I've been conducting research for the past almost two years now. Sometimes they're in person, other times digitally, in Oman, a country in the Arabian peninsula where I was interested initially because it was becoming more popular as an international tourism destination.

So, I went there after the pandemic expecting to meet all these people who were experiencing the problematics of international tourism as we know well, I think from your podcast among other, among other spaces.

And there's some of that, absolutely. But what I also found was that, in the past few [00:39:00] years, people who are living in Oman, and this is both Omanis, people who have citizenship and then also residents, so there's about 40 percent of the country is made up of people who don't have citizenship in Oman, like many other Gulf countries.

And in the past few years, I mean, we're talking five years, maximum ten years, there's been this surge of interest in nature, or we can say is the non human or even the more than human environment and what's can be understood as domestic nature tourism, I think, like many places around the world, domestic nature tourism in Oman became was very popularized during the pandemic when people could not travel abroad.

But what this meant is that people saw these images on Instagram and Instagram is really most popular app in Oman, next to WhatsApp, and that introduced them to parts of the country that they'd never [00:40:00] interacted with before.

And Oman is this incredibly various and fascinating environment where there's mountains that are, you know, over 3, 000 meters higher, what is that 10, 000 feet you know, all of this coastline and with coral reefs and these waddies or slot canyons. And people began to engage with the environments in a very different way to go on hiking trips, to go on canyoning trips and social media was this massive part of that.

You know, this is where people learned about this possibility, this is where people met people to introduce them, to take them safely into these spaces. They'd never been on a hike before. You know, Instagram is where they're going to meet somebody to go out into nature with.

And it's not to say that this doesn't have problems associated with it, and everything I suppose related with tourism does, but I think it also represents a case where Instagram, in this sense, was a way that people are actively connecting to nature, and in a place [00:41:00] where, you know, Instagram existed and was widely used before nature tourism was a thing.

And I think this kind of flips the narrative a bit where in Western Europe, where I'm sitting right now, for instance, there's been this long time practice of nature tourism, you know, going back to, again, the 1900s. You know, people started climbing Alps in the 1850s and so forth. And then Instagram comes along and everybody's saying, oh, people just want to climb the mountain to take a picture.

you know, they don't actually care about nature. Well, in Oman, people weren't really, not that many people were climbing mountains, before the ability to take a picture existed. So, there's a bit of a different trajectory in which people began to relate to a particular space and to the kinds of experiences that one can have engaging in nature tourism.

So in that sense to go back to your to your question about what do we essentially do with this platform? [00:42:00] And how do we address the problematics? I don't think that I mean, I think that Instagram will not be the most popular platform forever, certainly, but social media, or this kind of connected media, barring some kind of unforeseen complication.

I mean, looking at you, AI.

But this sort of communication is here to stay probably. So, can we find ways in which this space is can be generative of community could be generative of care and ethical forms of travel? What might that look like? And what kind of imagery might be associated with it?

Chris: I'm curious in that regard, Oman to me is someone who's never been and probably, you know extremely ignorant to any of the nation's culture or history. I imagine modernity to be something of a recent arrival in that place, relatively speaking, correct me if I'm wrong, of course. And I guess what I'm curious about in the context of your research and most [00:43:00] recent research is if you've seen the conflicts that might arise in terms of traditional hospitality? What it means to be in a place, as opposed to a landscape, what it means to be a host, as opposed to, I guess a landlord, in the Airbnb sense of the word and perhaps also what it means to be a traveler as opposed to a tourist within the context of these new economic dynamics in Oman and if Instagram has anything to do with that?

Sean: No, that's, that's a wonderful question. It's one I really appreciate as I continue to work there and spend time with people who've been incredibly generous showing me around and introducing me to what their life is like as people who participate in tourism. I mean, the first thing I would say is the Oman, the Arabian peninsula and really Arabic speaking cultures generally is hospitality is one of the most fundamentally [00:44:00] important things in social relationships. In what it means to be a part of this culture, one is hospitable to guests, to friends, to family members. It's almost difficult to understate how integral this is. I mean, it is, in many cultures, hospitality is big, but it's very big in this space.

And so I think it's a particularly well suited question to, you know, how is tourism and how is social media impacting this code of conduct and, you know this really wonderful practice that I think, you know, the rest of the world can stand to learn a lot from.

So, to your question about sort of where my mind sits in this span of development. Oil was discovered in the 1960s and kind of transformative effect as it has everywhere. And in this time, there was a great degree of urbanization. People could get services rather than relying on culture, trading, which comes from a pre oil economy.[00:45:00]

Now, you see, I think, a couple things. For one thing, cultures of hospitality, I think, were already being disturbed by the way that neoliberal capitalism tends to work, not just in Oman, but anywhere around the world. It encourages people to find ways to profit themselves and to think as individual agents rather than as being part of a community, having responsibilities to the humans, but also nonhumans to the land as well as to one's family.

So that process is already in it's already taking place before tourism began to take root. And I think there are some spaces in which tourism is developing in such a way that it's very profit oriented. And where people are incentivized to privilege [00:46:00] their own gains over those of others.

However, there are other ways I think in which people who, say we're living in the city, are meeting people who live in fairly remote areas, under the auspices of tourism. Because they're engaging in tourism, they're meeting people who are living in these spaces and often chatting with them or sharing a meal or sharing coffee or something like this.

Sometimes these people who are living in places that are becoming tourism destinations are part of the industry and sometimes people are not, but as it stands now, it seems as very much a preservation of hospitality within this, this particular context. As with anything, I think the question of tourism is to what extent this will become commodified or not, like how do we make money off of this culture of hospitality?

How do we turn it into a tourist product? You know, we can sell Oman as being it's hospitable, come meet the locals. But in the way that people continue [00:47:00] to practice it, both people who are living in Oman and being domestic tourists and also people who are seeing tourists come to where they live in ways that they haven't before. To me, it still seems like it's very robustly in place.

Chris: Good to hear. And I very much look forward to the publication of your research. Hopefully it'll see the light of day soon, perhaps.

Sean: I hope so. Yeah. Things are in process for sure.

Chris: Okay. Well, I'd like to thank you, Sean, on behalf of our listeners for joining us today. And you know, this leads me of course, to the question of how might they be able to get in touch with you or follow your work. And if that includes an Instagram handle.

Sean: Yeah, that's, that's fine. So I I recently started another Instagram account. I had my own account and stopped posting about 2019.

And then I got interested in it again. I opened a new account, which is sort of more research facing. So yeah, if people wanna check that [00:48:00] out, it's @SPSMITHS, so S-P-S-M-I-T-H-S or email [email protected]. So always pleased to hear ideas and of course things that I've missed because of course I have so much to learn in this space.

So I would really look forward to feedback and ideas. Hmm.

Chris: Well, I'll make sure all of that's on the End of Tourism website and the podcast page when the interview launches and as well as the other authors, researchers and works that you mentioned earlier on. So once again, it's been amazing, Sean, thank you so much for being able to really flesh these complex ideas out for us and we'll see what happens, right?

Sean: Absolutely. Thanks very much for the invitation. And as always, I'll look forward to continue listening. This is such an excellent project.

Chris: Thank you, Sean.

This episode and others like it are created and made possible by the generosity of Substack subcribers like yourself. Similarly, I have subsidized the work of the pod with my own time and money. This is a labour of love and lineage that requires the support of others. Please consider offering a gift in return, whether that include upgrading to paid subscription, making a one-time donation, sharing the podcast among your people or being willing to reach out and assist in production (as others have).

Thank you. Bless. Peace.

On this episode, my guest is Manish Jain, a man deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems, cultural imaginations and inter-cultural dialogue. Inspired by MK Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore,  Ivan Illich, his illiterate village grandmother, his unschooled daughter, indigenous communities and Jain spiritual philosophy, he is one of the leading planetary voices for deschooling our lives and reimagining education. 

He has served for the past 25 years as Chief Beaver (ecosystems builder) of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development based in Udaipur, India and is co-founder of some of the most innovative educational experiments in the world - the Swaraj University, the Jail University, Complexity University, Tribal Farmversity, the Creativity Adda, the Learning Societies Unconference, the Walkouts-Walk-on network, Udaipur as a Learning City, the Families Learning Together network, Berkana Exchange.  He co-launched the global Ecoversities Alliance with 500+ members in 50 countries.

Show Notes:

Kidnapped by the American Dream

Grandma’s University

Reclaiming our Cultural Imagination

Cultural Imagination for the Culturally Homeless

The Radical and Exponential Power of Trust

Unlearning Cultural Appropriation in the Oral Tradition

Jugard, or “playful improvisation”

Being Reclaimed by Ancestors

Swaraj University - Money, Love, and Death

Alivelihoods and Deadlihoods

Traditions of Hospitality in Rajasthan

Ecoversities

Homework:

Swaraj University Website

Ecoversities Website

Jugaad (Wikipedia)

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome, Manish, to the End of Tourism podcast. Thanks for joining me today.

Thank you, Chris. Great to be here. Great to be with you.

Speaking of here, I was wondering if you could share with our listeners where you find yourself today and maybe what the world looks like for you where you are.

Yes, I live in a very magical place called Udaipur.

It's in Rajasthan, India. I have been here for the last 25 years. Before that I was moving cities every year. I was living in the U. S. and Europe. And my village is about two hours from where I live, from the city. And I have lots of relatives here, lots of ancestors around. And this happens to be one of the major tourist destinations of India.

So it's an interesting combination of very [00:01:00] cosmopolitan kind of global jet set coming in, but also lots of traditional culture, local knowledge, still alive. We were lucky to be called backwards and underdeveloped. And so many things have remained but again under, under continuous threat by kind of urbanization and global economy.

But yeah, it's a very beautiful place, lots of palaces, lakes all kinds of animals on the street. On a good day you'll see an elephant walking down the street or a camel just in our neighborhoods and yeah, I love it here. So it's, I mean, it's found a place in my heart for sure.

Hmm. What a gift. What a gift to, to live in a place that you love and, you know, it seems to be that question at the heart of the themes of the podcast and in that regard, I wanted to begin by asking you a little bit about your journey, Manish. So[00:02:00] from what I've read, from what I've heard, a lot of your work centers around de schooling and unlearning, specifically with Swaraj University and other educational endeavors, Ecoversities being one of them.

And I'd like to return to those themes and projects in a little bit and start by asking you, among other things, about your earlier accolades as a Harvard graduate and someone with a degree from Brown University. One of your bios says that you worked for, among others the American multinational investment bank, Morgan Stanley, as well as UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank, and USAID in South Asia, Africa, and the former Soviet Union.

And so I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share what led to your initial involvement in these rather prominent institutions, and then subsequently, what led to leaving them behind thereafter?

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, hearing that [00:03:00] always gives me the shivers a little bit. It's like such a long time ago now. But so I kind of actually grew up with a deep sense of wanting to serve, serve the world. And when I was growing up I actually, I tell people I was kidnapped when I was three years old, born in India, but then taken to the U. S. Kidnapped by the American dream, which I over time realized was a nightmare for most of the planet.

So this deep sense of service has always been, been with me, maybe from my mother, from my father, from my grandparents, many, many sources from, inspired by also Gandhi and, and Tagore and many other Indian freedom fighters.

But I kind of grew up with this narrative, if you want to serve, you should go to the big places, the places of big power, those institutions, that's where you can influence, that's where you can make the most impact. And so that kind of was a trajectory that I, I kind of [00:04:00] got put on I kind of was very good.

I never liked being in these institutions, but I was very good at faking it I faked it through school all the way to Harvard and, and so I was pretty good at faking it and eventually it caught up with me and I started feeling like I was becoming a fake. So, but going to those places I thought there were, you know, those were the centers of power and that when I got there, I started feeling that these places, each of these places, one by one, I started realizing that they were actually quite powerless in many ways, surrounded by a sense of scarcity and fear and very limited imagination.

And so one by one, I became disillusioned with each of each of those places. I was expecting that, you know, these would be the places which could help serve humanity, but I realized that they were built on, you know, this continuous model of extraction and colonization and exploitation of [00:05:00] life.

And so even with education, I felt like, okay education will be the solution and I started realizing that education was a huge part of the problem. And so that's what led me started me on the de schooling path to try to see how we can find other ways besides relying on these institutions and the logic of capitalism and commodification to solve our problems. You know, over time I started really developing a severe mistrust of experts.

I was one of them, like, although I'm fake and so are the rest of these guys. So by the time I was 28, I hit the wall. And I was like I don't have anywhere else to go, I've been to all these big places, and I don't really see, see any hope from them. I don't think they can be repaired either or that they can actually take the kinds of initiatives that are needed to change the game.

So that's what led me back to India then[00:06:00] to be with my illiterate village grandmother. And I thought I'll take care of her. And then I, my wife and I realized that we had inadvertently become part of our grandmother's university and she was our unlearning guru. To both Get beyond I would say a lot of our own fears and anxieties, get beyond a lot of the, let's say Western liberal do gooder frameworks, get beyond our attachment to institutions just to solve things for us and start to understand and remember, I think remembering is a word that I have discussed many times with old common friend of ours, Gustavo Esteva, but start to remember that we have much more richness and wealth and creativity, possibility within us and our, and within our communities. So that's been a little bit of the journey to re remember and reclaim and reimagine things.

I [00:07:00] remember seeing in one of your talks that you said that your work or to you, what you understood your work to be is, is a way of reclaiming our cultural imagination. I'm wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on that.

Yeah, I think basically I think the deepest form of colonization has happened is to our imaginations.

And there is a phrase from the eighties from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher called TINA. "There Is No Alternative." So, as there was an uprising that started happening around the world questioning the dominant development paradigm, the global economy, it was quickly suppressed, repressed by this phrase, TINA.

This is the best system that we have, and you know, there's, there's nothing beyond it, so you should just try to improve what's there. And so I think what then [00:08:00] people are forced into is to try to fix or let's say work with what is the existing frameworks and definitions that we have been fed about things like progress or development or success or happiness and then we are all in a very deep endless losing race to try to catch up with something.

And we're not even sure what happens when you win. Maybe that's where it hit me. You know, there's a saying, if you, if you beat them at their own game, you lose everything. And so I kind of started realizing that personally, and also when I was looking at the development paradigm more different more closely.

So I think, you know, what else is possible first of beyond the kind of logic of the rational mind, what's possible beyond the anthropocentric perspectives that we have on life, what's possible beyond global corporations and institutions deciding what's best for us, what's [00:09:00] possible beyond markets and technologies as the solutions for all of the planet's woes.

I think that's what we're trying to explore when I talk about cultural imagination. And I, I think that the first step is to open up the definitions again. This is another thing I think many of my elders, Gustavo, and, Ivan Illich and a person here in India who was a friend of Gustavo's, Claude Alvarez, many were urging us that we need to open up the definitions of things.

So that's what usually I think in a lot of the decolonial movements, what didn't happen that we accepted their definitions of development of the good life, all of those things. And then we started pursuing that, but actually it's a very exciting time that we can actually crack that open. And see, okay, what is it?

Little Bhutan, a country of 700, 000. People asking, you know, what is happiness? And saying that[00:10:00] you know, the West, you guys have all the money, you guys have all the technology, you have all the armies, but are your people happy? So I think, you know, this is happening in obviously in Latin America, "buen vivir," in India, Swaraj, so many movements, which I think are challenging the given definitions and creating a space for us to dream differently, to tap into a different worldview which recognizes a sense of the sacred and recognizes that we are not just, you know, cogs in the machine in terms of our purpose on this earth.

So I think those are, that's a little bit of what I mean by reclaiming the cultural imagination.

Hmm. And you mentioned Swaraj and I'm really excited to dive into that and see where this notion of reclaiming cultural imagination fits there in a place and not just in philosophies.

But I wanted to ask you this kind of this little follow up question in regards to the cultural imagination. Because we've [00:11:00] had the great honor to befriend and learn from people like Gustavo. But I think of my family and friends and compañeros, colleagues in Toronto, major North American metropolis.

And I wonder how reclaiming the cultural imagination looks like or could be for people who would consider themselves either cultural orphans or culturally homeless. You know I mean, you and I have distinct ties, it seems, and a lived memory to the places our people moved or migrated from or still live in.

And so there's a bridge of sorts that already exists that on some level can still be crossed. What about the people who have no lived memory of where their people come from or who would admit, or at least can offer up the idea that they have no culture?

Yeah, so, oh, that's a great question. So, [00:12:00] I think maybe the first thing I would kind of offer in that situation is that one is a question of how to reconnect to the land and the territory you live in the place, the water, the rivers, the mountains, the forests. There's a tremendous amount of memory that, that lives in the place which can help us recover parts of ourselves that have been lost. The other is, I think, in terms of reconnecting to our bodies again, there's a tremendous amount of wisdom. We can recover again from our own bodies, from our breath also reconnecting to our breath in a very profound way and help us recover things.

And also when I talk about culture, I think the essence of culture without being an essentialist, is is what I call gift culture. Mm-Hmm. So this culture of, of connection, of care, of kindness, of trust, of hospitality, of [00:13:00] forgiveness. There's so many traditions like that, wherever we are, and we can also create new traditions around these things.

And so, a lot of times we confuse culture for the food or for the clothes or for the music of a place. But I think the deeper level of all culture is a gift culture, which is a reminder of the interconnectedness of life, the thread that is woven through all of us, connects us to something very sacred and even divine in some sense.

So, I think that reconnecting to the spirit of kindness and care is a huge step. We've been doing a lot of experiments over the years around gift culture and reconnecting to a field of trust again. I call it the radical and exponential power of trust.

Much of our work and I would almost say in the miracles that I see every day in our work are because of this field of trust that we have been able to reconnect to and this is what my [00:14:00] grandmother, I think, was helping me to reconnect to in terms of culture is because I remember growing up in the U. S. this continuous thing of don't trust anyone, don't trust your neighbors, don't trust anyone, somebody, anybody is being kind to you because they may have an angle. They may steal from you or cheat from you or whatever, and I think it took me a lot of healing to come out of that and that has been a phenomenal journey in terms of opening up possibilities for how I connect, and one other thing I would say is that.

A lot of, I know this has been a major unlearning area because I used to be very critical of all of this cultural appropriation that we see in the West, people picking up things in here, here and there. But as I've been in India and I've become more connected to the oral traditions, very different kind of ethics and philosophy and ways of, of living and doing things that lives in an oral tradition.

Like [00:15:00] I grew up with this strong fear of, you know, plagiarism. You know, that was the one thing Harvard and Brown hammer you is about plagiarizing. Cite every word. Chris said this, or Gustavo said this, right? And I found in the oral tradition, there's a different kind of trickster level playfulness that you can take anything, play with anything.

You don't have to cite, you can modify, you can change, you can adapt. And I think I've been trying to bring that more into these conversations around cultural appropriation, because I think people get so afraid nowadays of being bashed for exploring a different culture for taking things.

Obviously, there is a level of depth and engagement and commitment, dedication to understanding something that I would invite in that. But being able to pick up things, I think has been part of our culture. People take things and spread them and appropriate them in ways that keep them alive and moving so it's something I've been exploring a [00:16:00] lot is that it seems very much more controlling and part of the old paradigm to say that we need to protect and there are certain cultural gatekeepers and certain kinds of people who who will tell you you're right or wrong in the culture.

So I also would want to open up that conversation, exploration with people.

Thank you. You know what I mean? You know what I mean with that? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It definitely points towards a notion of cultures being static and that there being a degree of authenticity, a kind of original foundation or culture for a people which seems to be a relic of 19th century anthropology and things like that.

And, and a restriction that we are just these bodies in this present time. You know, in India, obviously we talk about reincarnation and so there, there may be other, other cultures within us and that we've lived that [00:17:00] want to express themselves and want to be opened in this life as well, which maybe our body and our place doesn't necessarily give us that opportunity, but the possibility exists, or the the desire even if is there so. I would want to invite us to all of that as well.

Mm hmm, and you've been speaking a lot about how your time in India has really been an opportunity for you to unlearn, maybe disassociate a little bit from the taught worldview that you had in the United States.

And this next question comes from a friend of ours dear friend Erin, and She wanted to ask about your move to India or move back depending on how you choose to understand it and how that experience has been for you as someone who grew up on the other side of the world and what do you think it means in the context of [00:18:00] your migration to be claimed or reclaimed by a place.

Beautiful. Yeah. I think it's been quite a powerful and even I would say magical journey because as you said, the place and the people reclaim me. Part of it is that, you know, my relatives are here, my ancestors are here. And so at times when I felt, you know, a little bit out of place they reminded me that I belong here and I'm welcome here.

And I think what I've made a very strong effort to do is to reground myself in different ways and maybe those ways have been made the transition more smooth or beautiful in one way. So one is like, you know, a lot of the ideas, for example, or work that I'm doing I've tried to find cultural reference points and stories that makes sense because initially when I came, a lot of the things I was talking about, [00:19:00] people were like, oh, that's another Western idea. That's something you're just bringing. It's not Indian, blah, blah, whatever. So I started to look for stories in the past.

So when I talk about my university, Swaraj University, I tell people it's 5, 000 years old. Our first chancellor was from the Mahabharata, Ekalavya, the story of Ekalavya, the first documented, self-designed learner and so that all of a sudden something clicks differently for people of how they hear it, how they connect it. When I talk about, for example, when we used to talk a lot, Erin, since you brought her up, we explored a lot of zero waste and upcycling together.

There's a word in Hindi, jugard, which means playful improvisation. So, using our own words to describe it rather than trying to take everything from English and translate it. But also I'd say, you know, like people would say, again, zero waste. This is a Western sustainability thing. I said, no no, wait a second.

Our grandmothers are all zero waste masters. So, you [00:20:00] know, let us understand that all of these ideas are actually connected to many things that we have in our own culture. So that's made it a very beautiful thing because it's not only being welcoming, it's actually unleashing a lot of energy that had been pent up with people like fear and you know, self -limiting, self-belief, self -suppression in a sense.

So all of a sudden hearing that, Oh, this is actually has roots in who we are, has opened up a lot for ways we engage in people to accept me and some of the ideas and experiments we've been sharing. So that's been good. And I think the other thing is really a kind of regrounding. So when I moved back, I was good at PowerPoint and Excel.

My worldview was through Microsoft products, right? So what I learned again was to reconnect to farming and our food systems. And I think Aerin and Yeyo's journey is also, we've been together on this for many years, but [00:21:00] also to local language again, and you know, making our own clothes, building our own buildings, you know our own healing techniques and plants here.

So, just reconnecting to a lot of those things have helped the place to welcome me in different ways and also me to be able to build different relationships with a lot of diverse people here as well. And I think the third thing is really that just to add was like this, one of the deschooling ideas was to core is to shed these labels of failures of looking, you know, at only educated people as intelligent.

So there's so much wisdom and creativity and beauty and love that is with people who don't have degrees. And so being able to see that because I was able to let go of these labels and these frameworks has really helped me again, beautifully connecting with many people and many energies here.

Wonderful. And [00:22:00] do you think that those, those points that you just mentioned, that they were causes or consequences of you and your people there opening Swaraj University? Or did it evolve into that? It happened, you know, like I said, we have more than a thousand faculty in Swaraj University, and they are grandmothers and farmers and artisans and mountains and lakes and, and trees, the human, the more than human.

The one other thing that's really been very powerful is, you know, the place I live in, I would say about 80 percent of the people living here talk to their ancestors. Like without a shaman, they can, you know, like my cousins or my aunt can channel ancestors and we would have all night prayer rituals to talk, connect with them, invite them.

And it's like people, and for me with my western trained scientific mind, I [00:23:00] couldn't understand this initially and then it started to open up once I kind of allowed myself to breathe with it opened up a whole different set of possibilities also in engagement to the place where the ancestors were welcoming me. As well to this place. So, that has been beautiful.

And another thing that happened was I met, again, a lot of traditional healers. So 25 years ago when I was meeting them was a huge amount of skepticism. My mother's a doctor in the U. S. and she doesn't trust anything Ayurvedic or folk medicines or anything.

So when I met them, I was skeptical, but as I spent time with them, and started seeing that they're, they actually have some very deep power. And when I asked them, you know, how did you learn all of this stuff? Because you think of this plant with this, you know, the bark of this and the, you have to boil that with the roots of this and mix it with this.

I'm like, so many combinations and permutations, right? And I'm like, they didn't have supercomputers. [00:24:00] So I asked them, how did you guys learn this? And they said, what do you think? And I very proudly used to say trial and error, you know, that must be the scientific method. And they would laugh like crazy.

And I'm like, what, what was it like that? That's so primitive trial and error. It's so primitive. I'm like, what? And they would, I said, how did they do it? They said, Oh, we could, our ancestors could talk to the plants. And so once I kind of started to allow that worldview to permeate me, it started to create a different sense of connection to the place, I think.

And so it's been a very beautiful journey to in a sense, one can say rewild myself here.

And are those, are those themes incorporated into swarajs, and I don't want to say curriculum, because we all know that's a four letter word for a lot of people, but but in terms of de schooling, in terms of unlearning, in terms of, these kinds of old time [00:25:00] learnings, what does a student maybe encounter at Swaraj?

Yeah. So there's no curriculum per se, but we have, you know, a few different elements to it. It's all derived from living together, right? So, one is obviously, we call it learning from the gift of conflict. So as you're living together, there's conflicts that start to emerge all the time.

So those conflicts are very beautiful entry points into kind of reflecting, if you, once you move beyond the blame narrative to reflect on yourself, what's triggering you, why do you feel disturbed about it? So very, very powerful opportunities to reflect on oneself. We have also what we call a lot of unlearning challenges.

So those are optional, but we've created different challenges because we felt there's a lot of conditioning that people come into. Swaraj with and they're around many different areas, but I would say three of the common ones are around most [00:26:00] common around money unlearning our free fear, anxiety scarcity that's related to the money system.

Even our self worth gets tied so much to the money system. So, we have a lot of different experiments around that. The second is around love. Both starting with self love, but then how we understand love, how we relate, notions of jealousy, inferiority, all kinds of things which are tied to love.

And the third is then death. Death. And so are so these are places that we explore a bit. We have different experiments where people can, you know, for example, and imagine your death would be an invitation that we would invite people into a process. So there's a lot of unlearning experiments. And then the third is that people actually then have a lot of space to design their own personal programs of what they want to explore.

And in that process, because you're living in a community, lots of informal learning is happening. Peer to peer, your friend is doing [00:27:00] something. Maybe you start, like, I'm not interested, but after a month of seeing your friend, or a few months, you start, it's just something starts, you know, entering into your system and you realize, Oh, maybe I do like this or this is interesting.

And your friend leaves it. I've seen cases, a friend leaves it and the other person picks it up and you know, takes it forward also. So, all of this kind of cross pollination is happening all the time, which is very beautiful. So those are some of the things that happen in Swaraj.

And I think where we would invite this is we are becoming more, I think we've become more and more bold over the years, like with this idea of ritual and the sacred. So, in India, there was a lot of, you know first from the left, a lot of bashing of ritual and sacred as these were Brahmanical tools to suppress and these are superstitious. And these tools are, you know, the Marxist idea that these are to [00:28:00] control the masses.

And then also, it was bashed because these are ways to cement a kind of fascist Hindu paradigm which is against minorities and things. So, there was a lot of, lot of stories running in our heads around ritual. And then our own personal experiences that oftentimes meaningless, they become fractured, they become rigid and so what we've tried to do is really reclaim the space of ritual in Swaraj.

And part of that is with our ancestors or with the more than human. And so inviting people to look at ritual in a very different way has been very interesting. And sometimes I'm involved in rituals and I'm like, what are you doing? The inner voice says, dude, what are you doing?

You know, like, who are you at this? And, you know, so all of that old stuff that we kind of grew up with in terms of the scientific analytical mind, which sees everything that it can't understand as [00:29:00] superstition sometimes reappears in certain ways, but I think it's been part of the journey to really create a space at least to engage with this, and so in Swaraj very much it's, it's there as well, and, and maybe the, the way we explain it is there's a need to go beyond the kind of the rational, there's a, there's limits to the rational, logical fragmented mind of how it can see or what it can make sense of.

We often even talk about, you know, the way we're trained to think about the crisis is part of the crisis. So, you know, so this space of entering into kind of a liminal energy, a different frequency together is maybe very powerful. And those can be through many different ways, right? Through music, through dance, through food, through fasting.

In India, it's really through silence, you know, so it doesn't always have to be plant medicines, which you find more in Latin America and Africa, but in India, meditation and silence and fasting were and [00:30:00] breathing were really different ways that have been experimented over the centuries for people to enter into a different kind of consciousness together.

Well, it sounds like an incredible place and an incredible project. I hope if the winds allow me to travel again in a way that maybe they once did that I'd be able to experience that myself.

Yes, we have a long, we Udaipur and Oaxaca. So the chances for those winds appearing are pretty good.

Amen. Amen. And speaking of Oaxaca our mutual friend, Yeyo had wanted me to ask you about this formulation of yours and all he wrote was livelihoods as opposed to deadlihoods.

Oh yes, a alivelihoods, alivelihoods. We made a distinction because a lot of people are wondering what can I do today [00:31:00] in the world. And so the first thing is to help them see that most of what the university, the conventional university is preparing us for are what I call deadlihoods. The work, whether you're in law or in finance or in psychology or I.T., somehow or other, they're tied to a deadlihoods economy that is extractive, military, violent. So, how can we start to understand how we ourselves are implicated in that kind of economy. And so that's one part of it. But then to also think about, you know, the work that's needed today in the world is what I call alivelihoods. And that starts with, you know, what makes my spirit come alive?

Because we've we've heard this, "lots of work is soul sucking." So, what is the work that actually nourishes our soul? And gives us meaning and purpose, you know? Lets us reconnect that, you know meaning, purpose, spirituality is not something you [00:32:00] just do on a Sunday or you do in a class, but it's actually tied to the work you're doing in the world and how do we integrate that?

What is the kind of work that is helping my community come alive? That is actually shifting power from global corporations back into communities, which are kind of, what is the work that's building, weaving the bonds of trust? And care, kindness, compassion back into community life. And what is the work that is regenerating our ecosystems?

So what I call our real wealth. So how do we compost the money system? And start to regenerate real wealth with it. Our health, our forests, our soils, our waters, which are all over the world are in massive, massive degradation stages right now. And how do we regenerate the social bonds again?

The trust networks again, that can give us a sense of security, of care, of belonging, of respect, of [00:33:00] dignity. So that's kind of the loose framework we have for that. And I think one other element is that what is the work that will help us shift the worldviews that we have?

So the worldview of the planet is being a dead entity and human beings being the only intelligent beings on this planet and the kind of fear that is driving much of the decision making. How do we start to shift to a different worldview that many indigenous communities had a sense of, much better sense of.

So, what is the work that can help us shift the narratives of who we are? Why are we on this earth together? Why are we, you know, perpetuating these ideas of ownership or of borders of you know, so many things that we have kind of internalized, which are fundamental to the modernist project.

Is there a way to start to unravel these or shift these? So what is the work that allows us that? So I call all of that, all of that a livelihoods, really, and the invitation is to help [00:34:00] people think about how they can be doing that. And I think the other element in that, which is really important is, how do we move beyond this like individual self help kind of narrative we've been fed. You know, like the problem is in you. You have to fix yourself.

Whereas how, how do we shift it more to how do we want to understand the systems and the institutions and how they're operating, but also, you how do we focus more of our care and our energy and our healing around healthy community, rebuilding healthy community, because that's what will give us a different sense of power, a different sense of possibility and things.

So that's a little bit about it. There's much more, many layers, but just to give you a sense.

Yeah, thank you for that. You know, I'm reminded in this, in this context of deadlihoods and the kind of modern condition and the economies that prevail as a result. There is and has been, especially in the last two centuries, this kind of not only degradation of community, but of course, the dissolution[00:35:00] of community and in the sense of people moving to the big city or other countries for better lives.

And sometimes necessarily. So like sometimes it's simply their only option, right?

And, this is very, very much evident to me in the work that I do here in Oaxaca. And you know, I had come across this declaration from 2009 in a, a very rural village in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca, where a group of peasant families from different villages alongside their migrant kin or family spoke for days about the consequences of their movements, and at the end of that three day assembly, declared alongside the right to migrate, the right to stay home and the right to not migrate, and so I'm kind of curious what kind of dynamics you've seen in India In terms of that economic impulse to [00:36:00] move, to leave the village, to migrate and maybe what part Swaraj and endeavors like it might play in those dynamics.

Yeah. So I think, part of it is you're saying is physically forced displacement due to development projects, massive development projects or war. But a lot of the displacement has been sold to people package as to people that the urban lifestyle or the American lifestyle is the lifestyle and what you're leading is impoverished, is insignificant, is backwards. You know, there's all kinds of ways. And so much of what education role was is to convince us that somehow the urban lifestyle is what is to be aspired for. So a lot of people move because of that. I have my experience with rural people and working with rural people is that a lot of them, they're like,

"we're quite happy where we're at. But what happens is when our cousin comes from the city, they bring [00:37:00] fancy phones and motorcycles and money and they show off and that's what really makes us feel really bad."

And then we have to, what we've tried to do is to counter that with, you know reminding people of what a shitty life urban life is.

Most people are living in slums. Most people are, if you're not, you're living under continuous stress and tension to make ends meet in polluted environments these days and lots of traffic. And so I at least, you know, try to remind people that in their villages, they may not have that many material things but they're the Kings of the village.

They have fresh air. They have clean places, good water to drink still. They have good food, fresh food they're eating. So that's been an interesting journey. Sometimes people understand, particularly the older people understand. This is the other thing that schooling played a major role is to try to kill the voices of wisdom.

So, like my grandmother or other elders would be [00:38:00] told, "Oh, you're uneducated. What do you know about what is a good life or what is, you know, the way forward? And so those voices still are silenced quite a bit because young people go to school for some years and then they think they are much more knowledgeable about what life is all about or what's important in life.

So, I think what's interesting is that what we're saying about the breakdown of what the urban success story was or the urban model, it's becoming more and more clear to people, like they're seeing that so there are people I know who are moving back. Udaipur is a very small city and a lot of people who have been connected with us have decided to stay in Udaipur rather than moving to Delhi or Bombay, which has been the trend.

And so I think it's a very important thing to keep looking at. I think if people see if they have a good life in smaller places, a lot of people are ready to come [00:39:00] back. Because the stress, the continuous stress and speed of big city life is I feel is taking a toll on people and also the whole promise is there's jobs and everything.

And so you see more and more unemployment also happening in big cities. So, I think there's an interesting question right now in people's minds of what, what to do and where to go.

So you know, it very much seems that one of the ways that what I'll call, I guess, well, either modern people or cultural Americans seem impoverished by is in the realm of hospitality. The lack of hospitality towards not only their neighbors at home, but, but abroad among hosts, you know, most people stay in hotels or Airbnbs. Most tourists anyways, they eat at chain restaurants. They're taught a transactional worldview and all exchange tends to end up in a customer service evaluation. And I feel that this is very much what [00:40:00] tourism has done to that part of the culture, that we would otherwise refer to as hospitality.

And so I'm curious in your opinion how would you define radical hospitality? And how have you seen it perhaps as an antidote for the industrial hospitality modern people so often encounter.

Yeah. I would that's a great question. So I think I've had the experience in being in Rajasthan of many traditions of hospitality and I would even say radical in the sense that all over India we say that " treat our guests like gods." So that's probably as radical as you could get with hospitality, if I treat you like a god, right? And what it means to me is, not to God in the sense of the pedestal of God or somebody remote, but actually God in the sense of this is my way [00:41:00] to find another connection to the divine in all of us, the divine that connects all of us.

And so when I am able to receive somebody with that spirit, I'm able to touch into something very deep within myself also. And we have so many traditions here which again, in our work, we're trying to recover and remind people, remember in different ways. I would just share a couple of things around that.

So one is like, in the desert, when it gets really hot up to 50 degrees Celsius, probably the most hospitable and sacred thing you can do is offer somebody water. So with the industrial consumer tourism, we have a parallel underground system happening.

So you can go to stores and you'll see bottled water, for example, where people are paying and they buy it. But if you kind of look closely, you'll see on almost every corner of the old city where, where [00:42:00] most of the tourists come, there are clay pots, which people fill up every day for which are called piaos.

So the tradition was that to offer any passerby, any stranger, water, is one of the highest gifts you can honor with them because it's so hot and so I've seen women fill water and carry it from even very far away to offer it to strangers, which is so humbling and so powerful that people would actually be able to offer this.

So you can see these pots, people are sitting there sometimes, sometimes the pots are just filled and left with a glass for people to fill themselves and drink. But this is a very powerful way to remind us that there is a different way to relate both to resources like water and how we see it, which is non commodified.

And so my grandmother would never think of charging money for water. If I ever told her, she'd be like, what is wrong with those [00:43:00] people? There must be some real deep sickness in them. "Let's go charge money for water." And so I think that, you know, that's an example of an entry to a different understanding of what is water, what is our relationship with each other and I wouldn't say what is water, almost you could say who is water. That question gets opened up as well through this act.

And so the other thing around radical hospitality and I care, I would say there's some traditions that are called guptan here, which is kind of the invisible giving tradition.

So a lot of what do you find, hospitality these days, is around showing off or people should know who's serving you and who's giving you. And here, there's another sense of care that is given where nobody knows who is the giver and to try to remove that arrogance of the giver when care is offered.

And so it's offered with a deep sense of service, but to try to remove the ego element that I am the giver, I'm the one who's [00:44:00] helping somebody or being hospitable to them in some way. So I think that's also been quite inspiring to me, how to enter into that real space of humility as part of a radical hospitality tradition.

And I think that these things do have a very essential role to play in challenging what's happening in the world and, and building different kinds of models and systems, because if care and connection is not part of that I don't know what the, what the new models, what they would stand on.

And so these are this has to be the foundation of something that can grow. And every time, you know, if you ask me every few years, it deepens and changes because of experiences here. When I first I heard about it from Gustavo. I was like, "Oh, this is so beautiful." But I had relatively little ideas of how it would actually look every day.

I see more and more examples of it in living practice here where I live. So yeah, it gives me a lot of hope that [00:45:00] maybe that's one of the keys to finding our way forward.

Well, thank you, Manish, for your time today and this wonderful, wonderful conversation. Before I let you go to sleep and probably tend to family, I'd like to ask, how might our listeners find out more about your work, about Swaraj University, and I know we didn't have time to speak about it, but the Ecoversities project.

Yeah, it's been wonderful to, to talk with you, Chris. I do hope that we can welcome you someday to Udaipur as well. The one thing I would say is that Swaraj University is part of this alliance, translocal alliance around the world called Ecoversities, so a network of like 500 plus alternative universities in 50 countries.

And the idea [00:46:00] was that, you know, these are, in a sense, kind of part of an underground railroad, if you would say for people who are walking out of the system or trying to figure out how they can live differently on the planet together. And the beautiful thing is that, you know, anyone can declare themselves an ecoversity, their community.

And there's a huge diversity of things, ranging from the farmversities and the forestversities and the riverversities to, you know, like deathversities and travelersversities grandmothers' universities and jail universities and all kinds of spaces. So, this is really to reclaim different kinds of knowledge systems and different learning processes that have never been valued by conventional universities.

And to maybe start to create a space, as I said, to live together, to reclaim our hands and our hearts and our bodies and [00:47:00] our homes as well as our holistic heads And to try to dream, to dream something together. So we have a website, we have gatherings, I would invite people to, to come and and visit us and connect with different eco overseas around the world.

I have a 21 year old daughter. She's been unschooled. She never looked at a textbook or an exam or a classroom really in her life, except, you know, like we took her to see children in a classroom, like you take kids to see animals in the zoo so she could see what it was like for a couple of days.

But so, you know, really wanted to create a model, not only, I mean, for myself, for her, for other young people to be able to learn and be in different kinds of communities and experiments around the world. So, we invite you all to help create the new models that the world needs with us.

I'll make sure that all of those links and [00:48:00] resources that you mentioned, Manish, are there on the End of Tourism website when the episode launches. And on behalf of our listeners, blessings on your day, your path, your tongue, and thank you so much for joining me today.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks for your wonderful work and good luck with the new projects that are emerging in your life.

Thank you, Manish.

Show Notes

John Urry’s The Tourist Gaze

Photography

The Senses

Surveillance and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Spectacle

Homework

Transcript

Welcome friends to Season Zero of the End of Tourism podcast. In these mini-episodes, you'll hear short transmissions speaking to the principles of the pod. We'll introduce you, our listeners, to the themes and questions that will be woven into our conversations, a kind of primer on our politics. This episode is entitled "Spectacle, the Senses and Surveillance."

[00:00:31] So we can't talk about tourism without talking about the senses without talking about spectacle and without talking about surveillance. How do people come to perceive new worlds, sensually? How do we smell, taste, touch, hear, and see in foreign lands? And how did tourism become such a spectacle, driven incessantly by cameras, vision, and consumption? How is it that our movements feed surveillance states and surveillance societies?

[00:01:09] The English sociologist, John Urry coined the phrase, "the tourist gaze." His work dove into the worlds and ways in which tourists see in foreign lands, the way they look, observe, and watch local people, the way they watch local places themselves, and even each other.

[00:01:32]Modern people move with their eyes. We have become intensely visual beings. Some would even say that we are hypnotized by the eyes. On average, the other senses amount for a combined 15% of our perception. But not every culture carries this sensorial imbalance like we do. In other words, this way of perceiving the world is not natural, but cultural.

[00:02:03]This is not only what tourists bring to other worlds, but how they arrive in them, how they understand or more often misunderstand other cultures, people and places, through this hypnosis. Western worldviews reflect the images that Western people have their travels. None of this is new. Since the Renaissance, travel writing, manufactured the image of the world for those back home. Before photography, travel writing was the only way to explain to the masses how far off lands appeared.

[00:02:43] Each traveling author, each trip reflected the histories and power dynamics and prejudices of the time. Today, the same thing happens with photography and with social media. On the podcast, we will look deeply into the stereoscope of media, both past and present to understand these unseen consequences.

[00:03:08] Today, it seems that Urry's "tourist gaze" is intimately hitched to the camera and to photography. Photography has been a part of travel and tourism since the first cameras in the mid-19th century. Today, however, with the inundation of smartphones and wifi worldwide, the amount of photos taken is astronomical. The total number of photos ever taken has doubled in the span of just a few years.

[00:03:36] Of course, this has its consequence in the world and especially in the places, tourists, visit. The smartphone with the capacity to connect to the internet almost anywhere is the most dangerous and effective Trojan horse of globalization. If there was ever a way to attack or subvert traditional culture and culture itself, the smartphone, the handset of modernity, is it. It bypasses barriers that might otherwise shield people from the consequences of foreign entitlement. As soon as it has a foothold, it converts local people faster than any missionary would.

[00:04:19]The relationships that exist in could exist between our human sensing and the natural or more-than-human world is a kind of birthright. We might even call it a birth-responsibility, but today they are often ignored and neglected in favor of technology. The senses themselves are dulled to the point where we require more technology simply in order to get by in our day-to-day lives.

[00:04:47] As the senses whither, so does the wonder and wisdom and the kinship with the local world that our ancestors apprenticed and entrusted to us. In turn, our senses are outsourced to higher resolutions and more megapixels. They are outsourced to the cloud. We must ask, then, what are the consequences for having neglected those relationships, for having forgotten that wisdom? What happens to the more-than-human worlds in our midst as a result?

[00:05:23] What do they imagine us to be doing as we abandon them and the ancestors among us who might've honored, such senses, such sensing, deepening our ancient inheritance.

[00:05:35]You see, this is what tourism does. Sometimes, people travel only to take photos that have already been taken millions of times. Tourists desire to carve out the meaningless notches on their belt, drawing more and more attention to the slow destruction of the very thing they photograph, now reduced to nothing more than a photo or a photo op.

[00:06:03]Each photo, each location, each reaction, like, in commentary is recorded and funneled into an artificial intelligence underground, where it is converted into ways of both reducing and controlling our attention. This is what sends thousands, if not millions of people to foreign destinations as hunters of experience and pseudo-status.

[00:06:30]The attention economy feeds tourism and tourism undoes everything that makes a place itself. Overtouristed cities are already implementing Machiavellian panopticons, the all seeing eyes of local governments. They are using over tourism itself as a pretext to install surveillance programs that track every movement in and out of these places. Entire cities and entire populations. This is already well underway in places like Venice, Italy.

[00:07:07] Likewise, governments and industry are already launching digital travel passports that will not only contain all government-related documents, but act as "surveillance by design" tracking devices. The data can then be evaluated in order to privilege certain travelers over others, not unlike what is being done in China right now with the social credit and rating system there. In every way, shape, and form tourism feeds the dream-slash-nightmare of a totalitarian world.

[00:07:43] It seems to me that in the west almost no one is not a tourist. Let me say that again. It seems to me that in the west, almost everyone is a tourist. Almost everyone is a tourist, which is to say that we have become amateurs and strangers in our own neighborhoods, in part, because the spectacle of modern life and its media has ennobled a way of being in the world and in the neighborhood that is both temporary and seemingly inconsequential.

[00:08:17] The way we see in foreign lands comes from the way we see at home. We don't arrive in destinations as tourists. We leave home as tourists. This comes from home being understood and known, in our time, as an option, as a feeling, and even as a photo op. When home is no longer a place, when home becomes a choice or a potential "base," the responsibility of place is left in the hands of governments, usually to be sold off to the highest bidder.

[00:08:58] Home is hit with a wave of consequences, not unlike the places tourists go to visit and often for the same reasons. For our listeners, this might sound dreary, lamentable, and even over the top, but consider that if this arises for you in these ways, it might do so as a result of these things arriving mostly unconsidered.

[00:09:25] These are dangerous times and to be properly in them to find ourselves as faithful witnesses to the times, will likely ask more than we're willing and to give. That's okay too, and probably expected.

[00:09:40] This is both strange and mandatory because the times we're living in have been abandoned by a touristic mindset. For many, the old, week-long vacation has now become a lifelong lifestyle choice. Wanderlust, in other words. Not just escape, but socially legislated abandonment.

[00:10:03]Spectacle that conceals the wilting of the senses. Spectacle that conceals the rise of surveillance societies. Spectacle, that we will approach these conversations in a way that, all willing, subverts spectacle. Finding worthy resistance strategies, staying home and standing in solidarity with touristed places and peoples so that we may find a worthy way to bury spectacle. Welcome to the end of tourism.

On this episode, my guests are Martin Lena and Linda Poppe of Survival International. They join me to discuss “fortress conservation” in the Congo, the issues facing Kahuzi-Biega National Park, and the recent victories of Survival International there.

Linda is a political scientist and director of the Berlin office of Survival International, the global movement for Indigenous peoples' rights. She is also part of Survival’s campaign to Decolonize Conservation, which supports Indigenous peoples, who continue to suffer land theft and human rights abuses in the name of conservation.

Martin is an advocacy officer for Survival International. He primarily works on Survival’s campaign to Decolonize Conservation and has collected testimonies directly from communities facing violations of their rights in the name of conservation. 

Show Notes:

What Conservation Looks like in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Evictions of the Batwa

Safari Tourism in DRC Conflict

The Militarization of Conservation in Kahuzi-Biega National Park

Land Guards vs Land Guardians

Organizing Victory! Scrapping French Involvement in Kahuze-Biega

The German Government Continues to Fund the Park

Solidarity: How to Respond / Act in Concert

Homework:

Survival International: French government scraps funding plan for Kahuzi-Biega National Park, citing human rights concerns

Survival International Decolonize Conservation Campaign

Balancing Act: The Imperative of Social and Ecological Justice in Kahuzi-Biega

Transcript:

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the End of Tourism Podcast, Martin and Linda. I'd love it if I could start by asking you two to explain to our listeners where you two find yourselves today and what the world looks like there for you.

Linda: Well, hi everyone. My name is Linda. I work for Survival International and I'm in Berlin. I'm at home, actually, and I look forward to talking to you and chatting with you.

It's dark outside already, but, well, that's, I guess, the time of the year.

Martin: And I'm based in Paris, also at home, but I work at Survival's French office. And how does the world feel right now? It feels a bit too warm for October, but other than that.

Chris: Well, thank you both for for joining me today. I'd like to begin by reminiscing on the season three interview that I had with your colleague Fiore Longo, entitled "Decolonizing Conservation in Africa and Beyond."

And in that interview, we discussed the history [00:01:00] of conservation as colonization in the context of Tanzania and the national parks that were built there and the indigenous lands that were stolen in order to do so. I'm curious if you two could offer a bit of background for our listeners in terms of the history of conservation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and especially in regards to the Batwa people and the Kahuzi Biega National Park.

Linda: We were quite you know, astonished of the colonial history that, we find in the park where we're here to discuss today. Well, the Congo, obviously, you know, was a colony. And I think in this context, we also need to look at the conservation that is happening in the DRC today.

And a lot of the things that you have discussed with our colleague, feel very true for the DRC as well. And the, the park that we're going to look at today, I think it's probably [00:02:00] also the best example to start to explain a little bit what conservation looks like in DRC. It's an older park, so it was created a longer time ago, and it was always regarded as something that is there to protect precious nature for people to look at and not for people to go and live in.

And this is exactly what the problem is today, which we see continues, that the people that used to live on this land are being pushed outside violently, separated from the land which they call home, which is everything for them, the supermarket, the church, the school, just in the name of conserving supposed nature.

And unfortunately, this is something that we see all over the DRC and different protected areas that exist there, that we still follow this colonial idea of mostly European [00:03:00] conservationists in history and also currently that claim that they're protecting nature, often in tandem with international conservation NGOs.

In the park we look at today, it's the Wildlife Conservation Society, and they're, yeah, trying to get rid of the original inhabitants that have guarded these spaces for such a long time.

Martin: To build on that, in our campaign to decolonize conservation and survival, we often say that fortress conservation has deep colonial roots and you can definitely see that with the the actual history of the of Kahuzi Biega National Park because it started as a reserve that was created by the Belgian colonial government in 1937 and It was transformed into a national park after independence.

So in the 70s, but it was still designated as such following the lobbying of a Belgian conservationist. So it's really the continuation the Western and the European will to keep controlling the, [00:04:00] the independent territories. And that in Africa oftentimes was done through conservation.

Linda: And it also has this idea of, I think a lot of the conservation projects that we see, Martin just said it, there was also this post independence push on creating national parks, which was obviously related to the idea that Europeans might lose hold of control in certain areas, so they were pushing for the creation of national parks like the Kahuzi Biega National Park.

And that is the setting that we're talking about, basically, something that has very colonial roots and has been pushed into the post colonial era, but in a way which is actually very colonial.

Chris: Thank you both for that brief, brief history and introduction into what we'll be speaking about today, Linda, you mentioned that so many of the circumstances around the creation of these national parks includes the exclusion and [00:05:00] displacement of the original inhabitants.

And in this case, among others, this includes the Batwa people. And so I'd like to just give our listeners a little bit of a context for what's happened to the Batwa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And so the statistics tell us that "over 90 percent of the 87, 000 indigenous Batwa people in the park have lost legal access to their native territory, turned into conservation areas, and who are desperately poor," according to a 2009 United Nations report.

Now, in a recent Reuters article, it's written that, quote, "Local human rights and environmental experts say that the authorities failure to fulfill promises to the Batwa has undermined efforts to protect the forest and its endangered species, including some of the last populations of eastern lowland gorilla.

Some of the Batwa around the [00:06:00] park participate in the illegal poaching, mining, and logging that are destroying the gorilla's globally significant habitat. As a result, the conservation outlook for the park is critical, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature." The article goes further and says that "the Batwa have no choice because they are poverty stricken, according to Josue Aruna, president of the province's environmental civil society group, who does community outreach for the Batwa."

It seems in this way that the land rights and traditional lifestyles of the Batwa are intimately tied to the health and survival of the ecosystems within the national park, which they've been excluded from, and that their poverty is a consequence of their displacement. Do you think that the issue is as simple as that?

Martin: It's always interesting to read these reports from the conservationists, whether it's the IUCN or the NGOs, because the problem is always "the local people. So they are poor and they [00:07:00] have no choice. They participate in poaching." and it's always their fault.

Like you were saying, if they end up being poor it's because they were evicted from the land. And as Linda was saying earlier, the forest and the land more generally is everything to them or was everything to them. So it's not only the place where they get food, it's also the whole basis of their identity and their way of life.

So once they lose that, they end up in our world, capitalist system, but at the lowest possible level. So, that's why they end up in poverty. But it's a problem that was created by the conservationists themselves. And even when you read Their discourse or their position about trying to improve the situation for the Batwa, it's always about generating revenue ,lifting them out of poverty, developing alternative livelihoods. But what we are campaigning for is not some alternative to the loss of their rights. It's Their land rights themselves. And to go to your other question [00:08:00] about the fact that the loss of their land rights has led to a degrading in the health of the ecosystem.

I think, yes, for sure. That has been the case, and it's what we're seeing all around the world in these protected areas that are supposed to protect nature. But actually, once you evict the best conservationists and the people that were taking care of the land for decades, then there is room for all kinds of exploitation whether it be mass tourism or luxury safaris or even mining and logging concessions.

So it's not a coincidence if 80 percent of the biodiversity on the planet is located in indigenous territories. It's because they have lived in the land. It's not wild nature. They have lived there for generations. They have protected it and they have shaped it through their practices. So, to us, the best way to protect this ecosystem is to ensure that their land rights are respected and blaming them for poaching or putting that on the fact that they are poor, it's just [00:09:00] dishonest and ignoring the basis of the problem.

Linda: Yeah. I agree. And when you just read out these sentences, I noted down like the way it was formulated, as a result, the park is threatened. It's again, just focusing on the local people as being the problem. Like the protected areas, they are to protect an area from the local people, which I think becomes very clear in the way you explained it. And also, like, Martin, I'm quite struck by the idea that they talk about poor people, but ignoring that, you know, their actions that of the Batwa have also caused this poverty. So it's, in a way, you know, first you make people poor and then you kind of insult them almost for being poor and then, you know, acting accordingly.

I think that is quite, you know, ignoring what has happened. And I think it's the same with [00:10:00] the general model of conservation. Like the sentences you read, I mean, there is some sympathy in it, you know, it sounds like, "oh, these poor people," you know, "in a way we regret what has happened and that they were evicted."

But it's like "those poor people," they don't really look at, you know, why were they evicted and what are the consequences for our kind of conservation today? Like the consequence could be that the Batwa can return to their land because they are the best guardians and because it would give them a base to, to live, not in poverty.

So that consequence, they don't see it's because they ignore all the things that have caused the supposed poverty and have caused this kind of conservation that we see. So, don't think about what we've done in the past, we'll just go on, but that is a problem because they don't learn any lessons from what has happened and that land rights should be so important.

Chris: Yeah, I think that it definitely points towards this notion that I think a lot of people are becoming apt to in our [00:11:00] times in these days, which is the general kind of approach to the dilemmas in these contexts are to look at the symptoms of the dilemma and not the causes.

And in the context of the eviction and exile, displacement of the Batwa people, one of the articles mentions that "one of the consequences of the induced poverty includes the endangering and further endangering of the eastern lowland gorilla." And I mention this because in my research leading up to this interview, this conversation, I looked into the tourism offerings in Kahuzi Biega, in the National Park, and I found the following.

I'm just gonna read off a list of what I did find.

" Gorilla safaris, or trekking. Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center tours. Camping safaris. Cultural tours. Bird [00:12:00] watching. Hiking. Climbing and boat cruises."

And so my next question is this. To what extent does the safari tourism in the national park play a part in this conflict?

Linda: Oh, that's a super interesting question. I mean, it obviously depends on the specific park that you look at. But I think I would say in almost any national park that we look at in Survival, there is some kind of idea that this park needs to have tourists. Tourists need to come and go and see the beauty of nature, ideally Western tourists, so that they become involved in conservation and donate money, and also in a way that tourism would be a way to pay for services that are related to maintaining the park.

So it's something that usually always pops up. It's kind of, it's like twins a little bit. And, you know, I, I work on, on [00:13:00] mostly German politics and how they relate to this conservation. And it's something that you can't really separate where you read about conservation projects that the German government funds, you will always also read about tourism.

So they're very interlinked. In some parks, you know, there isn't a lot of tourism because the situation is not very attractive to western tourists, but the idea is always there. And then the extent to which tourism actually happens obviously differs and then has different effects. In some parks that we work on, There's a lot of tourism, there's a lot of creation of infrastructure for tourists, hotels, for roads, for tourist vehicles to go places.

Then it obviously has a much stronger impact on the area and also on the people that live there. If there are less tourists, then the actual effect of tourism is, of course, a little bit less than it might sound in these proposals to have tourists there at all.

Chris: In the [00:14:00] context of conflict zones, which from what I understand this particular park in the Congo is a conflict zone, or at least parts of it, that tourism can act as a kind of barrier between local populations or local ecologies and the consequences of those conflict zones, right? But it doesn't necessarily stop the conflict. It just turns it underground, it turns a kind of blind eye to it, waiting, in most instances that I know of, until the organized crime in the area ends up getting, you know, their hands into the economy of, of the tourism itself.

Martin: Yeah, I mean, I agree with Linda that it's always there and it's always under the discourse and it's never only about conservation, there's always tourism. And often the national parks are created for this purpose. If you read the UNESCO definition or the IUCN definition of what a national park is, it says it's also for [00:15:00] recreation.

So these places are built for tourists. against the locals. So, yeah, it's always there and it's even in the definition.

Linda: So yeah, when you said tourism is a barrier in some cases tourism can amplify the problems that are there because there is more eviction or there's more interest of, for example, governments to evict people, to create this great picture of nature, which is so attractive to tourists.

So I think, I would find it as something that can really worsen the situation. I think from what I've seen, you know. We sometimes talk about sustainable tourism or respectful tourism, but in the terms of conservation projects, my impression really is that it's been harmful.

And the indigenous populations that work in tourism, which is one of the things that funders of conservation projects often [00:16:00] say, that they can find jobs in tourism. A lot of these jobs are not very good. And I would argue that a lot of times people need to take these jobs because they have lost the choice to not take a job and live from the forest.

Chris: Yeah, it's an interesting thing to wonder about in the little research that I did around what's happening in this particular park in the Congo, that there are rebel groups. It is a conflict zone, and yet there are these tourism offerings, right? And that surely, the champions of the National Park and conservation and in many areas would say, "well, you know, the more, the more tourism we can get in here the more we can undermine at least the economic causes if not the political ones that are contributing to the violence," when in fact, from what I can understand from Survival's work, that this is just deepens the causes that produced that conflict and that exile in the first place.

Linda: Yeah. And I think there's also [00:17:00] perception of injustice, which we shouldn't underestimate. I mean, if you're an indigenous person that has been violently evicted or whose family has been violently evicted from a certain area, and then you see, Western tourists mostly, which are rich, you know, pay a lot of money for these trips, are allowed to go in and use that area in a way. I think that also creates, yeah, a sense of injustice, which is also, yeah, it's quite, quite sad.

Chris: Mm hmm. Definitely. And then that's certainly what we see in over touristed places around the world and in places that are just starting to become over touristed, this kind of deep resentment amongst locals for the inequalities, the growing inequalities and yeah, as well, the injustices that these industries bring.

And so on that point of conflict zones, especially in and around Kahuzi Biega. I wanted to ask you both a question around the militarization of conservation. So, [00:18:00] some people believe that militarized park police, which is what exists in this park, are a necessary evil.

Officially, at least, "the guards protect the park from armed militias or rebel groups in the area, ensuring that they stay out of the park." Of course, those who they confront and sometimes attack also include the indigenous people, the Batwa in this case, who are trying to retake and reclaim their ancestral lands.

And the argument is that without the guards, the land would fall into the hands of much more malevolent groups or forces. And so how do you think the presence of armed conflict as well as militarized conservation guards complicates the issue?

Linda: That's a tough question. Well, maybe I can just give like a little anecdote.

It was actually about this park, the [00:19:00] Kahuzi Biega National Park, and we were talking to German politicians and government officials about the problem of conflict and about the problem that these park rangers you know, are trained and have a lot of weapons, which seems very militant. And they, they were seeing the problem.

They were seeing that this is probably not the best thing they should do, support security forces in an area which is already so problematic. But their thinking was, if we don't give them the money, now we have created this this force, basically. We have hired people, we have trained them.

Now, if we stop supporting them, what are they going to do? You know, they're gonna maybe take the training and their weapons and make it even worse. So in a way, I mean, this was off record, right? They were just kind of thinking out loud. But in a way, they were seeing that the projects that they have supported have created structures which [00:20:00] very likely will increase conflict.

And it seems quite obvious also because you see all these conflicts with indigenous peoples. So, I'm not going to say that it's a very peaceful area and there is not a need maybe for people to defend themselves. But in a way, the structures that we have in militarized conservation are not the solution.

You know, they make the situation much more complicated than it initially was. And now, like, in this park, we're in a situation where we witness terrible human rights abuses, and everyone's scared to act and do something because it could get even worse. And it's, yeah, it doesn't seem like a very good solution.

I think we need another way. We can't just stick our head, and say, oh, you know, we just go on, we'll just go on and then let someone else deal with it in a few years. I don't think that's a very good solution. Very good example.

Martin: And it's questionable also to what extent do these these guards, these armed [00:21:00] rangers actually protect the, the parks and the species because they are here supposedly to fight against illegal wildlife trade and poaching and everything.

But what studies have shown is that the root cause of of poaching and of the, of the illegal wildlife trade is mostly the demand for such products that comes from industrialized countries or at least other parts of the world and the system is made for the guards to take action against the local population and not against the actual criminal networks that lead to illegal wildlife trade and poaching.

They get money for people they arrest and the easiest people to find are the locals that are trying to get to their ancestral lands. And there's also sometimes the park management involved in these criminal networks. So, you pretend to put in place a system to fight against illegal wildlife trade, but there ends up being no choice but [00:22:00] for the guards to, to take on the local people.

Linda: Maybe we should also think about the indigenous populations as guards, or maybe guardians is the better word, of this area. And if we zoom out of the DRC and look at South America, where we have much stronger land rights... it's not perfect, but of course, better for indigenous people.

They often act as guardians or guards of these territories, even though they're also confronted with illegal logging, quite brutal illegal logging, for example. But in a way, they are there and they, of course, are supported by authorities ideally, in defending these territories, but you see a less violent or militarized conflict because you have the indigenous guardians, as opposed to starting out with their protected [00:23:00] areas and armed guards, which are not just there to defend themselves, but have extensive rights of use of violence, and they don't have to fear any repercussions if something goes wrong and they kill, for example, an indigenous person.

I mean, that's what we've seen in this park, that they can basically act with impunity.

Chris: And thank you, Linda, for offering that example of the difference or the contrast between places like the Kahuzi Biega National Park and the DRC and other places in South America, for example, where there is this inherited intergenerational understanding of guardianship and while there's only maybe a half a century of conservation industry in these places, of course, they're an extension of the colonial project or projects that were undertaken much further back in time in places like Africa and places like the DRC before it was known as such.

And then what happens, you know, after X amount of [00:24:00] generations after this kind of exile and displacement, that there is no lived memory anymore of what it means to be a guardian of your place. And I don't just mean as a title, but in terms of how you guard that place, as an indigenous person.

We might be able to say that the Western world or the modern world that that's very much what we've become is people who are unable to remember or have a lived memory of what it's like to adequately stand as guardians for a place. You know, I think with the work that you two in Survival International are doing, there's a path forward towards that.

And I'd like to remind our listeners that we're also here speaking today in part because there was a victory that was won by Survival International on behalf of the Batwa people and activists like yourself. And so I'd like to just read very briefly from [00:25:00] July 2023 press release from Survival International, in which it is said that, quote,

"in a landmark decision, the French government has scrapped its plan to fund the controversial Kahuzi Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo."

France's Minister of State for Development, francophonie and International Partnerships, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, confirmed that the plan to begin financing the Kahuzi Biega National Park has been scrapped. Ms. Zacharopoulou said, quote, "It has been abandoned, in line with our requirement for the respect of human rights."

So first of all, I'd like to say congratulations to you both and to your teams at Survival for for getting this this victory and for doing the work you need to do in order to get there. And I'd like to [00:26:00] ask about the strategies that were employed in order to revoke French support for the park. You know, so many of these efforts and victories are either ignored in the context of the endless dilemmas or they're celebrated kind of superficially without considering the work it took to organize such campaigns.

And so my question is, how has this campaign been organized by Survival International?

Martin: Well, to give a bit of context the first time we heard about the French Development Agency planning on funding Kahuzi Biega, it was in the exact same time period as the publication of a report by Minority Rights Group International detailing brutal waves of violence in 2019 and until 2020 of appalling human rights abuses. So, atrocities that including murder, torture, rape [00:27:00] the burning alive of children, the burning of villages. So, we are, in this context, where we are reading the minority rights group report and understanding the scale of these waves of violence against the Batwa.

And around the same period, we see that the French Development Agency has been a delegation, including the director, has been to the park and plans on funding it. So, of course we are appalled and and decide to write to the French Development Agency, but also to the to the ministry that has oversight.

So, one of them is the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. And then we wait. And then we also got the support of a senator who also sent a letter and asked a question in Parliament to the government about their plan to fund this park in the context of these human rights violations.

And so in July 2022, so last year, they decided to suspend temporarily the project. It was also in the context of an internal scandal because there was an expert[00:28:00] in the field and contracted by the French development agency to carry out a feasibility study. And he was basically saying around, and it can be heard in recordings saying that basically the study is just a formality and that the decision to fund the park has already been made.

So there's both scandals. An internal scandal about the due diligence apparently being considered a formality on the field and the scandal of the very detailed report that had just gone out about the atrocities. So, that led to a temporary suspension. And they said that they would conclude the study and look into the abuses into social aspects.

And then a year passed and we kept sending letters, of course, and doing some public campaigning about it on social media, et cetera. And then the senator asked again a question in July this year, and that's when we learned that the project was cancelled. So, of course, it's a victory, and it shows that sometimes the government actually does have the oversight[00:29:00] on the development agencies and takes the right decisions.

But, of course, it's just the whole model still needs to be challenged and the park still has many international backers, even in the context of the atrocities that we that we know about.

Chris: Mm. So the senator that asked about the status of the funding and found out that it was in fact scrapped, the scrapping of the funding was never made public until that point?

Or there was never any press release saying so?

Martin: No, they made it public, In the answer to the question, orally, in, in commission in Parliament.

Chris: Mm. And would there be no way that the French public, for example, would be able to find out about this otherwise?

Martin: I don't think so. And to be honest, I'm not even sure the decision had been taken before. I think they looked into it again because the senator asked a question again, but that's just speculation.

Chris: And you spoke about writing letters, obviously to politicians and to the ministries [00:30:00] and also social media campaigns. Do you think there was more of an effect on the scrapping of the funding because of the public campaign, the social media campaign?

Martin: Yeah, I think and that's basically the whole premise on which our campaigns are based is that an efficient mobilization of the public opinion will lead and the fact that the public cares and is informed will lead to a more efficient lobbying and advocacy of the governments and, and other government agencies.

So yeah, I think one can't go without the other. And I don't know what would have happened if only the Senator had asked the questions or if only the Senator had asked a question or if we had only sent a letter and no public campaigning at all, or no press release, or no social media, I don't know. So I think, yeah, both go hand in hand.

Chris: Mm hmm.

So do you think that without the report from the Minority Rights Group, that the funding would have gone ahead, regardless of what was actually happening there?

Martin: It's possible because we know that the funders were aware for years and [00:31:00] years of the human rights violations. And even before the waves of violence that are described in the report, we know that they were aware of that risk of violence at that time and of the human rights violation in the whole context of the militarized park.

So, I think it could have very well gone ahead, because the other funders knew and kept funding it. And yeah, it's very important to get that kind of report with very detailed testimonies and information from the ground, and really documenting these atrocities. Otherwise, it's just business as usual.

Chris: And the original proposal for the funding at least by the French government or the ministries involved, they were basically just promoting conservation in the way that it typically is. That's what the funding was for?

Martin: Well, it's hard to know because they never published anything and actually, they never actually started funding it.

It was just, just a project. Like I said, they went on a visit there and started making [00:32:00] promise to the local conservation agencies and to the local authorities. It's not clear to this day what exactly they were planning on funding, but it was clearly stated that there were planning on supporting the park itself, but I don't know for which kind of activities, but still, funding the same structure that that has been responsible for these abuses is still unacceptable.

Chris: Mm hmm sounds "sketchy," as we say in English. And and so for our listeners, just a little bit of further context while France simply abandoned plans, the country had not yet made, or the government had not yet made, Germany continues to finance the park despite France's, however, subtle acknowledgment of human rights violations.

And so, Linda, my question for you is, first of all, why is Germany funding a national park in the DRC to begin with? And, if you know, [00:33:00] how does that money get spent?

Linda: Well, I guess the, the German interest in this park is pretty old, so the German government started funding the park already in the 80s.

And there were some other projects even before that, supposedly. But it's considered to be a very, well, it obviously is a very long running project financed by the German government. And some local people call it the German park, because they assume that without the German funding, it wouldn't even exist. Like the kind of money that has been given over decades and the kind of things that have been funded, the infrastructure, the Congolese conservation authorities, the park rangers, you know, all the things that were funded basically crucial for the park to function. So yeah, it is a very German funded project. And also the German government has for very, a very long time looked at it as being a prestigious [00:34:00] project.

You know, it was this great park, the gorillas, you already mentioned it, you know, and the Germans been funding it, which when you know a bit about German history, post World War II, there was a lot of interest in biodiversity and conservation funding because it was a good thing to do, which gave Germany a little bit of a different international picture than it had after the war.

So there was a lot of interest in funding projects, and they were perceived as being fantastic, and they were shown to be these great projects that Germany is supporting internationally. And then, obviously, it isn't, but the German government has been very, very good at denying that there are these problems, and the role that it has had in facilitating these horrific human rights abuses. Mm.

Chris: And how, if at all, has the German government responded to the [00:35:00] scrapping of the French funding?

Linda: Very good timing, because I just got a response today, actually from the German government. Mm. 'cause we did point out to them that the French government has decided to not fund the park because of the violations of indigenous people's rights and because of human rights concerns.

So we pointed this out to the ministry again, just in case, they would not have learned about this themselves. But the reply basically doesn't address this at all. You know, this was what we wrote the letter about and the replies about all the great things that the German government keeps funding and the improvements it is supposedly seeing on the ground and these improvements justifying their continued support.

So it's just a letter explaining why they continue funding it and not addressing why maybe partners like the French government have decided not to fund it. And it's something that we have seen over the years. I think [00:36:00] survival first raised human rights violations in the Kahuzi Biega National Park in actually 2017, so that's quite a few years ago.

There was a Batwa family. A father with his son, a teenage son. They were going into the park to collect herbs for medicine because another son of the family was sick. They encountered park rangers who killed the teenager and hurt wounded the father. So it was quite a terrible incident.

And the father wrote to the German government, to the funders, and he complained about these human rights violations and the fact that the Batwa had lost access to the park and to their livelihood because of the German funding. The German government just said, "well, you know, there's not much we can do about it, basically."

They tried to pay some money, but then really nothing, nothing else happened. And over the years, the situation hasn't improved. It has [00:37:00] gotten worse. But the German government keeps saying that they have faith in the Congolese conservation authorities and they do not see grounds to stop the funding or the project.

They keep saying that they see progress. And things will get better. And we know it hasn't gone better.

Chris: I'd like to return anyways to this this question around tactics and strategies and organizing. It seems that activists and those not directly involved in social movements struggle with the weight of our times.

I mean, it's you know, kind of hard to ignore these days. And so, given that the German government, I imagine, is the obvious next target in the campaign to defund Kahuzi Biega, or at least the conservation authorities and programs there, what tactics, what strategies are being employed by Survival in your campaigns, [00:38:00] and how might our listeners in Germany, France, Europe, and, and beyond, how might they participate?

Linda: That's a very good question, because, as I said, you know, Survival has been working on this for a few years, and there's a little bit of frustration, of course, that not much is happening in the terms of acknowledging the problem of funding this park. I think what Survival, what we're thinking is, quite important in this issue of conservation is making sure that donors in the West understand that this is a very symptomatic problem.

So, a lot of conservation projects function like this and it is because there is this underlying problem with them, that they do not acknowledge land rights. But they continue to say that certain government authorities or certain conservation organizations are best put to run these places. It's the same with the [00:39:00] Kahuzi Biega National Park.

The German government now says, "well, we know there are problems, so we pull in the WCS. They're the conservation organization and everything will be better. But it won't because they also have a record of not respecting indigenous people's rights. So, we need to make them understand that there is this underlying issue of not acknowledging indigenous people's land rights.

And we try to do this by pointing out that this is a problem which is happening in a lot of national parks. So, protected areas that Survival has looked at in Africa and Asia, almost all of them, even the ones that we were told were good examples, have these problems. And we try to show that to the donors that have such big impact on these conservation projects and make them rethink what they're doing.

It's a very difficult process, of course, because they've always done it in a different way. And now it's hard for them to think [00:40:00] about, you know, giving control and power to local people, which until now they've always said is a threat to conservation. It's like a total turn of what they assumed so far.

But for us, it seems like that's the thing that we have to do for them to actually acknowledge the problem, because otherwise all the solutions that they come up with are not real solutions. They put people like the WCS in power, which is also not going to respect the Batwas' rights.

Chris: Yeah, I think one of the critiques around development is in the context of these industries, especially things like conservation, volunteerism is another one that as industries, you would imagine that they would have in their mission statement, or vision, or ten-year plan, the slow and intentional disappearance of their own industry, right? Because if what they were [00:41:00] doing was working, we would need less of them. And there would be less of them, but here we are, right? And it's just, of course, a massively growing industry, both conservation and volunteerism.

Martin: Yeah, it's true that our key targets are the donors, because like many of the issues that indigenous peoples are facing across the world, the root of the problem and the funding for these problems come from the West and our societies.

So that's going to remain one of our targets and key part of the strategy. I think we are starting to see a shift in the discourse, in France, at least. And when we talk to the politicians, we also see that shift, that shift in the discourse of the conservation NGOs, but it's still as harmful.

So instead of saying that these places are wild and empty and that the local artists are destroying it or encroaching, well, they still say it, but they also say that what we were saying before about the poverty issue and that [00:42:00] they will generate new projects and new activities and development basically.

So, I think that they are starting to acknowledge the presence of these people. They couldn't be further from recognizing their land rights because, like you said, otherwise it means their own disappearance, and they're not built for that.

Linda: Yeah, so it's a difficult, it's a difficult thing. I mean, I think we try to talk to people that are more inclined to understand the importance of indigenous people's rights so that we can have a base of people that support our campaigning, which is very important for us.

And then we select our targets and try to engage the people that support us in convincing these targets to change projects or change their minds. And sometimes, you know, that can just be it a tweet that texts someone who we know makes decisions about certain [00:43:00] projects, try to raise awareness that there is concern about this project, that some people disagree, that this doesn't comply with human rights, that this doesn't comply with, agreements or treaties they're supporting for indigenous people's rights.

And sometimes it's a more complex lobbying strategy. So there are different things we try to do and sometimes, like we saw with the example of the French government, sometimes it works because there's timing, there's different things coming together. But obviously, even though we have a lot of strategies, it's always difficult to know what will work in the end.

So we try different things and try to engage with people that will help us spread the word about the need to decolonize conservation and do it differently and acknowledge land rights. And sometimes it's little things that really change a lot. Sometimes we work on something for a long time and it wasn't the right strategy and we need to change.[00:44:00]

Chris: Well, speaking of how might our listeners find out more about Survival International and the decolonize conservation campaigns and especially around the work that you two are doing.

Martin: Well, I strongly encourage people to read more of our campaigns on the website, on social media, also to subscribe to our newsletter, because that's where we mostly share our urgent actions.

So which are one of our tools to put pressure on the targets. So, mass emails basically sent by our supporters to the targets about specific projects. And we also publish some video, direct video testimonies in our tribal voice projects, as we call it.

So if they want to listen to, to the victims explaining the problems they are facing, but also the way of life that they have lost or sometimes more inspiring things about the resistance and and the fight. I think it's also very interesting to hear directly from the people affected.

But yeah, I strongly encourage people to join the movement by [00:45:00] any means possible. And sometimes as Linda said, just small actions like a tweet or sending an email through these campaigns can be can really make an impact and and it does help ensure that the advocacy and the lobbying is effective.

Linda: Yeah, and I think it's also a nice way to picture that you're showing solidarity with, for example, the Batwa, who often perceive the Western donors as being the cause of their problem. And I think for them, it's nice to see that there are also people in the countries that, where the problems originate that are standing up for their rights and supporting them.

And I think it's probably the least we can do also, because we're so obsessed with African nature that I think it would be a very good step for us to think about the people that live in these places.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And maybe not immediately or superficially in part because of the inundations and the dilemmas in our times, but that kind of [00:46:00] solidarity can begin to break down as well, the largely like unconscious nationalist tendencies we have when we think of other people in other countries, we always associate those people with their governments, right?

Which is just like, absolutely ridiculous when anyone thinks of themselves in relation to their own government, right? But these are two faces, two voices of the resistance that are working on behalf of many others.

And so I just wanted to reiterate that we're here today just to have the chance to be able to speak about a little bit about this this small victory that all willing will lead to many more to much bigger ones in regards to the Decolonize Conservation campaign of Survival International.

It takes work and I'm grateful to be able to speak with you both today and to have you share some of your work and your dedication with our listeners and I will make sure that all of those links that you mentioned, Martin, will be on the End of Tourism website and available for our [00:47:00] listeners to sign up to the newsletter and follow on social media and of course participate if they so wish.

Thank you both.

Linda: Thanks.

Martin: Thank you.

​

On this episode, my guest is Christos Galanis, a friend and scholar who recently completed his PhD in Cultural Geography from The University of Edinburgh where his research centered on themes of displacement and memorial walking practices in the Highlands of Scotland. A child of Greek political refugees on both sides of his family, Christos' work looks at ways in which ceremony and ritual might afford us the capacity to integrate disconnection from place and ancestry. Further, his research into pre-modern Gaelic Highland culture reveals animistic relationship with mountains which disrupt easy definitions of colonialism and indigeneity.

Show Notes:

Summoning and Summiting a Doctorate

The British Empire & Everest

The Three Roots of Freedom

Hillwalkers and Homecoming

The Consequences of Staying and Leaving

The Romans Make a Desert and Call it Peace

Farming Emptiness

Landscapes as Mediums

Ritualized Acts of Walking

Homework:

Christos Galanis’ Official Website

Transcript:

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Christos, to the End of Tourism podcast.

Christos: Thank you, Chris.

Chris: Thank you for joining me today. Would you be willing to let us know where you're dialing in from today?

Christos: Yeah, I'm calling in from home, which at the moment is Santa Fe, New Mexico in the United States. Yeah, I moved out here for my master's in 2010 and fell in love with it, and and then returned two years ago.

So it's actually a place that does remind me of the Mediterranean and Greece, even though there's no water, but the kind of mountain desert. So there's a familiarity somehow in my body.

Chris: Sounds beautiful. Well I'm delighted to speak with you today about your PhD dissertation entitled "A Mountain Threnody: Hill Walking and Homecoming in the Scottish Highlands." And I know you're working on the finishing touches of the dissertation, but I'd like to pronounce a dear congratulations on that huge feat. I imagine after a decade of research and [00:01:00] writing, that you can finally share this gift, at least for now, in this manner, in terms of our conversation together.

Christos: Thank you. It was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life in terms of a project. Yeah. Nine years.

Chris: And so, you and I met at Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School many years ago. But beyond that from what I understand that you were born and raised in Toronto and Scarborough to Greek immigrants, traveled often to see family in Greece and also traveled widely yourself, and of course now living in New Mexico for some time. I'm curious why focus on Scotland for your thesis?

Christos: It was the last place I thought I would be going to. Didn't have a connection there. So I did my master's down here in Albuquerque at UNM and was actually doing a lot of work on the border with Mexico and kind of Southwest Spanish history.

I actually thought I was going to go to UC San Diego, partly because of the weather and had some connections [00:02:00] there. And two things happened. One was that you have to write your GRE, whatever the standardized test is you need to do for grad school here in the US, you don't have to do in the UK. So that appealed to me.

And it's also, there's no coursework in the UK. So you just, from day one, you're just doing your own research project. And then I wanted to actually work with what Was and probably still is my favorite academic writer is Tim Ingold, who was based in Aberdeen up in the north of Scotland and is kind of that thing where I was like, "well if I'm gonna do a PhD What if I just literally worked with like the most amazing academic I can imagine working with" and so I contacted him. He was open to meeting and possibly working together and so I was gonna fly to Scotland.

I was actually spending the winter in Thailand at the time, so I was like, if I'm gonna go all the way to Scotland, maybe I should check out a couple more universities. So, I looked at St. Andrews, which is a little bit north of Edinburgh, and then Edinburgh, then visited all [00:03:00] three schools, and actually just really fell in love with Edinburgh, and then in the end got full funding from them. And that took me to Scotland. And I didn't know what was in store for me. I didn't even follow through on my original research project, which had nothing to do with Scotland. The sites that I was actually proposed to work with was on the Dine reservation out here in Arizona. There's a tradition, long tradition of sheep herding and there's a lot of, some friends of mine have a volunteer program where volunteers go and help the Diné elders and herd their sheep for them and what's happening is they're trying to hold on to their land and Peabody Coal, a coal mining company, has been trying to take the land forever and so by keeping on herding sheep, it allows them to stay there.

So I was actually kind of looking at walking as forms of resistance and at that time, most undocumented migrants trying to enter Europe were walking from Turkey through Macedonia. So I was actually going to go there. And yeah, once I kind of hit the ground, I realized that that's way too ambitious.

And I [00:04:00] decided to focus on this really strange phenomenon called Monroe Bagging in the Highlands of Scotland, where people work all week in their office, Monday to Friday, and then spend their weekends checking off a task list of 282 mountains that they summit. There's 282 of them and they're categorized that way because they're all over 3, 000 feet, which for us in North America, isn't that high, but for the Scottish Highlands, because they're very ancient, ancient, worn down mountains is pretty high.

And also the weather and the climate and the terrain make it pretty treacherous out there. So it's, it's not an easy thing. Yeah. And I just thought this is a really weird, strange way to relate to mountains and to land. And it seems like a very British thing to do. And I kind of just got curious to figure out what was going on and why people would actually do this.

And it came from a very, actually, critical perspective, to begin with. As things unfolded, that changed a fair amount in terms of getting to know people. But, yeah, that was Scotland. And, I think looking back, I think [00:05:00] I was called there by the mountains. I can give the bigger context maybe later on, but essentially one of the main mountain called Ben Cruachan, in Argyle that I ended up most working with and kind of going in and doing ceremony for, and with. I ended up later meeting my what would become my wife and married into her family and on one side of her family, they are literally the Macintyres who are from that mountain. So yeah ended up kind of going there and marrying into a lineage of a mountain that was the center of my my dissertation.

So in the end I think I was called there. I think I was called to apprentice those mountains. And then I feel like my time ended. And I think this dissertation is kind of the story of that relationship with that courtship.

Chris: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for that beautifully winding answer and introduction. So, you know, a lot of your dissertation speaks to kind of different notions of mountain climbing, summiting, hiking but you also write about [00:06:00] how our cultural or collective understandings of mountains have defined our ability to undertake these activities.

And I'm curious, based on your research and personal experience, how do you think mountains are understood within the dominant paradigm of people who undertake these practices.

Christos: Yeah, good question. I would say, I know I don't like to speak in universals, but I could say that one universal is that, as far as I can tell, all cultures around the world tend to not only revere mountains, but tend to relate to mountain peaks as sacred.

And so in most cultures, at least pre modern culture, you will always find a taboo around ever actually climbing to the top of a mountain, especially a significant mountain. So ways that you might worship a sacred mountain, for example, you know, in Tibet is to circumnavigate. So hiking, walking around a mountain three times or walking the perimeter of a mountain, kind of circling [00:07:00] around and around the summit.

But it would be absolutely abhorrent to actually ever climb to the top. So one thing I was interested in is what happened, what shifted, where in the past people would never think of climbing a mountain summit to that becoming almost the only thing that people were focused on. And I didn't know this, but out of all countries, the country that most intensely kind of pursued that practice was, was England, was Britain, actually.

So it's really fascinating. There's this period, the Victorian era, where basically Britain is invading other countries such as Nepal, India, into China, into Kenya, parts of Africa, South America certainly here in North America and the Americas and of course mountain ranges serve as pretty natural and intense frontiers and barriers, especially back then before. You know, industrial machinery and airplanes and things [00:08:00] like that, you're going over land.

And so to be able to get through a mountain range was a pretty intense thing. Really only became possible with kind of Victorian era technology and because they were able to penetrate these places that people really couldn't have before it was a way of kind of proving modern supremacy or the supremacy of kind of modern secularism.

Because even in places like Sutherland and the Alps, the indigenous Swiss also considered like the Alps sacred, the mountain peaks and wouldn't climb them. And so as the British kind of came up into these mountain ranges. They had the idea of proving that essentially there were no gods on these mountaintops.

There was nothing sacred about them. It's just a pile of rock and anybody can climb up and nothing's going to happen to them. And so they really started setting out to start summiting these mountains. And it was mostly military engineers. There's a big overlap between kind of military engineering and surveying and [00:09:00] map making and this kind of outdoor kind of Victorian kind of proving your manhood against nature kind of thing.

And so it's a strangely poetic and very grief soaked proposition where increasingly humans had the technology to penetrate anywhere on the planet, you know, more and more. And maybe I'll just go into the story of Everest because it was perceived that the, the earth had three poles.

So the North pole, the South pole, and Everest is the highest peak on the whole planet. So there was this race to set foot on the North Pole on the South Pole and on Everest. I don't know much about the North and South Pole expeditions I think they were first but Everest was kind of like yeah I think Everest was the last literally the last place on earth that humans weren't able yet to physically step foot on.

And so the British set out to be the ones to do it after World War one. And there's another overlap where most of the men that were obsessed with mountain summiting after World War I had [00:10:00] been through the horrors of World War I and had a lot of PTSD and shell shock and kind of couldn't reintegrate back to civilian life.

They kind of needed that rush of risking your life for some kind of larger goal, which warfare can provide. And, slowly they kind of got better technology and eventually by, I think it was maybe 1952, 1953, they finally conquered Everest. And it's almost like the moment that they penetrated this last place of wilderness that was holding out the British Empire started collapsing, which the timing is quite fascinating.

You know, they lost India and Pakistan. And as soon as you kind of are able to dominate everything, there comes this nostalgia immediately for wild places. And this is where Scotland comes back in. Where, Scotland, the Highlands have been inhabited for tens of thousands of years.

There's nothing wild about them. There were villages everywhere. But what happened through the [00:11:00] 16, 1700s was the Gaelic population, the indigenous population were ethnically cleansed. And then kind of the lands that follow for maybe 100 years. And then when the English started coming in, they were like, "Oh, this is wilderness.

These mountains have never been climbed before. We're going to be the ones to conquer them because we're the superior race." And they did so, and when I chose the the title of my thesis used this little known word, Threnody, which is actually from Greek, Threnodia, which translates something as like a song of grief or a song of lament.

And I think for me, this incessant kind of like summiting of mountains and risking and sometimes losing your life to penetrate these places where you actually don't retain control, or it's very hard to retain control, right, because of like storms in the weather, that it's almost like a kind of mourning for the loss of the very things that this technology has kind of erased or has compromised.

So it's almost, I can't even put into words the feeling around it, but it's almost like, [00:12:00] You're doing the thing that's destroying something, but you have the impulse to keep doing it as a way of connecting to the thing that's being lost, if that makes sense. And I can imagine, you know, maybe all the work that you've done around tourism might have a similar quality to it.

There's, I don't know, there's like a melancholy that I experience interviewing and going out with these people that I don't think they would ever be conscious of or even name, but there's a longing for something that's missing. And so that's where also this kind of song of lament theme comes into my, into my dissertation.

Chris: Yeah, it's definitely something that shows up over and over again in these conversations and thank you for putting it into such eloquent words is that. I think it really succinctly speaks to the, the condition or conditions at hand. And I guess I'm curious you know, in regards to what you just said about notions of freedom [00:13:00] that are often experienced in touristic experiences or contexts and some of your dissertation centers around the freedom that your friends and hill walking acquaintances experienced there in the Highlands and freedom can often seem like a kind of recurrent trope sometimes in describing the tourist's reasons for travel.

And surely outside of a trope for many people's reasons for travel you know, especially in the context of migration. Beyond the surface, we can wonder about the inheritance of ancestrally or ancestral indentured servitude, the commons and the lack thereof in our time and also like a kind of communion or relationship with what you refer to as other than human worlds. And I'm curious what kind of contradictions or insights came up for you in regards to the supposed freedom that was either found or sought after by the Hillwalkers you encountered.[00:14:00]

Christos: Thank you. Yeah, I think before I started going deep into this, I probably, I probably shared most people's notion of freedom, which most of us don't ever really sit and wonder that deeply about.

But there's a section of my dissertation where I go deep into freedom and I actually look at three different cultural and kind of etymological or linguistic lenses through which to understand freedom. And there's two that the people I interviewed, I think, were most practicing. So the word freedom itself comes from the Germanic, and it's two words.

It's broke frei, which is "free," "to be free." And dom, translates kind of as "a judgment." So if you know like doomsday or the doomsday book. What the doomsday and judgment day actually mean the same thing It's just doom is like the older Germanic word for judgment. Okay, and so freedom can kind of translate as like freedom from judgment freedom from constraint and it has this quality of like spatially removing [00:15:00] yourself or getting distance from something that might constrain you, so you mentioned indentured servitude and slavery, which are as old as human civilization across the world.

And all these different things that, basically, we are more or less constrained by, whether it's, family, the state, our living conditions, poverty, excess wealth, you know, all these things that might, or the expression of our true life force. And so for a lot of the people that I was working with, that was certainly what they would describe, you know, like I work in an office as a manager Monday through Friday in Edinburgh, and then it's only on the weekends that I get out into the hills and I truly feel alive and free, right? Because I'm in this vast expanse and,

I mean, It's not my climate. I'm Greek by both sides. Wet, soggy moss and mold and endless rain and drizzle and cold and dark is not my thing, but it is visually stunningly beautiful. And you know, [00:16:00] and I'm sure we all know the experience of getting up to a peak of something and that sense of kind of almost being removed from the everyday and that sense of like maybe connecting to something higher or bigger.

So that sense of freedom is obvious. The other, another lens is through Latin liberty or libertas, which comes from ancient Roman society, which was a heavily hierarchied society where up to 60 percent of people were actually slaves. So, there's a big distinction between those who are free and those who are slaves.

And so the idea of liberty, and this also came up with my informants is the idea that you have to compare yourself to another and the more freedom you have compared to someone else, the better it feels. And I think of that as all the mechanics of like air airports and you know, first class lines and first class seating.

I had the experience once flying because flying from New York through back to [00:17:00] London to get back to Edinburgh. And for the first and only time in my life I was bumped up to first class for some reason, I don't know why. But it was on, I don't know, one of the newer kind of jumbo jets, and the difference between economy class and first class in many ways is pretty profound.

At the same time, it's ridiculous because you're all sitting in the same tube. But I remember the feeling that happened once we took off and they drew the curtain between the first class and everyone in the back. And it was this experience where everyone back there just disappeared.

It's just kind of like, you can't see them, they're out of sight, out of mind, and you're just up front. You can lay down completely horizontally in these chairs, you have real glass, glassware and real cutlery, you know, and people treat you super, super nice. But like, in order to enjoy that, you need other people to not be enjoying that, right?

So the idea of liberty kind of requires another, or it's almost a zero sum game where someone else has to be losing for you to be winning. And you know, I think of that with tourism, the idea that those of us from the North, you know, are stuck [00:18:00] at home in the winter while those with money, you know, can fly off to Mexico or Costa Rica and stuff like that.

So that difference that like your experience is enhanced by other people's discomfort or suffering. And then I came across another lens, which comes from the Greek. So the Greek word for freedom is Eleftheria. And I didn't know the etymology, but one of my office mates in Edinburgh was from Greece, and we sat down with like a Greek etymological dictionary and I discovered that the Greek notion of freedom is completely different.

It's almost counterintuitive, and it translates as something close to " loving the thing you were meant to love" or like "being the thing you were meant to be." And even more distinctly, the rios part in Eleftheria would translate into something like "returning to your home harbor after like a long voyage," and it's that, it's literally the experience of coming home, [00:19:00] which in a way is the freedom of not wanting to be anywhere else or to be anyone else, which is in some ways, I think to me, the most true freedom, because you don't want for anything, you actually love everything you are and everywhere you are, and you don't want to go anywhere else.

So in that way, I think for me, cultivating a connection to place as an animist, you know, and I think that's a lot of what you and I I imagine experienced, you know, listening to Steven Jenkinson's many stories that keep circling around this idea of, you know, belonging is cultivating that place in you or that muscle in you that doesn't want to be anywhere else, doesn't want to be anybody else, but is actually satisfied and fulfilled by what is, which it's probably at the heart of most spiritual traditions at the end of the day, but to think of that as freedom, I think for me, really, really changed my perspective from, the idea of going around the world as I have and certainly in the past to experience all these different things and to [00:20:00] feel free and to be a nomad versus I would say the freedom I have here of loving Santa Fe and not imagining myself being anywhere else right now.

Chris: Well, the theme of homecoming is definitely woven into this work, this dissertation, alongside hill walking.

They seem, generally speaking, superficially very disparate or distinct activities, homecoming and hill walking. One is going and then it's coming. And I'm curious if you could elaborate for our listeners a little bit of what those terms mean, and where or how they come together in your work.

Christos: Yeah. So the title of my dissertation, you know, is a "A Mountain Threnody: Hillwalkers and Homecomers in the Highlands of Scotland."

So I set out to study hill walkers, which is basically a British term for going out for a walk or a hike where the focus is summiting some kind of peak, you know, whether a hill or a mountain, but that's what most people do there. When you set out on a walk, it's just assumed that you're going to end up going to the top of something and then [00:21:00] back down.

What ended up happening is actually through Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School, I met several other Canadians of Scottish descent who had already or were planning on going quote "back" to Scotland to connect with their ancestral lands and their ancestors which is a lot of the work with Stephen's school and that, you know, that idea of connecting with your ancestry and with your roots and with your bones.

And I kind of just started following along and interviewing people and talking with people that became friends just out of curiosity, because, you know, that's a lot of my background with being first generation Canadian and growing up in a huge Greek diaspora in Toronto and speaking Greek and going back to Greece multiple times and this idea of kind of being Canadian, but really home is in Europe and Greece, even though I've never lived there.

So, there's a lot there, personal interest and eventually against my supervisor's advice, I was like, this might be an interesting [00:22:00] conversation to put these two groups together, these people who are spending their weekends summiting mountains in the Highlands and then these other people coming from Canada and the US and New Zealand and Australia who are going to the same mountains to connect with their ancestral, you know, lands and and people.

And these two groups are probably the two biggest sources of tourism, like, in the Highlands, which is fascinating. Wow. Except that the one group, the Hillwalkers tend to imagine that they're in a pristine wilderness and that there's never been anybody there. And the homecomers like to imagine that the hills used to be covered in villages and their own people that were there for thousands of years and that they're reconnecting.

So it's interesting how the same landscape is both imagined as being repopulated and also emptied. And that both groups are kind of searching again for this kind of belonging, right? This belonging through freedom, for this belonging through ancestry. The other piece that gets, [00:23:00] well, you know, we're interviewing this, we're doing this interview November 21st and we're, I think most people these days are pretty aware of what's going on in Israel and Palestine and this idea of home because to have a homecoming means there has to be somewhere out there that you consider your home.

And that's such a loaded, loaded, loaded concept, right? Like many wars are fought over this idea of who a land belongs to, right? I mean, I know you and I have talked about both our families being from the borderlands with Greece, Macedonia, Albania, and those borders just change over and over and where you belong to what is home keeps changing depending on which war has happened, which outcome and things like that.

And I think for those of us, I'll say in the Americas, who don't have deep roots here this idea of home being somewhere else other than where you live, is a very complex prospect because certainly when I go to Greece, people don't recognize me as being home, you know, they, they consider me a Canadian tourist. And at the same time growing up in Canada, I certainly never felt [00:24:00] like, "Oh, Canada is like my ancestral home. You know, it's, it's skin deep. My parents came over in the sixties. Right."

So this idea of homecoming and, you know, maybe we can just riff on this for a bit. Cause I know you've explored this a lot. It's like, is it tourism or is it something else? Because a lot of people in Scotland, including people I interviewed, just laugh at these Canadians who come over and just start crying, standing over some rocks in the Highlands and who will buy some shitty whiskey at a tourist shop and feel that they're connecting with their roots and buy bagpipes and by kilts and all this stuff, whereas like most Scottish people don't wear kilts and don't blow bagpipes and don't necessarily drink whiskey all day, so there's these kind of stereotypes that have often been just kind of produced by the media, but it's almost like, other than that, how do people actually connect with the homeland, right?

Like, what does it even mean to connect with a homeland? And one thing that I found that I think is one of the most powerful things is the idea of walking. So [00:25:00] this is why the comparison and the contrast with hill walking and homecoming is most people, when you go back to your homeland, there's something really central about walking in the footsteps of your ancestors, right?

So walking around in the same village, walking the same streets, going to the same house, maybe even if it's not there anymore, going to... I remember going to my mom's elementary school in the little village that she grew up in the mountains of Greece and walking down the same hallways with her, and we went to the auditorium, and she, showed me the little stage where she would literally be putting on little plays when they were, like, in third grade and there's something about standing and stepping in the same place that is so fundamental.

And so I'm kind of looking at homecoming through these kind of memorial or commemorative practices of walking. So it's not just walking, but walking and activating a landscape or activating the memories that are kind of enfolded in a landscape. And I've come to believe and understand that walking is a kind of almost magic technology that I [00:26:00] almost see it as really like opening up portals to other times and other places when done in a ceremonial kind of ritualized manner.

So a lot of my work again, as an animist and kind of being as far as I know, the first in my field was just cultural geography, to kind of bring an animist lens to the field and kind of look at how, doing ceremony on a mountain, going into these glands and doing ceremony is more than just the material kind of walking, but is actually kind of connecting with these memories and these people in these places.

In a way that's, I think, deeper than tourism and that's maybe the distinction between tourism and let's say homecoming on the surface that you might actually be doing almost the same thing, but I think there is this kind of animist lens to understand homecoming through where you let's say you bring a stone from home or you take a stone and bring it back home you know, like these kinds of Ritualize little practices that we do to connect with the place that I don't think tourists do in the same way, [00:27:00] you know?

Because in tourism, you're often just trying to get away from where you live and experience something different, where this is trying to reconnect with something that's been lost or something that's in the past.

Chris: Yeah, definitely. This leads me into a lot of different directions, but one of them is this question of animism that I'd like to come back to in just a moment but before we do, I want to ask you about. These heritage trips sometimes they're referred to as within the tourism industry, homeland returns which in most cases is a paradox or an oxymoron because most people are not returning to the places that they either were born in or lived in.

They, typically, like myself, had never actually been there before. I'll just pull a little quote from your dissertation because I think it precedes this question in a good way. You write that quote,

"the commissioner of Sutherland advocated for a state administered program of colonization in the Scottish Highlands, similarly arguing that the [00:28:00] Gaelic race and its inferior temperament presented an obstacle to the onward march of civilization. Locke set out a vision for the colonization, displacement, and reeducation of Gaelic Highlanders, where eventually, quote, 'the children of those removed from the hills will lose all recollection of the habits and customs of their fathers.'

Locke's vision has broadly come true," end quote.

And so, within the context of the wider spectrum and calendars and geographies that we've kind of been discussing, but more specifically in the context of Scotland, I'm curious if the people that you met there, either locals or visitors and especially in the case of those coming for a homecoming or heritage trip had an understanding of these things, of this history.

Christos: No, that's what I found out. [00:29:00] What I've found in my lifetime, cause this isn't the only kind of project around this kind of theme that I've done. Maybe we'll get, I did another project with Mexican friends going back to Spain and kind of repatriating or reconnecting back through the kind of the displacement of the Spanish civil war.

But what I've found is those of us of the colonies, that's kind of what I consider myself in ourselves, like people of the colonies. I'm not sure if it's better or worse that we're the ones that hold on to the stories and the memories and the people back quote "home" or in the "homeland" for the large part have moved on and don't really give much thought to these histories of displacement.

It's almost, oh my God, it was strange to be in this country where most of the place names in the Highlands are Gaelic, and 98 percent of Scottish citizens cannot read or understand Gaelic, so partly it was this strangeness of being in a country where only two out of every hundred people could even understand the names of the places where they lived, even [00:30:00] though they had never left there and their people had never left there.

And you know, if you let that sink in, it's like, let's say you and I being of Greek descent, imagine if 90 percent of Greeks couldn't understand Greek, you know what I mean? And couldn't understand the name of their own village. And well, there's, here's another angle to this in Scotland.

When you want to learn traditional Gaelic fiddle, you go to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia in Canada because that's where the Highlanders who immigrated to Nova Scotia in the past kept the tradition pure and kept fiddle playing what it had always been. Whereas, you know in Scotland now, they're into hip hop and trap and drum and bass and stuff like this.

And so if you're Scottish and you've never left Scotland in order to connect with the music of your ancestors you have to go to Canada, so most people that I interviewed and I think this is fair, you know to assume of most people Don't [00:31:00] think much about the ethnic cleansing that went on whichever side that they were on And it's kind of left to us in the colonies either to also let it go and move on and try to settle into these new lands or you kind of keep holding on to this memory of a place you've actually never lived, you know, and it's almost like both propositions are grief soaked.

Both are kind of almost an impossible poem to hold because obviously there were people here before our European ancestors came. Obviously, we don't have these deep roots or memories or connections to this place. We don't have ceremonies or songs or much that's derived from this land, at least not yet.

And yet many of us lose the language and the ceremonies and the traditions of the places where our ancestors came. It's almost like at least we still know where we've come from. Whereas to be in Europe, or at least in Scotland, and to have never left, but to nevertheless have also lost the connection with [00:32:00] your own ancestors and your own language and those places it's almost like a parallel process where there are people that get on the boats and leave, but there are people that are left behind. But it's almost like, regardless whether you leave or whether you stay, the fabric of that culture just gets completely rendered and torn apart by that displacement.

And somehow, even though you never leave having so many of your people leave actually kind of compromises the ability to stay where you are, and to be connected to where you are.

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I interviewed one woman who had an ancestor who in Scotland, they call like psychic abilities, the second sight.

So the idea of having kind of psychic premonitions or all of a sudden knowing that like your brother has died, even though he's in Australia, you know, that kind of thing. That people had that when I lived in Scotland and when they moved to Canada, they actually lost that ability. You know, so it's this idea that it's not that you carry almost these knowledges or abilities just in you, but it's actually comes from the connection [00:33:00] to the place.

And once that connection becomes severed, you lose those capacities. And I've actually never said this out loud, but I wonder how much the people that stayed behind actually lost because of all the people that left, if that made sense. It's almost like, how does a culture stay resilient when almost everyone between the ages of like 20 and 40 leaves and never comes back.

I think you could consider that this is all just stuff to wonder about. But like, for those of us that come from these kind of like largely settler countries like Canada and the U. S, we're still living through these questions. We're still living through these implications of like, how long do you hold on to the past? And at what point do you just kind of let go and move forward? And If you do so, how do you move forward in a place that you don't have any roots?

Chris: You know. I remember going to see, going to my father's village in northern Greece for the first time some eight years ago, and knowing that I had [00:34:00] one baba or grandmother left there, and after searching for a few hours, she was hard of hearing at the time, finally found her, finally found the house and shared a delicious meal and traded photographs.

I had no Greek or Macedonian language ability at the time. And then I was I called a taxi later on some, you know, at the end of the day to go back to the city, to the hotel, and standing in her garden there, she began to weep, right, without having said anything, even with the language barrier, I could understand what she was saying, and she was, she was mourning the migration of my family or my side of the family, or my father's side of the family to Canada, and then, her son and his family to Germany.

And so, there's this question of what comes upon the people that quote unquote "stay." that's so often lost in the discourses [00:35:00] around migration, kind of always focusing on the individual, the migrant themselves, or the places that they arrive in.

But do we just let it go? And how do we do that? I have this other quote from your dissertation that lands really strangely in this moment, in this conversation and it has to do a little bit with the kind of what I think you refer to as a national geographic imaginary.

And so this is the response of the people in Scotland, in the Highlands embedded and engaged and indebted to these hill walking and homecoming industries. And so in your dissertation, it's written that

"in February of 2017, an uproar on all sides erupted when, in a rare sign of bipartisan solidarity, both Mountaineering Scotland and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association attempted to pressure the Scottish government to abandon a [00:36:00] proposal to increase woodland cover, trees, from 17 percent to 25%. by 2050. The commitment to plant 10, 000 extra hectares of trees between now and 2022 was made in the government's draft climate plan. The protesting organizations argued that there had not been enough consultation and consideration given to the changes to the highland landscape that would come about by this tree planting initiative.

And they were voicing their concern on whether, quote, 'adequate weight is being given to the significant changes this will have on the landscape of Scotland, and in particular, the dramatic open views and vistas which have come to signify to the outside world that which is unique about our country.'" End quote.

And so this seems to be, to some degree, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but a manner of contending [00:37:00] with that past in a way that is, you know, perhaps ignorant of it. Or that is perhaps also faithfully serving the needs, the economic needs of the people, of the place.

Christos: There's a lot there. I'm, what's coming to me, do you know this quote? It's from ancient Rome. It's a bit convoluted, but this is a Roman text talking about the colonization of Britain, so of the Romans conquering the Gaelic people in the Picts, but it's In a speech written by this Roman historian that he's attributing to like the Gaelic king, basically. So it's not, this wasn't actually said by a Gaelic king, it's just a Roman kind of putting these words in his mouth to kind of create like a battle scene, but but a lot of people quote this and it's from the Gaelic perspective referring to the Romans saying

"the Romans make a desert and call it peace."[00:38:00]

And that's kind of what's happened in Scotland is the villages were cleansed, literally. You know, the houses were burned down and knocked down. The people were forcibly, sometimes violently, thrown out of their homes into the cold. Many of them just had no prospects to be able to stay and move to Glasgow.

And many of them, you know, came to Toronto and Saskatchewan and North Carolina and all this. And so after they left, these highlands kind of became empty, like this vast emptiness. And then once the Victorian English came into that landscape and started painting it and writing Victorian poems about it, this aesthetic of this, treeless, vast expanse became kind of that National Geographic kind of aesthetic of the mountain peak and the colorful heather and then the loch or the lake, kind of [00:39:00] reflecting the mountain.

You can just imagine the scene, right? Of like the mountain peak being reflected in inverse in the lake, you know, kind of thing. It's just that perfect kind of symmetrical perspective photograph or painting. And then that kind of became the symbol of freedom and tranquility which is basically like a site of ethnic cleansing becomes a symbol of beauty.

And then what happens is you keep managing the landscape to maintain that aesthetic, which is why you find the strangeness of, like, environmental groups arguing that planting trees is ecological vandalism, that you're ruining the ecology of a place because your trees are gonna get away in the way of these vast expanses.

So it's it's this weird wondering on, like, how certain aesthetics become symbolic of something. And then you manage the land, to maintain that aesthetic. Even though it's [00:40:00] absolute death for the wild, the wildlife and even the people in that landscape, to maintain it in that way.

The thing that might not be obvious to most people which wasn't I didn't know about this whole world before I moved there, but Scotland's one of the few if not only place in all of Europe where you can still be a feudal lord like they call it a laird, l-a-i-r-d, but it's like a lord where all you need to do to be a lord is you just buy land and if you have enough land you're you claim title of Lord Wow.

And most people that are lords in Scotland these days are not even British. You have people from Saudi Arabia, from all over that have bought up the highlands in many ways. And they have these estates and you know, Balmoral estate, which is like the Queens, or I guess she's dead now. Now it's King Charles's estate.

And what you do is maybe once a year you and all your rich friends from all over the world fly in [00:41:00] and do this traditional game hunt where you might be hunting deer, but more often you're actually hunting wild birds. You know, so grouse especially. If anyone's seen, I find it fascinating watching Downton Abbey, that TV series, because it's kind of, it covers a lot of the kind of that, that time in Britain.

And there's an episode or two where they go into the Scottish countryside to go, you know, go hunting. So it's this weird aesthetic where you dress up in a certain way, kind of like an old time Scottish lord, and you go out on the land with dogs and you shoot down birds, and in order for the birds to live there you need the landscape to basically be wide open, because that's actually what they prefer.

And so, this is why, again, for the context of that quote, you have an environmental group, and basically, rich, elite gamekeepers working together to keep the government from planting trees in this landscape because it's in both their interest to maintain [00:42:00] this landscape as an ecological wasteland, essentially that people can't sustain themselves off of or people can't live in

So you're kind of farming emptiness if that makes sense in a way you're like cultivating emptiness. Yeah. For tourism. Which again I mean, you've been talking to so many people about this subject. To me, it's fascinating what tourism can be or what it can mean, you know, or like what need is trying to be fulfilled in these, in these landscapes that often get kind of territorialized as touristic, you know, because most people, when they travel, they don't go to walk around the suburbs of a city. There's only certain places that tourists are drawn to, right? Hmm. And so I'm always curious about why and what tourists are drawn to, you know, what is like almost like the resource there that is being extracted. In

Chris: the context of your work, you know, largely in regards to, to landscapes and we've spoken a fair amount today about [00:43:00] landscapes as, as objects at the very least.

But in, in your dissertation, you know, there was a line that struck me certainly I think coming from your animist tendencies and sentiments where you say that "landscapes are mediums and landscapes are a process," and I'm curious, as we kind of wind ourselves towards the end of our time together, if you could elaborate on this for our listeners a little bit, this, this idea of landscapes as mediums or as processes.

Christos: Yeah, so I've done my, my PhD in the field of cultural geography, or sometimes called human geography, which is kind of like anthropology except kind of rooted in place, I'd say that's the big difference. It's not as popular here in North America, but in the UK it's much more popular. And probably the primary focus in that field is landscape, which I think most people might be familiar with that term in terms of like, maybe landscape [00:44:00] gardening or landscape painting.

But when you get deep into it, which is kind of what grad school is, is you're like a big weirdo and you just get so deep into something so friggin specific that, you know, most people think you might think about once in your lifetime, but you end up spending nine years thinking about and writing about.

It's almost like you can't perceive a place without some kind of filter, if that makes sense. It's almost like there's no such thing as just like a place or land that's just objectively out there. Like, I spent most of a winter, you know, down where you are in Oaxaca, but you having lived there for this long, like if you and I walk around in the streets of Ciudad Oaxaca, you're going to perceive so much more than I am, or at least many different things than I am, right?

I'm going to be purely a tourist, I'm going to be reading on a surface level where you might have dozens of memories come up from your time living there and different things that have happened. And [00:45:00] so, in that way, like a landscape is almost, is always like a medium, meaning like our own perceptions, our own projections, our own memories are always affecting the way that we perceive a place.

And so cultural geography, the field that I'm in, kind of looks at that. It looks, literally at the kind of the, the collision of culture and geography and like the politics of a place. You know, I was talking about like earlier about landscape management. You know, there are people that are choosing how to manage the landscape in the highlands, where to allocate money and where to cut money from.

And all of those decisions are based on preferences of aesthetics and land use, in terms of landscape. So for anyone that's interested, it's a fascinating field to start looking at what we perceive in a place or in places [00:46:00] and how, what we perceive or what we wish to be there affects, you know, the politics of a place.

And again, the contemporary crisis right now, Israel Palestine, this question of like, who belongs there? Whose land is it? What do you see in that landscape? For some people, they see an ancient Jewish homeland that these persecuted people are trying to return to and reclaim and for other people, they see, you know, an indigenous Arab people that are being displaced by outside colonizers and, you know, both in their way are right and wrong.

I'm not going to wade into the politics of it, but the way that landscape is used as a medium, politically, economically, culturally, is a really fascinating subject, at least for me.

Chris: Well, thank you for that, and to finish up with a question around pilgrimage, which Jerusalem being the quote unquote, "holy land" and where so many pilgrimages landed in in previous times and of course in contemporary ones as [00:47:00] well. I'm curious about what you could describe as ritualized memorial acts of walking. And I'd like to finish by asking what have been the most achieved and enduring acts of ritual that you've encountered? What lessons might they have to teach us in a time of hypermobility?

Christos: Again, that's like a huge question. Okay, I'll try to be succinct if I can. I don't know why I'm drawn to these kinds of histories, but anywhere I go in the world, I tend to be drawn to, yeah, histories of displacement, I would say.

It's a strange thing to be interested in for most people, but it probably speaks to the fact that I am the fourth generation of men to leave the country that I was born. You know, that's between both sides of the family, it's not all one lineage. But being of Greek descent, Greece has long been a country where people leave, you know?

Like, right now, the [00:48:00] United States is a country where people come to, but to be claimed by a place where for hundreds of years now, so many people, whether by choice or circumstance, leave their home probably does something to you, you know? And so Anywhere I've traveled in the world, I tend to either seek out or be sought out by these kinds of histories, and so I referred a bit earlier to this project I did years ago where I was spending a lot of time in Mexico and ended up meeting what became a friend is an artist from Mexico City, Javier Arellán, and he was second generation Mexican.

His grandfather was from Barcelona in Spain and was a fighter pilot for the Spanish Republic, so like the legitimate democratically elected government of Spain. And when Franco and the fascists kind of staged a coup and the Spanish Civil War broke out you know, he was on the side [00:49:00] of the government, the Republican army.

And Barcelona was basically the last stand of the Republicans as the fascist kind of came up from the from the south and when Barcelona fell everyone that could literally just fled on foot to try to cross into France, nearby to try to escape, because knowing that if they were captured they would be imprisoned or killed by the fascists who had basically taken over the country now.

But the French didn't want tens of thousands of socialists pouring into their country because they were right wing. And so rather than letting people escape they actually put all the Spanish refugees in concentration camps on the French border. And that's where my friend's grandfather was interred for like six months in a place called Argilet sur Mer, just over the French border.

And then from there, Algeria took a bunch of refugees and he was sent to Algeria. And then from there, the only countries in the whole world that would [00:50:00] accept these left wing Spanish refugees was Mexico and Russia. And so about 50, 000 Spanish Republican refugees relocated to Mexico City. They had a huge influence on Mexican culture.

They started UNAM, like the national university in Mexico City. And my friend Javier Grew up in Mexico city, going to a Spanish Republican elementary school, singing the Spanish Republican National Anthem and considering themselves Spaniards, you know, who happened to be living in Mexico. And so when I met him, with my interests, we, you know, overlapped and I found out that him and his wife were soon setting out to go back to that same beach in France where his grandfather was interred, in the concentration camp and then to walk from there back to Barcelona because his grandfather had died in Mexico before Franco died, so he never got to return home. You know, maybe like a lot of Greeks that left and [00:51:00] never did get to go back home, certainly never moved back home.

And so we went to France and we started on this beach, which is a really kind of trashy touristy kind of beach, today. And we thought you know, that's what it is today, but we then found out talking to people that that's actually what it was back in the 1930s, 1940s was this touristy beach and what the French did was literally put a fence around and put these refugees on the beach in the middle of like a tourism beach literally as prisoners while people on the fence were like swimming and eating ice cream and, you know, and being on vacation.

So even that site itself is pretty fucked up. A lot of people died there on that beach. And it was 15 days walking the entire coast from the French border back to Barcelona. And whereas Javier's community in Mexico city actually raised [00:52:00] funds for us and we're really excited about this idea of homecoming and going back home to Spain.

We quickly discovered when we started talking to locals about what we were doing, they would stop talking to us and walk away and they didn't want anything to do with us. They did not want to know these histories. They didn't want to touch it. And what we found out is like Spain has never really dealt with this history.

And it's such a trauma and nobody wants to talk about it. So again, it's this strange thing where it's like us from the Americas, you know, my friend from Mexico was wanting to return home and it was a strange trip for him because he thought of himself as a Spaniard returning home and these Spaniards were like, "you're a Mexican tourist and I don't want to talk to you about the civil war, you know?"

And I think that really hurt him in a lot of ways because he almost kept trying to prove that he wasn't a tourist, whereas for me, I knew that I was a tourist because, you know, I have no history there.[00:53:00]

In terms of pilgrimage, I've done other pilgrimages, other walks I won't get into now, but there's something about walking a landscape or walking a land as opposed to driving, obviously, or flying that the pace of walking, I think, allows you to interact with people and with places at a rhythm that is maybe more organic, maybe more holistic. I did do the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage in Spain, like I did that another 15 days as well. And for me there's nothing like walking. You know, there's, there's something that happens. To your mind, to your body, to your spirit when you're moving that I've never experienced through any kind of other travel.

And unfortunately there are only so many places in the world where you can walk for days or weeks on end that have the infrastructure set up to do so. And I know that here in the Americas other than walking on busy roads, it's pretty hard to get long distances through walking.

And so I think another thing that tourism has done is kind of cut off the transitional kind of walking and you just kind of fly off and just kind of plop yourself [00:54:00] down and then get extracted out through an airplane, but you don't have the experience of seeing the landscape change day by day, footstep by footstep, and experiencing the place at that speed, at that pace, which is, you know, a very slow pace compared to an airplane, obviously.

Chris: Mm hmm. Perhaps, perhaps very needed in our time.

Christos: I hope so. I think there's something about it. I think there's something humanizing about it. About walking.

Chris: Well, I've asked a lot of you today, my friend. And we've managed to court and conjure all of the questions that I've, that I had prepared for you.

Which I thought was impossible. So, on behalf of our listeners and perhaps all those who might come to this in some way, your dissertation at some point down the road, I'd like to thank you for your time and certainly your dedication.

And I imagine a PhD, nine year PhD [00:55:00] research process can be extremely grueling. That said, I imagine it's not the only thing that you have on your plate. I know that you're also an artist a teacher, writer, and Kairotic facilitator. I'm saying that right. To finish off, maybe you'd be willing to share a little bit of what that entails and how our listeners might be able to get in touch and follow your work.

Christos: Yeah, first I'll just say thanks for reaching out, Chris, and inviting me to do this. I've listened to your podcast and love these kinds of conversations around these topics of place and belonging. It's obviously deep in my heart and I said this to you earlier, other than my supervisors and my examiners, I think you're the first person to read my dissertation, so I appreciate that you took the time to read it and to draw quotes and to discuss it with me because, I think most people that have done a PhD know that it can be a pretty solitary process to go so deep into such a tiny little corner of like knowledge that for most people is not what they're interested in every day and to [00:56:00] share these stories. Thank you.

So yeah, my website is ChristosGolanis. com. And part of what I do is working with this Greek term, kairos. So in Greek there are at least three words for time. One is chronos, which is like linear time. One is aeon, which is like kind of eternal time.

And one is kairos, gets translated as kairos, which is like almost the appropriate time or ceremonial time. And my best definition of that is you know, there are some things that are scheduled, like you and I for months ago planned this particular time and this particular day to do this interview.

But deciding, let's say, when to get married with your partner doesn't follow any kind of rational, linear timeline. That's more of a feeling. And so the feeling of like when some, when it's appropriate for something is what Greeks consider to be keros, like, you know, keros for something like it's, it's the appropriate time for something.

So. What I do is I kind of counsel people to craft [00:57:00] ceremonies or rituals for big transitions in their lives to mark things in their life through ritual or ceremony. Like I said, for like a homecoming two weeks of walking the coast of Spain can be a ceremony, right, of kind of walking your dead grandfather back home. I think there's something about the impulse to go out into the world, to find something, to integrate something, to process something, right versus staying right where you are and kind of with community, with others. It's kind of ritually marking it, integrating it, and you know, it's cheaper, it's easier on the environment, and sometimes can, can go a lot deeper than going away and coming back, and maybe not much has changed.

But it can be dealing with the transition of someone from life into death or a birth or a career change. And so basically using ceremony and ritual to really mark and integrate these significant moments in our lives so that we can be fully with them as they're happening or as they've happened in the past, but haven't been able to be integrated.

So that's some of the kind of [00:58:00] work that people can do with me if you want to reach out through my website.

Chris: Well I very much look forward to seeing and hearing your dissertation in the world outside of these small groups of podcast interviewers and academics. So, hopefully one day that's the case if there's any editors or publishers out there who enjoyed what you heard today and want to, want to hear more, please get in touch with me or Christos and we can, we can get that into the world in a good way.

Christos, thank you so much brother. It's been a pleasure and I hope to have you on the pod again soon.

Christos: All right. Thank you.

My guest on this episode is Healani Sonoda-Pale, a Kanaka Maoli Human Rights advocate for Self-Determination and a Water Protector who has been organizing at the intersection of the indigenous struggle for liberation and environmental protection in Hawai'i. She is a member of the Red Hill Community Representation Initiative and the spokesperson of the Ka Lahui Hawaii Political Action Committee. Healani was born and raised on the island of O'ahu where she resides with her family.

Show Notes:

The Beauty of the Pandemic Shutdown in Hawai’i

The Fallout of the Lahaina Fires in West Maui

No Controls

Manufacturing the Authentic

Reopening for Tourism in the Midst of Catastrophe

Local Schism: Those in Favour and Those Against

The Tourism at the Heart of the Housing Crisis

Ka Lahui Hawai'i Political Action Committee

The Water Crisis in Oahu

Decolonizing Tourism is an Oxymoron

Solidarity with Kanaka Maoli

Homework:

Healani Sonoda-Pale Instagram

Ka Lahui Hawai’i | Twitter

Oahu Water Protectors | Red Hill Community Representation Initiative

Transcript:

Chris: [00:00:00] In the first season of the podcast I spoke to Hokulani Aikau and Vernadette Gonzalez about the attempts to decolonize tourism in the Hawaiian islands. And following that Kaleo Patterson. Who offered a deeper historical and cultural background into the ongoing us occupation of Hawaii. The military industrial tourism complex, and some of the traditional forms of hospitality that Hawaiians have engaged in. Since then, and especially because of the wildfires that spread through west Maui this past summer. Listeners have asked again and again, to return to the islands, to host the voices of those. They're now struggling with another catastrophe. Who are offering resilience and resistance. In the face of these enduring consequences. And as such, I welcome.Healani Sonoda-Pale to the pod. Thank you for joining me today, Healani.

Healani: It's my pleasure to be joining this podcast and to help [00:01:00] spread the message about tourism in Hawai'i.

Chris: Healani, could you do us the favor of elaborating a bit on where you're speaking from today and how the world looks like for you?

Healani: Okay. So I'm a Kanaka Maoli woman, born and raised in Hawai'i on the island of O'ahu. I have been in the Hawaiian movement for liberation and self determination for nearly 30 years. I am a student of Dr. Haunani-Kay Trask, and I am on the front lines of many, many issues. The issues that we face today are, many of them are a consequence of tourism.

The desecration of cultural sites. The degradation of our beautiful beaches pollution, traffic, overcrowding, the high cost of living in Hawai'i, the extremely high cost of housing in Hawai'i. These are all because of tourism. This is happening to Hawai'i. [00:02:00] As a result, direct result of the tourist industry, which Hawaii relies on.

And in Hawaii, we have two businesses. We have the military industrial complex and the tourist industry. Those are the two worst industries to rely on, number one. And they are the most exploitive and extractive industries to have. They do not enhance our way of life here on, on these islands in Hawaii.

They do the opposite. They have brought many of us to the brink where we are now, most of us living paycheck to paycheck. The average cost of a house in Hawaii is a million dollars.

I believe Honolulu is the number one or at least the top three most expensive cities in the United States to live in. So tourism is a plague in Hawaii. It is a plague upon this place and it has caused us to [00:03:00] struggle on a daily basis, not just financially and not just socially, mentally as well.

Having to deal with tourists on a daily basis in Hawaii is frustrating, so that's kind of like the space I'm coming from. I am involved with the water issue, protecting our water, which is now something that is a huge issue. I'm very much involved in the Red Hill issue. I'm involved with protecting Iwi Kūpuna, which is our traditional Hawaiian burials. I'm involved with the repatriation of our land. Again, another big issue. It never ends because the, the economic, social pressure to take and take and take until there's nothing left is relentless.

So that's the space we're coming from.

So you talked about COVID, right? You started this podcast in the beginning of COVID and COVID was an eye opener for a lot of people in Hawai'i. When COVID happened, [00:04:00] the state of Hawai'i shut down and tourists weren't allowed here during our shutdown.

I believe it was like a year and a half. It was beautiful. Even though we were living in the middle of a pandemic, our beaches were empty. There were no lines at the stores. There was no traffic. Even the air we breathed seemed cleaner. The water we swam in, in the ocean, didn't have this sliminess on it, from tourists with suntan lotion swimming in it all day, right?

So the fish came back. Even the plants and the land was happy. I mean, it was a beautiful time. Even though it was sad because we were living through a pandemic, it was a beautiful time for us as Kanaka because we got to see Hawai'i without tourists. And that really opened the eyes for people who usually are not as [00:05:00] critical of tourism, as many of us have been so more people in Hawaii started saying, especially Kanaka Mali, well, how do we move forward without tourism?

But when the state opened up again, tourism came back and it came back with a vengeance.

When you look at what was happening on social media and, you know, what people were posting and across all the islands, we saw some frustration. We saw people posting about interactions they were having with tourists at sacred sites and beaches. People were more aware that tourists were there after COVID because we were able to enjoy our beaches, enjoy our islands without them.

And then when they came back, it was not only dangerous because we live 2, 000 miles away from the nearest continent. So, they were bringing in the COVID. I mean, from the time of [00:06:00] Captain Cook, tourists, visitors, explorers, missionaries, they have been bringing in diseases when, when Captain Coke arrived in 1778. We didn't have any immunity to these diseases, and so now, I think for a lot of residents here in Hawai'i, our eyes have been opened on what we have to give up for tourism.

We have to sacrifice not only our beautiful island life, but a way forward that doesn't include commodifying who we are as a people, our culture, everything. The state's been talking about diversifying the industry here in Hawai'i, right? They wanted to look into agriculture was one. They've never seriously taken that up. And they always fall back on tourism.

Chris: And why do you think that is? Because it's just so easy.

Healani: Because they've invested. It's a multi billion dollar business. There's hotels. Waikiki [00:07:00] is loaded with hotels. It's business interests. It's those that have been in control of the tourist industry, wanting to keep control of that and wanting to keep their financial interests protected and keep going.

So that is, that has been a problem. And of course we have strong lobbyists here in Hawai'i for the tourist industry. It is an industry that is supported by taxpayer dollars. It's one of the few industries we give millions of dollars of our money. It's a private industry supported by taxpayer dollars.

So it's a private industry that we support that exploits not just our resources, our culture, but they have really degraded our way of life here. They've made everything so expensive that most of our people, most of the indigenous people of Hawai'i have moved away because they can't afford to live here.

Chris: And you know, I'm curious [00:08:00] in this regard, to what extent do you think that this Government money and government decisions played a part in these wildfires that passed through West Maui in August, you know, like reading and researching for this interview and seeing what's been shared online and social media, the term management and mismanagement continues to arise in and among social movement activists.

And I'm curious to what extent you think that either government action or inaction or the tourism industry had a part to play in what happened this past summer.

Healani: The Lahaina Fires. was so tragic and the tragedy continues months after. The suicide rates are on the rise in Lahaina. Families are still displaced, thousands of them. They were just [00:09:00] a few days ago, I had posted about it. They were just given again, eviction letters. The last time I was in Maui was there.

The first set of eviction letters that went out. So they're being housed in hotels, 7,00-8,000 of them; families that have lost everything, in hotels. And now they're being told to leave to make way for tourism, to make way for tourists. That's the enormity of the pressure that tourists, tourism brings with it. The pressure to a piece and to serve and to put tourism first.

Just going back to my childhood in school. We were basically brainwashed into thinking we need tourism. Without tourism, we wouldn't have jobs. There would be no money, you know? So it's been kind of ingrained in us. And that's why I think COVID was super important because it was an eye opener for a lot of us.

Because they saw really [00:10:00] what was possible, a world without tourism. And so the pressure to support, to push tourism, to... "they always say, we want to support small businesses," but it's really not about small businesses. It's about those huge, multinational corporations that have invested millions.

into this industry and have supported and lobbied for their industry, for the tourist industry. That's what it's really about, to a point where they really don't care about the people, the residents of Lahaina. They're literally traumatizing these families again and pushing them around to make room for an industry that we all pay to support.

And the Lahaina fires is a result of corporations, land grabbing by corporations of [00:11:00] tourism gone wild, literally. The whole culture of Hawaii is about making sure tourism is going to be okay in the future. We're one big resort. That's what we are.

Hawaii is one big resort. Everything is catered for tourists first. It's always tourists first, residents last. And kanaka maoli not even considered, like we're not even in the equation, except when they want us to dance hula, and when they want us to chant, and when they want us to teach tourists how to make leis.

So the whole Lahaina situation is very complicated.

Tragic, and it continues to be tragic. Over a hundred people died in those fires. And Lahaina is like a real big hub for tourists, and has been. It's like the Waikiki of Maui. So having that burned down, I think, was a big loss for the tourist industry on Maui. [00:12:00] So they are trying every which way to bring that back.

In fact, today they're going to unveil the strategic plan for the next few years for Maui, which again, is just a slap in the face. It's insulting to the people of Lahaina. They're actually having it in West Maui. It's insulting to the people of Lahaina to have now a discussion about how to move forward with tourism while they're still displaced. There's thousands of families that don't know where they're going to be next month.

There are thousands more that don't have access to clean water, don't have jobs, that have multiple families living in their homes and they're going to have a big presentation on tourism today. That's what we have to deal with.

There is a mythology that's been built around the tourist industry that basically tells us, you know, [00:13:00] we need tourism. We need tourism. For some reason, we won't be able to survive without tourism. So that's the culture of Hawaii. And that's what I've grown up in.

One of the things that is concerning about tourism is the fact that there's never been an environmental assessment or environmental impact study done on the effects tourism has on Hawaii .There are no controls. There's no control of how many people will be allowed in, how many people will be allowed at a certain beach, how many people will be allowed to swim and hike up to a sacred pond.

There's nothing like that. It's like a free for all here in Hawaii when it comes to tourism.

With tourism comes a thriving sex trade. So we have a number of brothels that, of course, are illegal, here in O'ahu. And a real epidemic with a [00:14:00] high number of missing and murdered Native Hawaiian women and girls. Hmm. This is the average characteristics of a victim of a missing girl is 15 years old native Hawaiian.

And that's you know, that's the reality here in in Hawaii.

So tourism is one of those industries that has a lot of low paying jobs. People have to work two to three, sometimes four jobs to survive here in Hawaii because Hawaii has the highest cost of living and one of the highest in the United States and it's really a struggle to make a living off of the tourist industry.

Once tourism gets a foothold in your community, then it's very difficult to get tourism out. And right now, I'm in the midst of a struggle with keeping tourism out of East Maui.[00:15:00] They're expanding tourism into rural areas because they want to make these real authentic experiences for tourists.

And they want to provide cultural experiences for tourists now. And the last couple years, the Hawaii Tourism Authority has done something called destination management, which is where they give money to non profits to host tourists in these real authentic settings, where they get to work in the taro patch or they get real cultural experience hiking or storytelling or something like that and in exchange these non profits get paid.

The reality of this Destination Management Program that they always give Hawaiian names to -Aloha Aina, Kahu Aina -the reality of these programs [00:16:00] is that they're actually community bribes.

Residents are less tolerant of tourism these days, especially post COVID. And so these programs, like the Destination Management Programs that they're now doing, and have been doing for a couple years are community bribes that help residents swallow the bitter pill of tourism. And that is pretty much how this whole thing kind of plays out.

Whatever financial benefits we get out of tourism, they're short lived and they aren't sustainable. And in fact, they threaten a sustainable and livable future for residents here, especially Kanaka Maoli.

Chris: Do you see any parallels between the quote return of tourism following the COVID-19 lockdowns and later after the fires? Was anything learned by the inundation of [00:17:00] COVID carrying tourists?

Healani: Yeah, so I see parallels between what's happening with tourism post COVID and what's happening with tourism post-Lahaina fires. And what's very clear with the government here, the local government has made very clear is that tourism, no matter the cost, in terms of our health and safety, comes first.

And that has been shown over and over. While, when they opened up tourism, the COVID numbers went up. And because, of course, people are bringing COVID in. And that put the numbers of people in the emergency rooms and in our hospitals that went way up. We don't have the capacity and we still don't have the capacity to serve thousands and thousands of residents and tourists at the same time.

In terms [00:18:00] of medical health care. And so we, you know, we're in a really tight spot for that, you know. So we were really struggling because our hospital and our medical system was overrun.

We had sick tourists and we had sick residents. And when you look at the numbers, it was the Native Hawaiians and the Pacific Islanders who were not just catching COVID more, but also dying from COVID more often than others. And with Lahaina, same thing. Instead of waiting, holding off on reopening Lahaina and Maui for tourists, they opened it up super early.

In fact, they opened it up a month ago, for tourism. They opened up line up for tourism and families are still suffering. Families don't know what's going to happen next month, where they're going to be living next week. There's [00:19:00] thousands of displaced families still in Lahaina, yet the pressure to open up to tourism is so immense that they did it anyway. So what happened with COVID and the Lahaina fires is that they really show that what they're prioritizing.

They're not prioritizing the health and safety of, of the residents, let alone Kanaka Maoli residents. They're prioritizing business interest.

Chris: Mm. Hmm.

Really just showing the true face, the true nature of the industry. Right. And then not in any way surprising why locals, both residents and Kanaka Maoli would be so upset and so angry, not just with the industry, but with tourists as well when they arrive having no understanding of this. Right.

And so my next question kind of centers around locals there, workers, especially. And in this particular article, It says that, "as tourists returned to the [00:20:00] island, displaced residents are still in need of long-term solutions for their future, most notably in terms of long-term affordable housing. Currently. Quote, "a coalition of 28 community groups have staged what's being called a 'fish-in' on Kaanapali beach to help raise awareness of the ongoing impacts of the Malai wildfires. Wearing bright red and yellow shirts, the protesters have pledged to fish along kind of poly beach. An area usually crowded with sunbathers in swimmers, around the clock 24 7, in order to bring awareness to these issues.

And so in terms of strategy and solidarity, How have local people and organizations responded in the context of these last few months.

Healani: Yeah. Many locals work in tourism. So a lot of people in Hawaii felt that the reopening was too fast, too early. There were other ways they could have dealt with. They always use the term 'affordable housing,' they always use that to [00:21:00] develop. Here they use small businesses to justify prioritizing tourism. So, their whole justification for opening up to tourism early, in Lahaina, was to support small businesses.

But there are other solutions. We all know that. They give billions of dollars to Israel and to Ukraine for a war that has nothing to do with us, to other countries who are doing whatever they want with it.

But when it comes to this whole issue of tourism and the displaced families, they could have supported these families and for at least a year supported these small businesses like they did during the pandemic, but they chose not to.

There's other solutions they could've used, but for them, opening it up was more important than making sure families were okay.

So, there is a split between some residents who feel they need tourism and some [00:22:00] who don't. And it's usually, again, business owners who rely on tourists for their livelihood. And like I said before, any kind of benefit we get from tourism is really short lived and the effects of tourism, not just on our environment, but on our society and on our economic system is more detrimental than beneficial.

I'll give you an example tourism fuels people from other places wanting to buy a second home here. Tourists come to Hawaii, they see how beautiful it is, they love the beaches, of course. We have like really good weather on a daily basis. So when they come here to visit, they wanna buy a second home here.

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Right now we have a housing crisis in Hawaii, and the reason for this housing crisis is because we have [00:23:00] tens of thousands of empty homes. In fact, we could put all the houseless people that are in Hawaii right now into these empty homes. And we would still have thousands of homes left over. And that is one of the reasons why number one, we have one of the, like the highest housing costs. The average house right now sells for a million dollars.

It could literally be a shack on a piece of land. It'll sell for a million dollars in Hawaii. It's because of the demand for housing here in Hawaii. And it's because of the fact that a lot of the housing that we do have are usually second homes. And lots of times they use it for short term housing rentals as well.

And I just want to clarify the numbers for the short term housing rentals. There's about 30, 000 residential housing units that are being rented to tourists, instead of residents, instead of locals, instead [00:24:00] of Kanaka Maoli, so that's part of the problem here. We don't have a housing shortage.

We have a shortage of housing rentals or landlords that want to rent to residents.

So, what we gain from tourism doesn't even come close to what we are losing from tourism, from the tourist industry.

Chris: Uh, Wow. . It's just a. It's incredible. How so much of this, this desire to vacation, escape, have fun, rest, make money "passive income" lead so much to the detriment of neighbors, of what might otherwise be neighbors in our midst. And I know that, I think I've read the other day that there's this group Lahaina Strong, that was asking for government intervention. Is that right?

Healani: Yeah. So they've asked. Yeah, that's a, that's a good point. [00:25:00] Lahaina Strong, one of the lead groups in Lahaina, have asked for the mayor and the governor to intervene and to ask short term housing rental owners to provide long term housing solutions for those, the displaced families. And that hasn't happened yet.

It's been months. It's been September, October, November, over three months. And these families, their future is still up in the air. They don't even have reliable housing. So again, it just tells you what the priorities of the state is. Honestly, I don't think they're going to get what they want.

Chris: Thank you, Healani and for being a witness to all this and proceeding accordingly. I'd like to, if I can ask you a little bit more about your political work. If I'm not mistaken you're a spokesperson for

Ka Lahui Hawai'i Political Action Committee. Could you explain a little bit about [00:26:00] this organization? What the name means, how it was formed its principles, goals, and actions, perhaps.

Healani: Okay, so yes, I am the spokesperson for Ka Lahui Hawai'i, and I am part of the Komike Kalai'aina Political Action Committee, which is a national committee of Ka Lahui Hawai'i, which means the Hawaiian Nation.

We are a native initiative for self determination and self governance. We were formed in 1987 by Kanaka Maoli, Indigenous Peoples of Hawaii, as a response to the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and as a way forward for our people to seek out justice and to create our own way forward by creating our own nation.

I have been with Kalahui Hawaii since 1993. And I [00:27:00] joined after watching Dr. Haulani-Kay Trask do her speech on the grounds of Iolani Palace, where she proclaimed that we are not American. And that was an eye opener to me. And I joined Ka Lahui and I transferred to the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, became her student.

A lot of the work that we've done has been nation building. We are a nation in exile, literally. We take stances on issues a lot of times. And the issues we've been doing has been from water issues to intellectual property rights, to land rights, to tourism. The issues we cover is literally anything that affects us as a, as a people and as a nation. So we cover a wide [00:28:00] spread of issues.

Most recently it's been the water issue that we've been really focused on. And when you look at the water issue, again, you see the disparity there. We are in a water crisis on the island of Oahu. We are encouraged to practice conservation measures. However, the tourist industry, hotels with pools and fountains and large golf courses, which have to be watered daily, are not being told the same thing. They are the exception. They continue to waste water while on O ahu are concerned about the future.

Of our children and grandchildren because we're not sure if number one, there will be clean water and number two, if there is clean water, there'll be enough clean water for everyone in the future, but the hotels in the tourist industry, they don't care. They have swimming pools and[00:29:00] golf courses.

Tourists are not told to come here and conserve water. You know, in fact, they waste water in the tourist industry and you can see it. Are you seeing how they waste it? It's pretty visual and obvious.

So Ka Lahui Hawaii has been active On the front lines with Mauna Kea issue, and we have treaties with other Native American nations. We've gone to the U. N., our past Keaāina, our governor, Merilani Trask helped to draft UNDRIP, which is the U. N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is one of the most important documents that have come out from the U. N. for Indigenous Peoples and has reasserted all of our rights to self determination.

There's about 400 million indigenous peoples around the world, and UNDRIP [00:30:00] is important to every single one of us.

Chris: Well, thank you for, for that and the work that you do with Ka Lahui, Healani. I'll make sure that the requisite websites and links are up on the homework section and the end of tourism podcasts for our listeners. Now, in my interview withHokulani Aikau and Vernadette Gonzalez, they spoke of various projects within the tourism sector, undertaken by indigenous Hawaiians to uncover and share with tourists or visitors, the histories of the people and place so often ignored by the industry. Now in order to do this, to educate, many people work within the confines of the structures and the systems we already have, that is to decolonize tourism, for example. Now if we weren't limited by those current structures and systems. How would you personally want to proceed hosting the other, the foreigner? How would you want them [00:31:00] to proceed towards you and your people? How might you imagine such relationship to unfold?

Healani: Yeah. Yeah. Decolonize tourism. That's an oxymoron. I don't believe in decolonizing tourism. The nature of tourism, it's like colonization. The nature of tourism is to exploit, is to extract everything it can from a place and from a people and it commodifies, things that to us are spiritual, to us are sacred, tourism commodifies it all. To decolonize something that was not created from indigenous peoples is impossible.

We can decolonize our world. But we cannot decolonize systems of [00:32:00] oppression because they're set up to oppress us. And so that is, I don't know what to say. It's like I said before. You know, they keep changing the name, you know, Hawai'i Tourism Authority even though they have leadership that is Kanaka and they're trying to be culturally sensitive and they are doing, you know, destination management practices kind of thing and working with nonprofits and cultural groups.

It's still tourism. It's still a business that wants to benefit from our land, from our water, from our culture, from our people. And when we talk about decolonization, when we talk about working against systems of oppression, it's really about us rebuilding our own systems that counter their systems.

So it's all systemic, right? It's like a system of power that benefits one group [00:33:00] over the other. It stems from colonization, which is a system of power that is working against us. So to counter that, we have to create our own systems. We actually have to reconnect and recreate our old systems. So Franz Fanon talks about this. When colonization happens, what they do is they compartmentalize our world.

So, you know, where we see the world as living, as where we see ourselves as part of nature, and part of this living system where there's balance. We give and take from the land. We take care of the land, the land takes care of us. In our cosmogonic genealogies as Kanaka, it tells us basically our universal perspective on all life, which is basically we are related to all the animals and plants and to the islands itself, because what it does is it recites the birth of every [00:34:00] living thing in Hawaii that was here during the time we were here, before Captain Cook arrived, but it connects us to this world and it tells us our place in it. And when colonization came, what they did was they ripped our world apart.

And they separated us from nature. They separated us from our ancient beliefs. They separated us even from our belief in ourself. And many Native people, I'm sure can relate to this, but it's like living in two worlds. We live in a Hawaiian world, and we live in the Western world. We act a certain way in the Western world because of the way it's organized. And in our world, it's different. So, it's important to understand that we cannot infiltrate a system. Without the system infiltrating us. We're going to change before the system changes because these systems have been in place [00:35:00] for centuries.

So I don't even want to answer the question about hosting foreigners or others because that's not even something that's on my radar. I don't imagine tourism in my future or in the future of our Lāhui, or in the future of our people. Kalahui, Hawai'i has taken stances against tourists and tourism. It's not worth what we have to give up to host foreigners. And I could go on for hours with stories of our people, putting themselves at risk, saving tourists in the ocean, and not even getting a word of thanks. Having tourists pee on our sacred sites, having tourists throw rubbish on our beaches. It never ends.

So I think it's cute that they want to decolonize tourism. It's a multi billion dollar business. You cannot decolonize tourism unless you take [00:36:00] the aspect of capitalism out of it. It's like decolonizing money. How are you going to do that?

It's like you need to build systems where you can sustain yourself and your people outside of these capitalist and outside of these corporate systems of power.

Healani: Yeah, so what I would want to say to those who want to stand in solidarity with Kanaka Maoli, with the Native people of Hawai'i, I would say stay home. Help us spread the message that we do not want or need visitors to come to our islands. As the Native people of Hawai'i we're building our own food systems, we're bartering. We're trying to move forward as a people away from these other systems, away from tourism, away and out from under military occupation.

It's a struggle that we're in. I think for those that are listening, it's important for you to[00:37:00] spread the word about the struggle that Native Hawaiians are going through in our own homeland and our struggle for liberation and to support us in whatever way you can. So I think it's important to support us from afar, I would say.

And if you're here anyway, like if you end up coming anyway, then support. Don't just come here. Give back. Help out a Hawaiian organization. Help out a Hawaiian on the street. 40 percent of all houseless in Hawaii are Indigenous Hawaiians. And we only make up 20 percent of the population in our own homeland. 50 percent of the population in Hawaii's prisons and jails are Hawaiians.

We have low educational attainment. We die from diseases that other people usually don't die from. We have probably the highest suicide rates in Hawaii. High infant mortality rates. So this isn't our paradise. But we have to make it a paradise for tourists. And that's something we can't continue to do.

The reality of the [00:38:00] situation is that it's destroying our future right now. And you look at what happened to Lahaina, and that's all because of unsustainable development, high cost of living, corporations running amok, diverting the rivers, water being diverted to hotels and golf courses, instead of letting water just flow freely from the ocean, from the mountains to the sea.

So that's what we're dealing with, and if you are thinking about coming to Hawaii, please, please think again and just support a Hawaiian organization in their struggle to reclaim what we lost.

We did something around tourism. It's a survey that we gave to tourists who are here anyway, right? So that is our pledge for tourists if they are gonna come here. And we've had it out for a few years. We've tried to get like the airlines to push it out and stuff like that to raise awareness. Now they're doing more of that, which is good. [00:39:00] And I appreciate that. But ultimately, we don't want people to come here.

Healani: That would be the end goal because Hawai'ians are displaced on our own land.

This is our mutual aid that we set up to help families of Red Hill who still don't have clean drinking water, which is nuts. And this is two years after, right? So if they want to help with that, we appreciate that.

Chris: I'll make sure that our listeners have all of those available to them when the episode launches.

Healani: Because we're basically providing services to the residents, but Yeah, that's pretty much it. I can't believe people think they can decolonize tourism. It's freaking nuts.

Chris: Yeah. I keep coming back to this notion that, you know, [00:40:00] part of colonization of our minds and the wars against us tend to stem from a war against the imagination and a war against us being able to imagine other worlds and just things completely differently. And I also think that when people don't have examples to follow of what that might be like to, to imagine things differently, and then also to not have the time to do that.

You know, people tend to fall back on kind of simple alternatives, I guess.

Healani: I think it could be useful for a little while, but it's like, we've got to work towards not sustaining it, but dismantling it, somehow getting rid of it.

I mean, look at what everything that's happened to Hawaii, COVID, Lahaina fires. Our wildfires are like happening more and more. We have more on this island now than we've had before. It's just a matter of time before we have our own huge fire that's going to be devastating on this island.

Chris: [00:41:00] I'm very grateful for your time, and I can tell very clearly that you're one of those people that's offering an example for younger people on how things might be different. So, I'd like to thank you for your time, your consideration. And I'll make sure, as I said, that all of these links are up on the End of Tourism website when the episode launches and and on social media as well.

Healani: Awesome. Thank you so much. You have a good day.

On this episode, my guests are ClementineMorrigan.com and Jay Lesoleil of the F*****g Cancelled Podcast.

Clementine Morrigan is a writer and public intellectual based in Montréal, Canada. She writes popular and controversial essays about culture, politics, ethics, relationships, sexuality, and trauma. A passionate believer in independent media, she’s been making zines since the year 2000 and is the author of several books. She’s known for her iconic white-text-on-a-black-background mini-essays on Instagram. One of the leading voices on the Canadian Left and one half of the F*****g Cancelled podcast, Clementine is an outspoken critic of cancel culture and a proponent of building solidarity across difference. She is a socialist, a feminist, and a vegan for the animals and the earth.

Jay is a writer, artist and designer from Montreal and is the author of the Substack jaylesoleil.com and the zine series What Else Is There to Live For. Jay is also the co-host of F*****g Cancelled.

Show Notes:

Clementine & Jay’s Travels

The Nexus

Identitarianism and Identity Politics

Gentrification & Solidarity

How Nationalism Leaks into the Left

The Contradictions of Identitarianism

Freedom, Limits and Guesthood

Borders and Biomes

The Quest for Offline Communities

Radical & Reciprocal Hospitality

Authenticity

Homework:

Clementine’s Substack

Jay’s Substack (including Dumplings & Domination)

Clementine’s Shop

Jay’s Store

F*****g Cancelled Shop

F*****g Cancelled Podcast

Transcript

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the pod, Clementine and Jay. It's an honor to have you both here today. Each of your work both individually and together has been a great influence on mine and definitely eye-opening and if I can say so much needed in our time. So thank you for joining me.

Jay: Thank you, man. Thanks for having us.

Clementine: Thanks for having us.

Chris: So, I'd like to start, if we can, by asking you both where you find yourselves today and what the world looks like for you through each of your eyes.

Jay: Well, we both find ourselves in Montreal which is where we live. I was working in homeless shelters for years and then I got let go cause I tried to unionize the one I was working at. Actually I succeeded in unionizing the one I was working at. And they mysteriously did not have any money to renew my contract after that.

And yeah, so I'm writing and I just launched a new solo podcast about like world history outside of the West. And so I've been working on that. It's called [00:01:00] dumplings and domination, which are two things that human beings love. And Yeah, so that's, that's what I'm up to.

Clementine: Yeah, so I'm also, yeah, I find myself in Montreal, in the snow, and I guess, relevant to the topics of this podcast one of the things I'm grappling with now is my perpetual existence as a unilingual anglophone in the city of Montreal, which is a bilingual city, but it's a French city, like.

Actually. And I'm planning on having a child and I'm planning to have this child here. And so I'm facing the dilemma of being like an English speaker whose child is not going to just be an English speaker. And so I really need to learn French, basically. So this is my struggle, because being 37 and only speaking one language my entire life, it's like super hard to learn another language.

And I've really, really struggled. A couple times I've made an attempt to learn French, and it's like really [00:02:00] frustrating, but that is one of the things I'm grappling with. I feel like it's relevant to the podcast, because in many ways, even though I've lived in Montreal for like almost seven years, there's a way in which I still am kind of like a tourist here, because I haven't learned the language.

So, will I complete my transition into becoming Quebecois?

Chris: Yeah, maybe so.

Jay: Only time will tell.

Chris: I was just reading this biography of Ivan Illich, who's like was an Austrian philosopher and he said that like trying to learn a new language, especially if you're immersed in the place is the greatest measure or degree of poverty that one can undertake because of the degree of dependence that they have on other people and not just dependence, but like dependence on their hospitality, assuming it exists in order to, you know, be able to understand what you're saying and communicate in that way.

Clementine: Like Montreal is interesting because at least in the neighborhood that I live and in many places in [00:03:00] Montreal, it's functionally bilingual. So it's not like learning in an immersive environment as if you went somewhere and everybody's speaking that language.

So you kind of just have to or you won't be able to communicate. Like you have to learn here. You know, when I'm fumbling around trying to speak French, people just start speaking English to me because even if they're a francophone, like, at least in the neighborhoods where I live, most people are bilingual, and they speak better English than I do French, so they will accommodate me, which is polite of them, and also, It does not help me learn, you know?

Jay: Whereas the government of Quebec will not accommodate you.

Clementine: No, the government will not accommodate you at all. And so, like, it's only in circumstances where, like, I desperately need to understand where, like, there's no, there's absolutely no accommodation. So.

Chris: And that kind of touches on my next question, which is, you know, in terms of the travels that you two have.

Has there been that degree of poverty elsewhere? I mean, I imagine you might have traveled to other places maybe in Canada, maybe elsewhere. [00:04:00] What have your travels taught you each, if anything, about the world, about your lives, about culture?

Jay: Yeah. I had kind of an unusual relationship with travel.

Because as a kid, I moved to a different country every like three or four years cause of my parents work. And so, yeah, I grew up like in Asia and not just like dipping into a place and then like leaving right away but spending years of my life in each country. Right. And like learning the languages and stuff.

And so, yeah, I think that was a quite an unusual way to kind of experience travel as a kid. And I think that it did definitely have a lot of impact on me. Because I think that travel in general, I think is a wonderful and amazing thing, you know, which is why people like to do it. And it can be really profound for your mind and your understanding of the world and of other people, you know but obviously there's travel and then there's [00:05:00] travel.

I feel really grateful that I was able to see so much of the world by living there, you know and I think that it was really important for me in my kind of embodied understanding that other people and other parts of the world are, you know, just as real and just as important and just as embedded in history as I am and as like the people are in my passport country, which happens to be Canada, you know?

Clementine: Yeah. I've traveled a little bit, but I think for me, like, When I was young, I was too crazy to travel, you know, and I truly mean that, like I have complex PTSD and like as much as my life was so chaotic and like really, like, you know, on F*****g Cancelled, Jay and I talk about how we're both alcoholics in recovery, like, When I was drinking, I always wanted to be someone who traveled, and my life was very, like, chaotic and full of violence and danger and all those types of things, but the PTSD made it really hard to do [00:06:00] anything because I was always scared, you know and being a woman traveling... like, in recovery, I've wanted to try to travel more, but the combination of one being a woman traveling alone, it does come with certain risks to it.

You're more vulnerable in certain ways and then add that to the PTSD. It's like... it's super anxiety producing, you know, so it's something that I've done a little bit but not as much as I would have liked to and I guess we'll see like what the future holds with that. One thing is is that like I learned to drive pretty late.

I learned to drive in my 30s and once I learned to drive going on road trips was actually a way that really opened up travel for me because having my car with me gave me this sense of like safety, basically, that I could leave a situation like I was there with my car. So I had like the independence to like not be dependent on like strangers because I was afraid of them basically.

But we went on a podcast tour last [00:07:00] year and drove like all across the United States in like a month and like drove down to like Arizona and like back up the West coast. And like, that was really, really cool.

Chris: Beautiful. Thank you both. And so, you know, it might seem a little strange for you two to be invited on a podcast about tourism, migration, hospitality given that, you know, perhaps on the surface of things, your work doesn't appear to center around such things, but I've asked you both to speak with me today, in part, because I see a lot of parallels between what you've both referred to as the nexus in your work and what I refer to as the, a touristic worldview. And so to start, I'm wondering if you two could explain for our listeners, what the nexus is and its three main pillars.

Clementine: So, in shorthand, or in, like, common language, you might call it social justice culture. There's a lot of different ways that this culture has been talked about but it's a particular [00:08:00] way of doing politics on the left, or left of center. And. Like, Jay and I come from inside this culture, so we are coming from inside social justice culture, being, like, leftists and being queer people and having existed in, like, progressive social justicey spaces for our entire adult lives, basically.

And basically, we're noticing that there wasn't really language to talk about some of the phenomenons that were happening inside social justice culture or even, you know, social justice culture itself doesn't really give itself a name. Like we can call it social justice culture or we could call it something else, but it doesn't really have a name that it like claims for itself.

It basically describes itself as like just doing politics or like being morally correct, you know, right? Yeah, being right. So we just started using the nexus as kind of like a placeholder for talking about a phenomenon that like doesn't really have a name. And we were trying to describe like this social phenomenon that we were totally [00:09:00] immersed in that there wasn't really language to describe.

And we pulled out like three components that we saw interacting with each other to produce this phenomenon that we were calling the Nexus. And those pillars or components would be cancel culture, social media, and identitarianism. So, you maybe want to say more.

Jay: Yeah, and we were just noticing how like when those three components were interacting on the left, you know they were producing a kind of like fourth thing that we were calling the Nexus and it's just like cancel culture was kind of this, you know, this culture of disposability and very sort of like intense acrimony functioned to sort of like boundary the whole thing and to keep, you know, certain views out and keep certain views in and sort of like establish the boundaries of what was thinkable or not.

And the identitarianism provided the sort of ideological underpinning of the whole thing, like a way of making sense of the world, a [00:10:00] way of thinking about any problem and any issue, you know? And then social media was kind of the medium in which it was all taking place. And that was providing a lot of the kind of like the scaffolding of what it ended up looking like.

Yeah. Does that make sense?

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you both. And so I like to start then if I can with with identitarianism and you know as it pertains to, I guess, the end of tourism podcast and the way I've come to understand it is that to be a tourist isn't just to be a foreigner, but a stranger to the place one inhabits.

And so in this sense, I feel that people can be tourists in their own homes and to a large degree the housing crisis, among many others seems to enable and ennoble this, you know, people know that they won't be able to afford a rent increase. And so they don't bother getting to know their neighbors or participating in the community.

And beyond that community is often described in demographic terms, you know, the black community, the queer community, et cetera. But rarely [00:11:00] anymore in terms of the diverse people that you actually live beside or near. And so, for me, this is where tourism not only hits home, but is kind of unveiled as maybe beginning at home.

You know, it's not just an industry, but something akin to a lifestyle or culture, as you said, Jay, of disposability. And so in this context, what I understand is identitarianism seems to enable this kind of touristic mentality of not needing to think of myself as a person of consequence in my building or in my neighborhood because I'll be out of here in another year or two anyway, right?

And so I'm curious what you think of this idea and whether you think that identitarianism is a consequence of these crises that exist today, like the housing crisis, like landlordism, for example.

Jay: Yeah, I definitely think it's all connected.

And I think that I think that a huge part of all of this, right, is accelerating alienation that people are experiencing under the [00:12:00] dominant form of neoliberal capitalism. And alienation just describes this deep embodied sense of disconnection from oneself, from one's work and from one's fellows.

And this is a concept that goes all the way back to Marx and before him even, you know, but Marx, I think correctly identified that capitalism had a mechanism within it that amplified this, this sense and created more of it. And I think that as we hurdle down the path of neoliberal apocalypse, we're sort of like more and more exposed to the sense of alienation.

And so what does that mean? It means that we end up feeling like we don't know who we are. We don't know where we are. We don't know who the people around us are. We're just sort of floating, we're atomized, you know. We don't have roots or the connections that we do have feel fleeting and shallow.

You know, and it produces obviously a deep sense of like misery in a lot of people, [00:13:00] whether they know it or not, I would say. But it also produces a longing for connections that feel real and that feel authentic. And I think that the turn towards identitarianism that has become more and more apparent over the last like decade or so both on the left and the right because I think that the rise of like the alt right, for example, was very much an identitarian movement as well. Yeah, it's that, that pivot towards identitarianism is a consequence of people feeling like they have no connections and they really want connections. They want to feel embedded in something, you know and so they're looking for other forms of community that they can belong to other than the communities that they actually live in, you know, because those communities that they actually live in have started to feel so disconnected and illusory, right?

I do have more to say about the concept of like authenticity and all of this, which I think is like really foundational to tourism. But I will pass the mic. Well, I feel like we're probably going to get [00:14:00] into it later.

Clementine: Okay. Well, yeah. So I mean, I think when talking about identitarianism, it's useful to make the distinction between identitarianism and identity politics.

And we make that distinction on the podcast, but in case listeners aren't really familiar with the term identitarianism, I think it's useful for us to be a little bit clear about what we mean. And basically, identitarianism is distinct from identity politics. So, identity politics is just basically saying that identity matters when we're thinking about what is affecting people's lives, right?

And when we're organizing politics, when we're trying to think of solutions where we can make the world better, identity is going to play a role. And that just means we're acknowledging that things like racism exists, homophobia exists, like, sexism exists, that the ways that our lives are shaped are impacted by identity.

And like, we agree with that, we're not against that, as a framework. But identitarianism takes identity politics to a new place, where it basically does two main things to it. One, it [00:15:00] acts as if identity groups are homogenous, or share, like, very intense essential qualities, you know? So, when you make a statement, like, the BIPOC community thinks this.

You're being identitarian and you're also being essentialist because you're actually making a statement in which you're saying that billions of people share a view, which is incorrect and also, like, very disrespectful to the vast diversity of thought that exists within any identity group, right? So it's actually like, it's an expression of essentialism and this belief that, like identity groups share essential qualities.

And it erases, like, the vast political differences and personal differences that don't exist always within any identity group. And then secondly, Identitarianism acts as if identity is the primary or only way that power functions. So when we're trying to understand, like, what is wrong with the world, and what is going on, and why are we all suffering?

Identitarianism [00:16:00] encourages us to look first, and maybe only, at identity as the way in which power is divided and organized. And so, in this way, you know, we have people, like basically collecting identity points. And what I mean by that is, like, adding up their various identities to try to understand their lives and their access to power.

So people will be like, okay, I have these identities that are considered marginalized identities, and then I have these identities that are considered privileged identities. And so if I do some math, I'll be able to figure out where I stand in terms of power, right? And this is a total oversimplification of the way that power works.

Identity is probably impacting your life in various ways. and may have a role in like your access to power, but it is not the only thing, and it's not as simple as just adding and subtracting to try to figure this out, and many, many things are lost when we are only using identity as the way to understand power, and so like when you're talking about, I just want to say that like that what you said [00:17:00] about people moving, I think is really fascinating because I moved like every year or two years.

My entire, like actually I kind of haven't stopped because I've only lived where I currently live for like just about two years. So, I've basically been doing that since I was 16. I'm 37. Wow.

Chris: Wow. Wow.

Clementine: You know, and like, I don't mean cities, but I mean neighborhoods and at least apartments, you know, and actually my current neighborhood I've lived in probably the longest that I've ever lived anywhere but I've still moved several times and I've managed to stay in the same neighborhood, but like over the course of my teenage years, all my entire twenties and into my thirties, like, I was just constantly moving.

And, you know, I, I had a sense of place in terms of the city I lived in. Like, I was living in Toronto for most of for my twenties. But I lived all over that f*****g city. Like, all over that city. You know, I didn't live in any particular neighborhood. And so because of that, like, I didn't really have that sense of like place and like there wasn't really a point in knowing my neighbors because it's true. I was going to [00:18:00] be moving and I knew that and so that is like a material reality that is being structured by capitalism and by landlords and rent and not having enough money and not having housing security.

And identitarianism isn't really helping me to understand that, right? Like I can't really make sense of that experience if my only lens that I'm looking at the situation with is identity. And that's just like one example, but there's many, many things that, identity as if it's our only frame is not going to help us to understand.

Jay: Or like it, it might help you feel like you understand it, but it's probably not going to give you a very good explanation, you know clear picture. Yeah, it's like there's this word that I stumbled across recently. I think it's like "monocausotaxophilia" I'm pretty sure is what it is and it's like the it's like the obsessive belief that like one there's like one answer for everything or like one thing can help you explain everything and it's it's like a common like logical fallacy that humans fall into, where like we just we discover something that really seems like it's right and then we're [00:19:00] like this can explain everything we can just apply this to everything, you know, and I think that identitarianism is like a an excellent example of this tendency that humans have

Chris: Yeah.

Wow. Kind of monotheism for politics, I guess. It's fascinating for me because I see a lot of these identitarianist dynamics play out in the context of tourist cities and the one that I lived in, still live around, just not in anymore.

And then of course the people that I interview who deal with over tourism and of course all the crises that come with it. And so You know, like in the early pandemic, for example, in places like Oaxaca or Medellin in Colombia, for example, they suddenly became hotspots for digital nomads and other tourist escapees.

And the consequences of over tourism in these places already existed, but once travel restrictions had [00:20:00] dropped and vaccines were doled out, places like this, and maybe the more obvious ones like Bali or Hawaii or Barcelona those consequences exploded and, you know, the number of visitors skyrocketed.

And so both local people and foreigners opened Airbnb after Airbnb, and this is kind of what ended up happening in a lot of places in the, in the course of, you know, a couple of years essentially deepening the economic and social divisions in those places. And so what we've seen is that people simply tend to point their finger at the tourists, at the foreigner, ignoring the economic and political issues that affect these things.

And so, what's arisen on the internet at least have been faceless social media accounts basically cancelling tourists or foreigners for you know anything you can think of for being cheap, people complaining about prices on their YouTube video or whatever, and others criticizing local cultures for X Y Z Zed pardon me and some Some who [00:21:00] refuse to, like, to speak the local language, for example, all of which, you know, constitutes bad behavior.

And even still, like, other people, foreigners who become landlords in their new homes, right, who move to another country and just, you know, rent a nice place and then put it on Airbnb or something. And so, I'm curious about the individual? And why do you think, in so many of these cases, especially in regards to people who claim to be leftists or anarchists or radicals, that the focus is squarely put on individuals or individual behavior as opposed to the conditions or systems that created that behavior?

Jay: Oh yeah, I mean, we've become like ludicrously unable to actually look at structural causes of anything in a way that allows us to formulate policy and work towards policy. Like, I think that like one of the major like failings of the left currently is that it is, especially in like the Anglo world, like completely f*****g unmoored from policy.

I think in the US there's like a really [00:22:00] obvious reason for that, which is that there is, you know, no political party that's even remotely. So the idea that you could, that you could have policy that you like is sort of like nonsense to people in the first place. Right.

So everything then becomes about either it would become either about individual behavior or about some sort of like more radical revolutionary option, you know but the radical revolutionary option doesn't exist. So it's all about the individual behavior. And a comparable situation is going on elsewhere in the Anglosphere as well where the sort of like political avenues for policymaking are severely lacking.

So I think that there's this like strong, strong emphasis on the individual, on individual behavior, on moralizing on sort of angrily saying what should be true rather than working with like, you know, like reality. Yeah.

Clementine: Yeah, I think that people, like, we haven't seen an effective left in our lifetime, like, you know, like we haven't seen the left making gains, like, for [00:23:00] millennials, like basically for our entire lives, you know?

We haven't seen movements be successful, and so we feel very powerless. Like, there's a deep, deep sense of powerlessness in the face of capitalism and in the face of climate change and in the face of so many of the horrible conditions that we're living under, and we don't have a lot of evidence of things working, but we know we have the power to take down some individual person and publicly humiliate them and destroy their life.

And so I think people get very addicted to that sense of power because it is like a balm to the abject helplessness that we feel under capitalism where we don't have a lot of power to really make the changes that we want to make, you know, but one of the things we're always talking about on the podcast is how cancel culture, while it provides this like temporary relief and this feeling like we're doing something like we have power.

In fact, it erodes the very conditions that would allow us to have real power and the conditions that would allow us to have real power are solidarity. Right. Like, the one thing that the working class of the world [00:24:00] has that the capitalists don't is our numbers, right?

Like, they have all the money and the use of force, you know? But we, there's just lots of us, and also we are the ones who make all their s**t. Like, or like, run their little online companies or whatever it is that they're doing now. Yeah, exactly. So, it's like literally the workers of the world are the ones who actually make capitalism run and there are no profits if the workers of the world organized and f*****g withdrew their labor, right?

But currently, we don't have any conditions of like an organized working class movement that could actually threaten to do something like that. And so, there's no real avenue. Like unions have been like totally f*****g eroded there's no solidarity.

There's no, like Workers movement that is being effective. I mean there are attempts at it like there was I don't know what happened with it because I'm off social media now, and I haven't been checking the news, but there was a gigantic like uprising of Bangladeshi textile workers who were like going on strike and like the police were trying to totally shut them down.

I don't know what ended up happening kind of disappeared off my radar, but I think any movement for solidarity, you [00:25:00] know, cancel culture b******t aside, because honestly, it is such a distraction. Like it's annoying and it's a distraction would have to move towards like international solidarity.

And I think that this is something that... we don't even have, like, solidarity, like, where we live, let alone solidarity, like, across the globe with workers in different places, you know? But under global capitalism, I think we're going to have to start looking with an internationalist lens and thinking about what would it look like to have the workers of the world actually uniting.

Jay: Yeah. It reminds me of gentrification, you know? It's like, individual gentrifiers are sure like annoying, right? You know, people who sort of like don't belong there and are bringing their like annoying habits into the neighborhood or whatever, you know, and driving up prices and all this.

But at the end of the day, this is like a structural issue that can only be solved by policy, right? You can't, you can't just sort of like be hostile towards gentrifiers and expect that to sort of like end up with anything other than you being angry and other people perhaps being frightened for like a couple of years until the [00:26:00] process of gentrification is complete.

And I think that you know, there's like a similar thing with tourism, you know, I mean, tourism is just kind of like gentrification on like a, an international scale in a certain sense. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I mean here in Oaxaca, tourism is like 85 90 percent of the economy in the center of the city. And so it's all changing really quickly, wherein, people are sometimes hearing more English than Spanish in the streets, right? Not just in Oaxaca, but in other places as well. So there's this relative and understandable kind of resentment against the foreigner, but then when we have these gatherings and, you know, people ask me, well, like, "what should we do?" And I say, "well, go talk to the tourist, like, you can build solidarity with that person, even if it's by them understanding what's going on here, and maybe not coming back. As an extreme example, right.

But what's also happened as a result, not just this waving or wagging the finger at the individual, but also in the context of identitarianism, reconvening the nation state.[00:27:00]

And so my next question.. It kind of feeds off of the first and has to do with the effects or consequences of this kind of pseudo cancel culture that arises from tourism crises in places like Oaxaca and others. And so what you tend to see are locals identifying tourists or foreigners based on skin color.

In Latin America, you know, the tourist is by and large the gringo, or the gringa, basically a white American. And what's happening as a result, especially among people who consider themselves, again, leftist or anarchist, is that they end up self identifying in opposition to the foreigner. And so what we see is an over identification, or what I will call anyways an over identification, with one's own skin color, class, and especially, especially now, nationality.

And so, understanding the other as American means I'm Mexican or Colombian, or whatever, right? And I'm curious whether or not either of you consider [00:28:00] identitarianism to be a child of nationalism or how nationalism fits into these contemporary understandings of identitarianism.

Jay: Right, right. Well, okay, I definitely have some thoughts about that for sure. I would say that like, nationalism is certainly one of the kind of original modern identities, right?

And it was very much like crafted on purpose to be that, which I think that a lot of people don't know, unless they've like, you know, done like a sociology degree or something, but nationalism and the nation itself was like a modern invention created a couple of hundred years ago for specific political purposes, namely to unite quite disparate populations within at that time, mainly like European countries and to try to get the children of those people to think of themselves as like French instead of Breton, you know and to get them to speak French instead of Breton, right? As an example.

And there is similar cases all over Europe. Anyways, that being aside, yes, like [00:29:00] nationalism certainly is like a form of identity and one of the most important forms of modern identity. I think that when we talk about identitarianism, often we end up not talking about nationalism very much because on the left, nationalism tends to be sort of like not the most important identity.

It's one that you kind of downplay, especially if your nationality is one of the privileged Western rich nationalities, right? However, obviously if your nationality might you know get you points in, in whatever sort of like game you're playing, then you might, you might play it up.

Clementine: Yeah, I have a couple things to say about this. I mean, one, the nexus or social justice culture, that we talk about on F*****g Cancelled, comes out of the United States of America. And the United States of America, they don't know that they're in the United States of America. So,

Jay: This might be surprising to people because of the number of flags that are everywhere in America, but they don't know that they're in america.

Clementine: They think they're just in the world. They think that that is the world, you know? And so, [00:30:00] there is this like, this lack of awareness or like basically they're not contextualizing what they're thinking and doing in an American context, even though it is, and then they're exporting that to the rest of the world, especially like English speaking places.

But then it like leaks out from there. But it is an American way of understanding things based in an American context and an American history, right? And so you see this a lot with identitarianism where the popular framings and understandings around race, for example, that are going around social justice culture right now are specifically coming out of an American context and American constructions around race, and they don't map on perfectly to other contexts, but because it's being exported, because Americans are exporting their culture all over the world, we, in other places, are expected to just take it on and to start using that framework. And people do, but it doesn't really work properly. It doesn't really make sense in a different context.

So that is a way in which like nation kind of disappears even though it is operating [00:31:00] in the way that identity is actually being shaped.

Another thing that happens, and Jay and I were just talking about this for an upcoming episode. Another thing that happens is that because in North America anyway, like we don't really use nation as a category in identitarian thought, what ends up happening is that people actually racialize their national identity in a weird way to make it make sense in identitarianism. And so one of the ways that this can happen is that people from South America who are white, in a Northern American context, are sometimes racialized and considered people of color because they are not speaking like English as a first language, for example, or because there's cultural markers that are showing them as not North American, and so therefore they are impacted by various types of discrimination and so on and so forth, but in their context, they are actually racialized as white, but then in North [00:32:00] America, they may be racialized as non-white. And so this actually comes through like a I mean, first of all, it shows that race is like a made up category that can shift and be expressed in different ways.

But also it is partially like the narcissism of North America that can't conceptualize difference, basically, and understand that, like, a person can actually be white and from South America and speak Spanish, for example.

Jay: Which, like, this can also sometimes, we were joking about this, too, because it's true, like, this can also sometimes extend to people not being sure about, for example, like Portuguese people, and sort of like racializing Portuguese people on the basis of their sort of supposed affinity with like Latin America.

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Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know, one thing that I want to mention too, you're just reminding me of this because of my research that you, that you mentioned is that like racialism, which is the idea that race is important and, and as a major identity category that people should care about a lot, let's put it that way, has often existed very [00:33:00] uneasily with nationalism.

And so for a lot of like neo Nazis, they're not necessarily like opposed to nationalism, but they would, they would treat racial affinity with much more importance than they would a national affinity, especially when the national affinity is seen to have been kind of polluted by like foreign elements, for example, you know, and a big part of the national project has been to say that, like, we are all members of this national identity, sort of like, no matter who we are, blah, blah, blah. Right. And obviously some of us are more than others, right, is usually is how it's gone, but it tries to integrate like many different groups of people, including, you know, in the United States, for example, including like black Americans.

Right. And, you know, the project of the integrated military, for example, has been a big part of the American national imaginary but if you're a white racist, you're not interested in a sort of national identity that, that includes black Americans as [00:34:00] well.

Right. And this is also somewhat true on the left in different ways. But yeah, I'll just put that out there.

Yeah. And then I guess the only other last thing I would like to say about this is that when we are anti essentialist and anti identitarian on the left, one of the things that, that like an anti racism that is rooted in an opposition to essentialism will argue and put forth is that race is a constructed and made up concept, right, which is something that I believe: race is not a real thing.

It is like racism is real, but racism is based on the invention of this way of dividing up people based on race. And so there's a lot of anti essentialist leftists who are arguing this, but one thing that is important is to not confuse race, which is a made up category, with culture and ethnicity, which are real things, right?

And one of the things, like, Jay and I have been talking about, and we're going to do an episode about this, or, like, related to these ideas, is, like, we actually care a lot about things, like, language protection, [00:35:00] culture protection, like the importance of people being able to keep and protect their cultural identities is like, it's a very important thing in respecting people's like human dignity.

And in Canada, where colonialism has so thoroughly attacked indigenous Canadian people's cultures. They don't have their languages anymore. And like, Protecting language is, like, hugely important for people's mental health and well being, right? So, dividing those two things, that being, like saying race isn't real doesn't mean that we're not in favor of protecting culture and language.

Yeah.

Chris: Right, right, right. Of course. What's interesting about the, I guess, the reactions to overtourism here, it's not just that, Oh, the gringo is an American, so I'm a Mexican, but it's also racialized. It's also, okay. So who I see on the street, white people, and because I'm dark skinned, it reinforces those dualities, binaries, et cetera but it re-racializes local people, and in the context of Mexico [00:36:00] anyways the roots of their understandings of their racializedness, if I can say that comes from the imposition of race, of races, by the Spaniards, onto them, and saying this is who you are now, 400 years ago.

Right? And so the new invasion, the tourism, right, is recapitulating that dynamic in ways in which people internalize the racial impositions that were put on them 400 years ago. Or their ancestors, right, I should say. So it's just mind boggling.

Clementine: Yeah, I think, I think it's interesting though, right? Because how do we hold, like, the importance of culture and language and ethnicity while also acknowledging that those things were always shifting, changing, like, were never a static, constant thing, you know?

That always included diversity, and within it, language is always changing and evolving. Culture is always changing and evolving, but also those things are real things that you can speak about and point to, and definitely notice when they'restolen from you or when you're no longer allowed to speak your language.

Right. So yeah, like, I think we tend to go [00:37:00] to extremes. It's either like it doesn't exist or it's not important, or it's like a very essential, like static thing that has always only been one thing.

Chris: Yeah, and also for a lack of history, right? I've been doing this investigation into Macedonian culture, ethnicity, history, etc, in part because my father is a first generation immigrant to Toronto, but from Agaean Macedonia and, you know, the Ottoman Empire was there controlling those lands for four or 500 years.

And so the Ottomans were Muslim and the Macedonians weren't Macedonians to them, they were Christians. They were a Christian race, Mm-Hmm regardless of their language. And then when the Ottoman Empire fell, the Greeks and the Bulgarians ended up fighting over that territory, that land, that a lot of people considered to be Macedonian.

And so the Greeks and the Bulgarians referred [00:38:00] to the Macedonians as the Macedonian race, no longer the Christian race, but the Macedonian race. So anyways, beyond that, once you get into the 20th century and start speaking in a global context, it's like, no, no, no, they're not the Macedonian race, they're a white race from Macedonia.

And so, just this idea that race is inherently tied to skin color is very contemporary and it depends, of course, where it's coming from and who it's coming from, right? This idea of what race is becomes very fluid.

I wanted to ask you two about escapism. I was just listening to your episode on freedom as a principle. Mm hmm. One of your most recent episodes and in it, you two speak of carceral institutions, jails, obviously, and I don't think it's very difficult to imagine how a touristic worldview, one built around escapism arises so fervently among people who feel powerless [00:39:00] to change the conditions in the culture that are oppressive and domineering.

At the same time the glorification and commodification of that escapism through tourism creates a kind of a culture of abandonment and disposability, in the sense that you're leaving behind all your people and then once you get to this place, well, you're actually not responsible for anything you do there because it's not my, it's not my people, not my home.

And so I'm curious, do you think that the freedom, that is usually couched in the freedom of movement has limits? And what do you make of the the inability to stay still in the context of all this?

Jay: Man. Yeah, I mean it just makes me think about my own sort of like internal struggles that I have where like, basically like whenever I'm not doing very well, I have this part of me that wants nothing more than to just f**k off and travel sort of like indefinitely. It's like one of my strongest like internal urges, you know.

I [00:40:00] don't know. I just keep thinking about that. But yeah, I mean, another thing that comes to mind for me, that is not, not a direct answer to your question, but it's just something that's coming up for me is that like, I think for like so many people in the wealthy West, you know they live in places that are comfortable because they're in the wealthy West, but they're like psychologically so destructive because it's just like these like vistas of like parking lots and like box stores and like depressing nothing places that no one could ever love and I think that like for a lot of people, and I hate to say this because it sounds like snobbish, you know, but it's like, whether or not they know it they are being psychologically attacked by the f*****g places that they live, you know, and there's a part of them that is like, I want nothing more than to get out of here, you know, and see something beautiful, and my question is sort of like, why can't we live in beautiful places? You know, and, and I actually like do live in a beautiful place and I love where I live, you know, [00:41:00] and the neighborhood in Montreal where I live is like gorgeous, you know it's a beautiful place to just walk around and look at stuff.

It's very f*****g pretty. And there's a reason why I live here, you know, and I lived in other parts of the city and, and I gave up. You know, bigger, cheaper apartments to live here because I like how it looks and I like how it makes me feel to sort of like leave my house and f*****g walk around. And other people like it too.

Millions of people come to Montreal as tourists. We actually have tourists in this neighborhood. And, and like when I leave my house and like walk around the corner, there's like lineups of tourists, you know that I have to sort of like navigate to like get to the gym.

Because they're flocking around because it's f*****g nice here. But like a lot of places in North America are really not nice. They're not nice places to look at. They're not nice places to live. You can't f*****g walk anywhere, even if you wanted to you know, everything basically looks the same as everything else, you know?

And yeah, it's not surprising to me that people would want to get out of there. Right. Also though, as I say this, it's not just North America that people [00:42:00] come from when they're tourists, right. Right. We're seeing like a gigantic increase in tourism from countries like China. Japan has always produced a lot of tourists, you know?

So I think like part of it is just that like, as people get wealthier the desire to just see different things and whatever is always present in people and if they can do it, like there's no particular reason why they wouldn't but I think that it's, it's definitely worth trying to imagine what travel could look like and what like guesthood could look like, you know outside of a context where it's all just like this very commodified process that is not necessarily very great for the people who are on the kind of like hosting end of it.

But yeah, again, like I live in a heavily touristed city, but apart from the tourists being quite annoying to have to walk around, like when there's like snow everywhere and they're taking up the whole sidewalk apart from that, and the fact that like Airbnb is a big problem in Montreal they don't bother me much here and I think that like a big part of that is just the, like, you know, Montreal is a very wealthy city, you know, so like an influx of like wealthy [00:43:00] foreigners doesn't like impact it that much other than to sort of like inject cash into the economy, which is not such a bad thing, right?

And I do think that like part of the answer to all this is that we need to be like taking seriously internationalist solidarity and like the development of places that are not as developed.

And it reminds me of like sort of debates about immigration to the West, you know, and it's like immigration, is a complicated topic and people have lots of different opinions about it, but like a lot of people on the liberal left will, will, will act like immigration is all by itself, like an amazing, awesome thing, always. And then people on the right will act like it's this terrible thing always. And I'm like, I don't know, it's kind of a neutral thing, you know, like there are good and bad things about it. Obviously people being able to travel is like a nice thing. I'll just say this, like, I think that like immigration is a good thing when the places that people are coming from are not so undeveloped or so poor that it's like forcing people out. Right. You know what I mean? And yeah, I dunno, , that was, that was like five [00:44:00] different tensions, so That's great.

Chris: Love it.

Clementine: So what, what is coming up for me is I saw this drawing that was like of whales swimming in the ocean.

And it was like, basically saying something like, borders aren't real, because like, there's no borders in the ocean for whales or whatever. And this is part of this, like, thing on the left, and it's kind of related to what Jay was just saying, that, like, on the left, we do have this, this big like, belief in things like open borders or just free movement, free travel as, like, this positive and, kind of obviously good thing that we should support and I understand it, but at the same time, the fantasy that there aren't different areas in the natural world is false.

There might not be borders, but there are biomes. And one of the things about travel that I don't think gets talked about a lot, and that is a big issue with, like, environmental destruction, is actually the reality of biomes and the fact that the movement of people across the world at the rapid way that we do it now [00:45:00] is moving plants, microbes, fungus from biome to biome and in different biomes the way that evolution works is that, like, those ecosystems were totally separate for all of this time, and then when some new, plant, animal, microbe, fungus gets into this new ecosystem, it may be that the other beings that live there have no defense against it, right? And then it causes massive problems, such as what goes on with invasive species.

But like, just as a random example, like one of the major things that's causing extinction of bats is the introduction of this fungus into North America that comes from Europe or something and it comes on like tourists. They come and they don't know that they have it on them because it's just like little fungus and then they go and they visit bat caves and then they accidentally infect the bats and the bats are all getting sick and dying, you know, and so I just bring up this random example because the question of like what does it mean to be responsible when we go somewhere [00:46:00] when Even us just going there can cause problems that we didn't intend, you know?

And it is a really complicated question. I'm not saying I necessarily have the answer. But especially from an environmental perspective, even if we get climate change under control, even if we deal with, you know fossil fuels, which we're not even close to dealing with, but even if we deal with that, we would still have this big question of, if we are going to continue to travel, say we get rid of planes, and then we have like airships and we're able to fly in a way that's not killing the climate, we still have this big question about what it means when we're bringing things on our clothes by accident.

And I'm kind of like, instead of like security at airports, like I wonder if there could be like these places where we go in and we basically have to like leave our things. And like, when we arrive, we get like a special clothes that we wear. I don't know what it would look like because we're carrying fungus on our clothes.

Jay: So. It would be really interesting to think about borders in a better world, you know and what that might look like, because I can imagine something like where it's like a supra national kind of like agreement between [00:47:00] different countries and stuff. And like the border is the border of the biome, not the border between the countries, you know?

Clementine: Yeah, and I was just talking about it on like an environmental level, which I do think is very important and doesn't really get talked about enough. But I also think we can look at this on a human level where, you know, if we're thinking about like invasive species and like a plant coming in and just growing and taking over, we can also think about how when we bring.

You know, for example, English, we can think about English as an invasive species, you know, like English is a species that's going to go there and because it's the language that if people speak more than one language, one of the languages that they speak might be English because it's kind of like taken over the world, then it means more and more people are going to be speaking English and then other languages are going to start dying out.

And so this is like literally what an invasive plant species does, you know? And so I think, We need to think about that when we're bringing English into a space. Like, what are we doing in that space? How are we changing that space by bringing English into it? And I say that very self consciously as a unilingual English speaker, but [00:48:00] it is, you know, like.

So, like, this idea of what it means to be a responsible guest, what it means to be somewhere, to visit somewhere, we need to think about, not even just the more obvious things, like throwing our garbage around, or being totally disrespectful, or using a place as a party spot, and then leaving, like, all of those things, I think, are very obviously disrespectful, and we need to be more considerate, but there's even more subtle ways, where just our very presence and the way that we bring ourselves can have an impact that we don't intend. That I think is part of the conversation about what it can mean to, to travel in a more ethical and responsible way.

Chris: Amen. Amen. Yeah, I'm reminded of, and I don't know how relevant it is for the conversation, but I'm reminded of Terrence McKenna, the great psychedelic bard. He had a hypothesis that the main vehicle of evolutionary change or growth wasn't human beings or mammals, for example, but language.

And we were just vehicles for language's evolution and spreading. And that languages are just fighting this secret battle, this secret [00:49:00] war. But, anyways.

To speak to what both of you are saying, I interviewed, a man named Daniel Pardo in the first season of the pod, this activist from Barcelona, and he said, you know, "in no way can tourism be sustainable because we can't extend it to everyone on the planet. Like, it's actually impossible to ensure that seven or eight billion people can go on vacation once a year or fly. Right? He said, "there's no right to fly." And, so it's important to ensure that people have these freedoms, but then to what extent can they actually be applied?

And I remember being back in Toronto last summer for a few months, and there were whole families and communities of migrants sleeping in front of churches on the street because from what I understand, the Canadian government the year previous had let in something like a million migrants and maybe half of them went to Toronto because it's the financial hub of the country. And there was [00:50:00] simply nothing for them there. There was no plan for them, by the government, there was no jobs, no social support, nothing, right?

And so they ended up on the street, sleeping on the street in front of churches, en masse. In terms of the people that I knew who grew up there, and myself, we had never seen that before. And so you can create the freedom to migrate and things like that but what is at the end of that movement, right? So there are definitely these dynamics and nuances that need to be spoken of in terms of travel and the way people travel and the borders and, and biomes that affect the way we move.

Yeah, and of course, I could go on and on.

I have two more questions for you two, if that's alright? Sure. Okay. So on some of the f*****g canceled podcast episodes you have subtitled the theme of the quest for the offline left. And, you know, I think [00:51:00] largely emphasizing the word offline. And so, you know, what do you think being together offline and organizing offline can do to people whose lives have been shaped around online and social media mentalities?

I mean, the three of us are more or less of the age that we still have a lived memory of life before the internet, but what about those who don't?

Clementine: Yeah, absolutely horrifying. I mean, I think we are social animals who evolved to be together, looking at each other's faces, like, talking and being in the same space together.

Like the alienation that Jay was talking about before, like both leads to our compulsive social media use and our desperate attempt to find community through that, and also completely contributes and worsens the problem, making it a million times worse where we are staring at our phones when we are literally, actually, physically together and could be having a conversation.

And that is really like sad and depressing. And I [00:52:00] think that in terms of organizing across difference building solidarity with people... like on the Internet, we can believe that a community is people who share either like an interest or an identity category with us. And that is a community online whereas in real life, community is going to be full of people who are not necessarily like ourselves, who we might not share interests in common with, and we might not share identities in common with, but they actually are the people who are in our spaces in real life, and we actually share many things in common with them that we might not realize because we share a place together, we share a world together and being able to build relationships with people who are different from ourselves is, first of all absolutely necessary as a political strategy if we want to get anything done on the left.

But also, it's deeply enriching for our human lives, you know, to be able to meet and talk to people who are not exactly the same, not the same age, not sharing the same politics, like, who are just different from ourselves. So I think it's very important. The other thing is like, the absolute erosion of our [00:53:00] attention span due to social media.

I have recently not been on Instagram for, like, a month, and I feel like my brain is, like, damaged, and I'm, like, recovering from a severe damage to my attention span, you know? Like, I wasn't able to read books for years, because I just didn't have an attention span to, like, really keep up with it.

It was, like, way harder for me than it used to be when I was younger, you know? Because I have been on the feed that is giving me just five second blips of information and then giving me something else and getting my brain hooked on this, like, dopamine response cycle, which is absolutely horrifying.

So, I think it's also really bad for us, like, mentally in terms of our ability to think critically and at length and to, like, pay attention to what we're thinking about. Yeah,

Jay: I think that the internet gives people the illusion that things are happening that are not actually happening You know like I don't know you make a a really good post and 2, 000 people like it Wow.

Okay. They're all scattered across the f*****g planet. [00:54:00] You know what I mean? It doesn't, you don't know them. It doesn't translate into anything, right? It feels good. And you feel like maybe you're influencing the discourse or something like that, you know but it doesn't translate into anything.

And it can give you It can give you the idea that like to be politically active and to be politically successful is to get more people liking your f*****g posts or whatever, you know, but it's not true, right? It also gives people the illusion and Clementine was gesturing at this that a group of people, it's not even really group, it's like a category of people that are like you, is a meaningful sort of group to be in. But let's say like, take like queer people, like LGBTQ community. Okay. And then you extrapolate that to like the whole world, or you can even just extrapolate it to like North America. You know, that's like a scattering of people that are spread out over this enormous geographic area.

You couldn't possibly meet them all. Not only because there's so many of them, but also because they're so scattered, right? And you couldn't possibly organize them all and like, and so [00:55:00] on. And, and it's not a community. It's not a community. It is. It's like there's a word I'm looking for and I was, I've been trying to think of it for the past, like five minutes, but I'm just going to say it's like an electorate or something rather than like rather than like a community, you know it's like this, it's this like demographic group that like marketers might market to you or that politicians might try to get to vote for them or something like that. But that's not, that's not what a community is. That's not what a real group is like a real group automatically encompasses difference.

Like a, a sort of like authentic human group, like always has differences of like age and occupation and often ethnicity and all these sorts of internal differences that, you know, human groups have always had. Right. And when we try to sort of like make these groups based on identity, which the internet makes very, very, very easy.

We like miss. The people that were actually around, like, yeah, but yeah, as for the offline left, I mean, we desperately need to be organizing and in the real world, and I think that[00:56:00] that's not to say that like you can't do anything on the internet.

Like the internet obviously has massive advantages for many, many reasons, you know. F**k, there's this like, there's this like image in my head. I'm a very like visual person. I get these like pictures in my head and then I'm like, I have to explain this picture. But it's like the, the thing about like the, the, the groups being this, these kind of like electorates, it's like, if you are this electorate, then you're only choice is to sort of petition your leaders to do something for you. You know what I mean?

But like if you are a real and authentic community, you can organize your community to enact something in the real world, you know? And I don't want us to always be in the position of petitioning our leaders, because it presupposes the leaders, it presupposes that we accept their authority, you know, it presupposes that we don't have another option other than to allow a tiny class of parasitical, like rich people to rule everything for us, you know but I would like us to move away from that.

Clementine: Yeah. Like just one other thing about that is you'll [00:57:00] see, you know, this gesturing towards actual organizing but through posting, but it's missing the actual organizing piece, which involves building relationships, right? And building trust. And so one of the things you'll, you'll see, like in the last couple of years, I've seen it a few times with different political things that are going on where people will just randomly call for like a mass strike and they'll make a post about it.

And they'll be like, on this day, we are calling for people to strike for like this political issue. I saw it for like abortion rights in the United States and I recently saw it for solidarity with Palestine. But it's like, people can't just walk out of their jobs randomly because they will be fired.

Like, the point of unions and the point of organized labor is that you have this guarantee where all of these people are taking this risk together in an organized and strategic way and they are trusting each other that they are doing it together and it is their numbers that makes it so that the boss can't just fire them all.

And they have strike fund. There's a lot of them and they're [00:58:00] supporting each other to do this and it's organized and they've actually built enough relationship to be like, okay, I trust that my fellow workers are going to do this with me. So, like when I take this risk, it's like the risk is mitigated by the numbers and I know I'm not alone in it.

Right. But a social media post cannot produce that. It is not relationship. And so random people reading that, like they're like, "should I just walk out of my job tomorrow?" Like, probably if they do that, they're going to be the only person at their job who's doing that, and they're just going to be fired or reprimanded, best case scenario. And that is not organized at all. And, and so then people are like, "Why aren't you guys walking out of your job? This is not solidarity." And it's like, "you're right. It's not solidarity. Because the solidarity hasn't been built." Like, you have to actually build trust with people to get them to take risks. And if you don't build that trust, and you don't have those actual real relationships, it's not a good idea for people to take those risks because they'll be by themselves taking those risks.

Chris: Yeah, begs the question if in order to have solidarity with people elsewhere, does it [00:59:00] have to exist at home first?

Clementine: I would say yeah. Absolutely.

Jay: And solidarity is kind of meaningless if it's just you. Like it kind of has to be organized, you know, like in some meaningful fashion and that can take place in a small scale or a large scale. But if it was just you feeling solidaristic, like it doesn't, yeah,

Clementine: like for example, with the Bangladeshi textile workers, you know. If there was organized labor in North America and say, for example, that like the H&M's were unionized, which I do not think that they are, but if the H& Ms were unionized because, like, the clothing at H&M all comes from Bangladesh, the workers could choose to do a solidarity strike, to strike alongside the Bangladeshi workers, so that the retailers were striking alongside the textile workers, right?

And that would be very effective and very cool if that was happening, but in order for that to happen, the retail workers first have to be organized, and they have to have unions, and they actually have to have like an organized labor force here in order to do any kind of meaningful action in [01:00:00] solidarity with the workers in Bangladesh.

Chris: Food for thought. Yeah. Thank you both. So my final question. Of the main themes of the pod, one is radical hospitality, which, to me at least, stands as a kind of antidote to industrial hospitality. You know, the systems, the hotels, the restaurants that produce, expectation and entitlement, especially when people go abroad, right?

I paid my money, so I deserve this, etc. The word radical in that term means rooted. And, so for me, what it means to be rooted in a place, rooted together, and maybe even reciprocally generous. So, I can only imagine the kind of volatility that might come your way as a result of naming the nexus, and broadcasting F*****g Cancelled.

And so, I'm curious, as socialists and people committed to organizing towards new and better worlds, what kind of radical hospitality do you think might be [01:01:00] required for those worlds to be born?

Jay: Very, very interesting question. For me, like, the first thing that comes up is that the, the idea of radical hospitality is almost like the inverse of alienation in a certain way. Mm-Hmm. and like our intense disconnect from one another. It's like the negation of hospitality, you know. It's like, I don't want to be hospitable because I don't know you and I don't owe you.

And I think that that's how like a lot of people feel and it's not even necessarily their fault for feeling that, you know. It's the world we live in, you know, but I think hospitality obviously is like a good quality and an important thing and it builds community and it builds connection and I think that community and connection are incredibly important for people.

For me, I really want social movements and a socialism, whatever it ends up looking like, a socialism for the 21st century that takes alienation seriously as like a major problem to be tackled, and that is like actively trying to build policy to like undermine alienation and bring people [01:02:00] together more, which is difficult. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it.

You know I think that it's going to be like a complicated thing, but I think that alienation is as much of a problem at this point as like many of the other sort of like evils of capitalism. It's hurting people a lot. I think that it's producing this absolutely gnarly f*****g epidemic of mental illness and despair and addiction and I think that people are like utterly traumatized by it and we need to be working, we need to be working against it.

And I think this like a concept like radical hospitality is a really interesting and beautiful one that could be part of that.

Clementine: Yeah, I think the first thing that comes up for me is just the concept of like reciprocity and like how that is connected to trust. And it's very hard to give with an open heart when you don't believe that you are going to receive. And when you're very exhausted and very depleted it is very hard to be generous, you know, and I think a lot of people are in that state where like they're not feeling very generous because they don't feel like they have what they need [01:03:00] and they're worried that if they give they're not going to receive, you know.

And so it's kind of like somebody always has to go first. If you're caught in a cycle of everybody in a mentality of scarcity. That's just going to keep reproducing until somebody starts to shift towards generosity. But it is also true that you can get yourself in a situation where you are being consistently generous to people who are not being reciprocal, right? Which is also not good.

Generosity also needs to be boundaried and self respecting, in the sense that, you are not turning yourself into a resource that is just being exploited, you know and so that is like that trust building. It's like if I'm offering radical hospitality, am I also receiving it? Not necessarily as like a one to one, like this where we're keeping a book to make sure it's all exactly the same. But is there a general sense of reciprocity in the relationship? And that can be expressed in a lot of different ways. In terms of, you were just talking about our work and the work that we do and like the extreme hostility that we receive from certain people for talking about these things.

One of the things that has been [01:04:00] beautiful, for us is the hospitality that we have received from the listeners of the podcast who have received so much from our work, because I'm sure you can understand as a podcast or yourself is a labor of love, it's definitely a labor of love. It's a huge amount of work and you're not really getting paid for it or at least we're not getting paid for it to the degree that would actually be like sustaining, and it's a struggle and we're like always trying to make it work. But the listeners, you know, who have been very impacted by our work and who feel very grateful for it have definitely shown us that gratitude.

And when we were on tour, we toured independently, no funding, just, just a couple of punks, like in my little car. And it was our fans who put us up all across America. It was our fans who put us up, who helped us make that happen in one city. We had an event plan and then we got canceled, we got literally pushed out of the like conference that we were supposed to do, due to cancellation b******t, but we had already put that city on our tour and like a fan like hosted us in his living room so that we could still do, [01:05:00] you know, do our event in that city, which was really cool and he put us up and everything too.

So, you know, I think that, that there are people who see the risks that we take in doing this work and they want to, they want to do that reciprocity and they want to like give us something back and make us feel like welcomed and safe doing something that they know is very risky. So I appreciate that.

And that is like an example of just people doing that like mutuality and reciprocity and action.

Chris: Thank you both. Yeah, and I hope that you know, through some of our conversation today that this has given a bit of an opportunity for your words and your work to have a platform among, you know, people who are dealing with these, these questions of gentrification and migration and of course, tourism.

Before before we finish, Jay, I just remembered the authenticity.

Jay: Oh, yeah yeah, yeah, I wrote a paper once in like my undergrad about tourism and [01:06:00] authenticity and for some reason it's like the only paper from my undergrad that I like still remember, you know but I think that I was like onto something with that paper and it's just interesting how with tourism, like a huge focus is on selling an authentic experience to the tourist and yet everyone involved, including the tourists are aware that it's inauthentic as soon as you sell it. Basically that is like the sort of like definition of what makes something inauthentic to most people is that like when you sell it, it's not authentic anymore.

Especially when it's like an experience, you know and yeah, I just think that this like process of sort of like inventing authenticity and then selling it when everybody's aware that it's not authentic is like very very on brand for late capitalism and is like also something that's going on in like the rest of our, our lives and something.

I don't know. It's just something I think about a lot.

Chris: Well, it comes, comes home to roost, right? The whole tourism worldview or touristic worldview and like [01:07:00] the desire for the authentic. We have all the labels now, organic and fair trade and all that stuff. And it's like, there's still no chance that you buying that coffee is going to get you any closer to a relationship with the people who made it or the land that it was made on, you know, and all that stuff.

Jay: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting. I actually, I have like a question for you, you know, cause you were like a backpacker for a long time. And I think that like part of the whole thing about backpacking is that it's more authentic, you know, because you're not really being like a tourist exactly, you know, because you're not going on tours, right?

And you're not like staying at like hotels and, or like Airbnb is, you're sort of like making your own way and like staying with locals or like in hostels or like whatever. And do you think that what you were doing was substantially different from mainstream tourism or did you get kind of like jaded by that in the end?

Chris: Yeah, I guess like to some degree it's I could say that one could say that it's less choreographed. Right. There's [01:08:00] less expectation. I think there's still probably the same amount of entitlement that people could have or feel, but there's less expectation because it's not as not as choreographed. But I did an interview recently where my friend Patrick, he asked me like, so what's the difference between a tourist and a traveler, right?

And I said, well, you know, based on all the people that I've talked to and all the episodes that I've done the interviews and all that it seems that people want to make a distinction between these things because they want to justify their version of doing it or they don't want to look like the stereotype of the ugly tourist or whatever.

But at the end of the day, almost everything you do as a backpacker or a tourist is housed in the tourism infrastructure, right? You still have to get on a plane to go where you're going. You still have to take those buses, you know? Maybe just because you're not with 30 or 40 other tourists doesn't mean that the same dynamics aren't happening, [01:09:00] you know?

Surely there's a degree of difference in it, but, you can go to, like a lot of Canadians go to Cuba to sit on a beach for a week, eat and drink whatever they want, or all that they can. Or, you know, you could go in, like I did, and spend like two months, you know, in the middle of nowhere in Peru, right?

But, at the end of the day, everything that happens there is temporary and therefore disposable. Nobody has, or nobody questions, the degree of consequence that they have in that place once they're gone. Right? And even if you did question that, you could never know. So, I think that that kind of you know, brings it back around a little bit to that question of, like, you can, you can be a tourist in the place that you live, in the city that you were born in, right? I have these questions sometimes when I wonder about like, you know, my friends and family back home after being gone for eight years, you know, my sister has two kids and all that stuff.

So my parents are getting older, you know, all that stuff. So how do [01:10:00] we understand ourselves as people of consequence in the places we live. And, anyways, I think that that's to me where I can offer a deep bow of solidarity to you two for your work, because I think that's kind of where they find themselves woven together a little bit, is that place where we find the ability to either respond or we find out how we have been removed or obscured or, or just made handicapped from the ability to respond in a good way, so.

Hmm. So, yeah, so on behalf of our listeners thank you two so much for your time today. And I know you have a lot of podcast episodes online and also a lot of writing projects. And maybe you could tell our listeners a little bit about those before we depart.

Clementine: So you can find the podcast at FUCKINGCANCELLED.COM and you can also find it, like most places you listen to podcasts, so Spotify or Apple [01:11:00] or whatever if you just look up f*****g canceled, maybe f*****g canceled podcast.

Jay: It's got two L's cause we're Canadian.

Clementine: Oh yeah. We're Canadian. So it has two L's. And then my rating you can find at CLEMENTINEMORRIGAN.COM. I have a Substack there that you can subscribe to. And I also make zines and books, which you can check out in the shop at CLEMENTINEMORRIGAN.COM.

Jay: Yeah, my writing is JAYLESOLEIL.COM. It's all up there. So, yeah. Thanks so much for having us, man.

Clementine: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Chris: And Dumplings and Domination, is that right?

Clementine: Oh, yeah.

Jay: Dumplings and Domination, yeah. So far, there's only one episode out. And I've told myself that I'm going to be boundaried about it and try not to treat it too much like a job and just do it for fun. So who knows when the next one's going to come up, but that's also on JAYLESOLEIL.COM. Like for now, I'm just putting them up as posts on my Substack. So yeah.

Chris: Awesome. Cool. Well, I'll make sure that all those links are up there on the end of tourism website and Substack as well when it comes out and thank you guys so much for your time.

Jay: Right on man. Have a good one.

Clementine: Thanks for having us. ​[01:12:00]

On this episode, my guest is David Bacon, a California writer and documentary photographer. A former union organizer, today he documents labor, the global economy, war and migration, and the struggle for human rights. His latest book, In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte (COLEF / UC Press, 2017) includes over 300 photographs and 12 oral histories of farm workers. Other books include The Right to Stay Home and Illegal People, which discuss alternatives to forced migration and the criminalization of migrants. Communities Without Borders includes over 100 photographs and 50 narraatives about transnational migrant communities and The Children of NAFTA is an account of worker resistance on the US/Mexico border in the wake of NAFTA.

Show Notes:

David’s Early Years

Learning about Immigration through Unions

The Meaning of Being Undocumented

NAFTA and Mexican Migration

The Source of Corn / Maize

Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations / Frente Indigena de Organizacaions Binacionales

The Right to Stay Home

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) Campaign

The Face & History of Immigration in the USA

Immigration Reform and Amnesty

The Violence of Fortuna Silver Mines in Oaxaca

Solidarity, Change and Optimism

Homework:

The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration

In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte

Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants

Communities without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration

The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border

David’s Twitter Account

David’s Official Website

Transcript:

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the End of Tourism podcast, David. It's an honor to have you on the pod. To begin, I'd like to ask you where you find yourself today and what the world looks like for you there.

David: Well, I live in Berkeley, here in California, and I am sitting in front of my computer screen having just what I've been up to today before talking with you.

Chris: Hmm. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for your work. Perhaps I could ask you what drew you to the issues of labor and migration.

David: Sure. Well, I come from a kind of left wing union family, so I knew about unions and workers and strikes and things like that from probably since before I can remember. And so I was kind of an activist when I was in high school, got involved in the [00:01:00] student movement in the 1960s at the University of California, got involved in the free speech movement, got tossed out by the university, actually, and wound up going to work after that, really, because I got married, had a daughter, and I got married, had a daughter, and, I needed to get a job and, you know, worked for quite a while as a a printer in the same trade that my father was, had been in went back to night school to learn more of the, of the trade, how to do different parts of it, how to run presses and so forth and then got involved, this is, you know, in the late 60s, early 70s got involved in the movement to support farm workers, really, and I was one of those people, you know, if you're my age, you remember this, if you're younger, you probably don't, but we used to picket supermarkets to try to get them [00:02:00] to stop selling the grapes and the wine and the lettuce that was on strike, and we would stand out in front of Safeway and other supermarkets with our red flags with the black eagle on them, And ask customers, you know, not to go into the store, not to buy the products that farmworkers were on strike against.

And I got really interested in. I'm curious about the workers that we were supporting. You know, I grew up in Oakland and so I didn't know anything about farm workers, really. I didn't know anything about rural California, rural areas, didn't speak Spanish didn't know much about Chicano, Latinos.

Oakland's a pretty diverse city, but in the area of Oakland where I grew up in you know, in our high school, you know, the students were African American or they were white, and that was a big racial question in, in school when I was in high school. So I grew up not knowing any of these things.[00:03:00]

And Because I was involved in, you know, standing out in front of these stores and supporting workers, I, you know, began wondering, who are these workers that we're supporting? And eventually, I went to work for the union. I asked a lawyer friend of mine who was in their legal department if they needed any help, and of course he said yes.

I went down to, Oxnard and de Santamaria began working for the union, originally taking statements from workers who had been fired because of their union activity. I didn't know much Spanish, so I had to learn Spanish on the job. Fortunately, you know, the workers were very patient with me and would help me learn, help me correct my still bad pronunciation and bad grammar.

And, and I began to learn. And that process has been going on ever since, really. That was a, that was a formative time in my life. It taught me a lot of [00:04:00] things. It taught me about, you know, the culture of. farm workers who were mostly Mexican in those years, but there were still a good number of Filipino workers working in the fields.

That eventually led me to the woman I eventually married, my wife, who was the daughter of of immigrants from the Philippines from a farm worker family. So I learned about that culture and I began learning about immigration, which I hadn't really known anything about growing up. Why people come to the U.

S., what happens to people here. I, I saw my first immigration raid. When I was an organizer, I later became an organizer for the union as my Spanish got better. And I remember going to talk to a group of workers that I had met with the previous night, who were worked up in palm trees picking dates.

And I went down to the date grove, this was in the Coachella Valley, and there was this big green van, and there were the [00:05:00] workers who I'd been talking to the previous night being loaded into the van. I was just You know, really shocked. The van took off. I followed the van all the way down to the Imperial Valley, to El Centro, where the detention center was.

Stood outside the center trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. What am I going to do? What's going to happen to these people? And that was sort of an introduction to the meaning of being undocumented, what it meant to people, what could happen. And that made me an immigrant rights activist, which I've also been ever since, too.

But also, over time, I got interested in the reasons why people were coming to the U. S. to begin with. You know, what people were finding here when people got here was very, very difficult work, low pay, immigration raids, police harassment, at least, and sometimes worse than that, poverty. You know, Why leave Mexico if this is what you're going to find?[00:06:00]

And it also made me curious about the border. And so that also began something that has continued on in all those years since. I eventually went to the border, went to Mexico, began getting interested and involved in Mexican labor politics, supporting unions and workers in Mexico, you know, doing work on the border itself.

After the Farm Workers Union, I worked for other unions for A number of years and they were generally reunions where the workers who were trying to join and we were trying to help were immigrants. So the government workers union, the women in the sweatshops sewing clothes or union for factory workers.

And so my job was basically to help workers organize and. Organizing a union in the United States is like well, you know, people throw around this word, you know, this phrase class war and class warfare pretty freely, but it is like a war. You know, when [00:07:00] workers get together and they decide they want to change conditions and they want to you know, get the company to, speak to them and to deal with them in an organized way.

They really do have to kind of go, go to war or be willing to, for the company to go to war with them. You know, really what people are asking for sometimes is pretty minimal, you know, wage raises or fair treatment at work or a voice at work. You know, you think, you know, what's wrong with that. But generally speaking when employers get faced with workers who want to do that they do everything possible to try and stop them.

Including firing people and harassing people, calling them to meetings, threatening people, scaring people. You know, there's a whole industry in this country that consists of union consultants who do nothing but, you know, advise big companies about how to stop workers when they, when they try to organize.

So that's what I did for about 20 years. Was help workers to get organized, form a union, get their bus to sit down and talk [00:08:00] to them, go out on strike, do all those kinds of things. And eventually I decided that I wanted to do something else. And I, I was already involved in, you know, starting to take photographs.

I would carry a camera and I would take pictures of what we were doing as workers. We would joke about it, kind of. I would tell workers, well, you know, we're going to take some pictures here and you can take them home to your family and show them, you know, that you're really doing what's right here and 20 years from now you'll show your grandkids that, you know, when the time came, you stood up and you did what was right and people would joke with each other about it.

And I discovered also that you could use them to get support for what we were doing. You know, we could get an article published in a newspaper somewhere. Some labor newspaper might run an article about us. You might get some money and some help or some food or something. But after a while, you know, I began [00:09:00] realizing that these photographs, they had a value beyond that.

And that was that they were documenting this social movement that was taking place among immigrants and, and Latino workers, especially here on the West Coast of people basically trying to. Organize themselves for social justice in a lot of different ways, organizing unions for sure, but also trying to get changes in U.

S. immigration laws, immigration policies those people who are citizens and able to vote, registering to vote, political change. You have to remember that if you go back to the 1960s or 1970s, Los Angeles was what we used to call the capital of the open shop. In other words, it was one of the most right wing cities in America.

You know, the mayor Sam Yorty was a right wing Republican. The police department had what they called the Red Squad, whose responsibility it was is to go out and to deal with [00:10:00] people that wanted to change anything or to organize and Unions or strikes or belong to left wing political parties or whatever.

And today, Los Angeles is one of the most progressive cities in the United States, and it has to do with what happened to those primarily Central American and Mexican and workers of color, women, who over time got organized and changed the politics of Los Angeles. And so, you know, I was really fascinated by it.

This process, I was involved in it as an organizer and then later as a somebody taking photographs of it and writing about it that and so that's, that's sort of the transition that I made for the last 30 some odd years. I've worked as a freelance writer and photographer, basically doing the same kind of thing.

I look at it as a way of organizing people, really, because the whole purpose of writing the articles and taking the [00:11:00] photographs is to change the way people think, and make it possible for people to understand the world better, and then to act on that understanding, which to me means trying to fight for a more just world, a more just society.

And so. That's what, that's the purpose of the photographs, that's the purpose of the writing, is to, is to change the world. I think it's a big tradition in, in this country, in the United States of photography and of journalism that is produced by people who are themselves part of the movements that they are writing about or documenting, and whose purpose it is to sort of help to move forward social movements for social change.

Chris: Amen. Some of the stories you were mentioning remind me of my mother who also worked for a labor union most of her life. And I was definitely still very much concerned with the state of affairs. I should [00:12:00] say that you know, I'm incredibly grateful as well to have a man of your stature and experience on the pod here to speak with us your work Has definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things I hadn't seen living here in southern Mexico, in, in Oaxaca.

And one of these, these books, which I'd like to touch on a little bit today, is entitled, The Right to Stay Home. how U. S. policy drives Mexican migration. And we're actually at the 10 year anniversary of the publication of this book. So I feel honored to be able to speak with you in this regard about it.

And, you know, it's, for me, someone who was a backpacker and a tourist, and then later a resident of this place, of Oaxaca, to come to understand much more deeply the complexities and nuances around migration, and especially in the context of Mexican migration to the United States. [00:13:00] What's left out of the conversation as someone who grew up in urban North America and Toronto, Canada very much on the left in my earlier years, in terms of organizing and, and and protesting, the, the, the dialogues and the conversations always seem to be around the the treatment of migrants once they arrived and, and not necessarily, as you said, why they left in the first place, the places that they left and the consequences to the places that they left.

And so I guess to begin, I'm wondering if you could offer our listeners a little bit of background into How that book came to be written and what was the inspiration and driving factors for it?

David: The book came to be written to begin with because I began going to Mexico and trying to understand how [00:14:00] the system of migration works in the context of the world that we live in, you know, people call it globalization or globalism, or you could call it imperialism.

So I was trying to understand that from the roots of first having been involved with people as migrants once they had arrived here in the U. S. I was trying to understand Well, two things. One was why people were coming, and also what happens to people in the course of coming. In other words, the journey that people make.

Especially the border. The border is the big And the border has very important functions in this because it's really the crossing of the border that determines what the social status of a migrant is, whether you have papers or not, whether you're documented or not, which is a huge, [00:15:00] huge, huge distinction.

So as a result of that, and as a result of kind of listening to people listening to the movement in Mexico talk, about it, investigating, going to places like Oaxaca. I first wrote a book that tried to look at this as a system, a social system. It's really part of the way capitalism functions on a international or global basis in our era because what it does is it produces Displacement, the changes that are, you take a country like Mexico, and this is what the first book, the first book was called Illegal People.

And what it looked at was the imposition on Mexico, for instance, it starts with NAFTA, the free trade agreement. In fact, the first book I ever wrote was about the border and was called The Children of NAFTA, the [00:16:00] North American Free Trade Agreement. But this book Illegal People, what it really tried to do is it tried to look at the ways in which People were displaced in communities like Oaxaca.

And of course, for Oaxaca, Oaxaca is a corn growing state. It's a rural state. Most people in Oaxaca still live in villages and small communities. Oaxaca's a big city, and there's some other cities there, but, but most people in Oaxaca are still what you call rural people. And so NAFTA, among the many changes that it imposed on Mexico, one of the most important was that it allowed U. S. corn corporations, Archer Daniels Midland Continental Grain Company other really large corporations to dump corn in Mexico at a price that we were subsidizing through the U. S. Farm Bill, our tax money. In other words, we're, our tax money was being [00:17:00] given to these corporations to lower their cost of production.

And that allowed them to go to Mexico and to sell corn at a price that was so low that people who were growing corn in a place like Oaxaca could no longer sell it for a price that would cover the cost of growing it. That had an enormous impact on people in Oaxaca because what it did was it forced people to basically to leave in order to survive.

It's not that people were not leaving Oaxaca already before the agreement passed. There were other reasons that were causing the displacement of people in rural communities in Oaxaca. A lot of it had to do with this relationship with the U. S. even then, but certainly NAFTA was like pouring gasoline on all of that.

And so three million people was the estimate that in a period of 10 years were displaced as corn farmers in Oaxaca. That's a huge percentage of the population of Oaxaca. [00:18:00] And so people were forced to go elsewhere looking for work. People went, you know, to Mexico City. You know, Mexico City, the metro system, the subway system in Mexico City was built primarily by workers who came from somewhere else.

A lot of them from Oaxaca. Who wound up being the low cost labor that the Mexican government used to build a subway system. They went to the border, they became workers in the maquiladoras, in the factories that were producing everything from car parts to TV screens for the U. S. market. And then people began crossing the border and coming to the U.

S. as either farm workers in rural areas of California or as low paid workers in urban areas like Los Angeles. So one of the big ironies, I think, of it was that here you had farm work, farmers who were being forced off their land. And remember that these are corn farmers, so [00:19:00] the Domestication of corn happened first in Oaxaca, and the first earliest years of domesticated corn, thousands of years old, have been discovered in archaeological digs in Oaxaca and caves near Oaxaca City to begin with.

So here we have people to whom the world really owes corn as a domesticated crop, who are winding up as being wage workers on the farms of corporate U. S. agribusiness corporations in California, Oregon, Washington, eventually all over the United States. That was the migration of Oaxacan people. And so you could sort of see In this, as sort of a prism, what the forces were, what the social forces at work are, in other words, that in the interests of the profits of these big corporations, these trade agreements get negotiated between [00:20:00] governments, okay, our government, the U.

S. government negotiates with the Mexican government, but that's like David negotiating with Goliath, or the other way around, rather, you know, The agreements are really imposed. It's not to say that the Mexican government of those years was opposed to it. It was a neoliberal government too, but the power in this negotiation is held by the U.

S. government. And so that trade agreement in the interest of making Mexico a profitable place for, you know, Archer Daniels Middleton to do business gets imposed on Mexico. And then as a result of that, people get displaced and they wind up becoming a low wage workforce for other corporations here in here in the U.

S. In fact, sometimes they Wind up working for the same corporation Smithfield foods, which is a big producing corporation [00:21:00] went to Mexico. It got control of huge areas of a valley called the Peralta Valley, not that far from Mexico city. And they began. Establishing these huge pork or pig raising facilities.

In fact, that's where the swine flu started was because of the concentration of animals in these farms. Again, displacing people out of those communities. And people from the state of Veracruz, where the Perote Valley is located, many of them wound up getting recruited and then going to work in North Carolina at the huge Smithfield Foods Pork Slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina.

So that sort of tells you a lot about how this system works. It produces displacement. In other words, it produces people who have no alternative but to migrate in order to survive. And those people go through all the things that people have to go through in order to get to the United [00:22:00] States because there are no real visas for this kind of migration.

And them wind up being The workforce that is needed by the system here, Smithfield Foods or other corporations like them in order for them to make high profits here. And in the process of doing this, I was developing a a relationship with a very unique organization in Mexico, in Oaxaca, a part of which exists in Oaxaca, called the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales, which is the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations.

And this is an organization that was actually started by Oaxaca migrants in the U. S., in Los Angeles, and then expanded both into the Central Valley here in California and then expanded back into Mexico in Baja, California, where there are also big corporate farms where primarily Oaxaca, people from Oaxaca are the workforce, and eventually chapters in Oaxaca itself.[00:23:00]

And so I would got to be friends with many people in this organization, and I would go and take photographs at their bi national meetings, they would have meetings in Mexico where people could come together and and talk about their situation. And, you know, I began, obviously, listening to what people were talking about.

And, People developed this, I think, very kind of path breaking, unique analysis of migration in which they talked about a dual set of rights that migrants need and migrant communities need in this kind of world. And so, What they said was, on the one hand people need rights as migrants where they go.

In other words, people, when they come to the United States, need legal status. People need decent wages, the ability to organize, you know, an end to the kind of discrimination that people are subject to. But, [00:24:00] people also need a second set of rights as well, which is called the right to stay home. And that is the title of the book, The Right to Stay Home.

And what that means is that, People need political change and economic and social change in their communities of origin, which makes migration voluntary. So these are communities that are so involved in the process of migration that it would not make any sense to say that migration is bad, because In many cases, these are communities that live on the remittances that are being sent by migrants, by members of people's own families who are living and working in the United States.

So the discourse in these meetings was sort of on the order of saying that people have the right to migrate, people have the right to travel, people have the right to leave, but they also have the right to stay home. They have the right to a decent future. A young [00:25:00] person who is growing up in Santiago, Cusco, Oaxaca in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, for instance, has a right to a future in Oaxaca so that you can make a choice.

Do you want to stay and have a decent life for yourself in Oaxaca, or do you want to leave and hopefully have a decent life for you and wherever you go, whether Baja California or California or Washington State? So in order to have a Right to stay home. What has to happen? What do people need? It's kind of a no brainer. People need well high farm prices to begin with. They need the ability to raise corn, tomatoes, Whatever crop it is that they need and sell it at a price that is capable of sustaining those families and communities. People need education.

They need healthcare, but people also need political change because the Frente Indígena is a political organization. And so it was fighting [00:26:00] against the domination of Oaxaca by the old PRI, the party of the institutionalized revolution, which had been running Mexico for 70 years, trying to find a government that would begin to push for those kinds of social rights.

And that was you know, a very important kind of eye opening for me was to hear people talking about the right to stay home, so much so that I said, you know, we need a book about this. So we're not just describing the system itself, how it works, but we are talking about what are people's responses to it?

What do people think should happen here? And this was one of the most important developments of it. And it was not just. The people in Oaxaca, the more I did work on trying to investigate it and document it, there's part of the book, and also this was being done in people's [00:27:00] voices, the main voice in the right to stay home belongs to Rufino Dominguez, who was one of the founders of the Frente Indígena, who was my teacher in this, and so at one point they did knock the PRI out of power in Oaxaca and elected a governor, Gabino Cuei, who turned out to be not as good as people had hoped that he would be, but he was not the PRI.

And he appointed Rufino, the head of the Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants. So here was Rufino who had, was a left wing radical who spent his whole life opposing the government in Oaxaca, who then joined it for a while until he could no longer stomach what was going on there and had to leave.

But. Pushing for that kind of political change in Oaxaca. There's another part of the book that talks about the miners in Cananea near the border with the United States. And their Effort to try to. win justice from this huge corporation that [00:28:00] was basically intent on destroying their union. And when they were forced out on strike, those miners also had to cross the border to Arizona to become workers in Arizona to survive.

Again, you know, you see how the system is working here, but they also were talking about what kind of political change has to happen in Mexico for the right to stay home. to become reality. And that movement in Mexico grew strong enough so that, you know, after The Right to Stay Home was published, some years after, since it was, as you said, 10 years ago that Andrés Manuel López Obrador campaigned.

He went all around the country speaking in every little tiny village that Mexico has, practically, in the course of four years. And one of the main things he talked about was the right to alternatives to forced migration. And I was there in Mexico City in the Zócalo when he took office. He finally won it.

I don't want to go into all the things that had to [00:29:00] happen for Andrés Manuel López Obrador to win an election and become president of Mexico. But in his, in his inaugural speech as he was being sworn in, he talked about, we are going to make Mexico into a place where Mexicans can be happy living, where you don't have to go to the United States in order to survive, and I think you can talk about the, Things that the Mexican government has not been able to accomplish in the last four or five years.

But I think one thing is beyond question and that is that that has been the main direction of the policy of the government of Mexico in that period of time because that's what got him elected. was this idea that, as he said, we are going to reject the liberal, neoliberal hypocrisy of the last six administrations in Mexico, meaning no more trade agreements like NAFTA, no [00:30:00] more opening Mexico up to U.

S. corporations to come in and make money and as a result of which everybody's going to have to leave, that there had to be some kind of different direction in Mexico. So, in a way, I think that. Maybe that book, The Right to Stay Home, was like a little grain of sand that joined with other little grains of sand like it in helping to move forward that process of political change, because it happened on really on both sides of the border.

Gosh, millions and millions of Mexicans who are living in the United States. So the process of political discussion that goes on about the kind of government Mexicans should have happens not just in Mexico, it happens here too. You know, part of Mexico is here on this side of the border. So you know, the book, and the book actually was published in Spanish and in Mexico as well too.

So I think that it talked about things that were very important to people. [00:31:00] At the time, and that people are still debating about what has to happen in order for the right to stay home to be a reality. And I think it's something very important for people in this country to listen to and to think about as well, too, because in all the debates about migration that happen in here in the U.S

There's not a lot of attention that's paid to this whole idea of the two sets of rights, what has to happen. You know, certainly, you know, there are people like Trump and the right wing of the Republican Party that just, you know, never going to talk about anything like this. But even among Democrats, even in the Biden administration, you know, it's really too much about how to manage the border, you know, which basically boils down to how many people are we going to detain and deport.

Rather than thinking about what kind of [00:32:00] world do we want to live in. Therefore, what kind of places migration going to have in it?

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Chris: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's it's been fascinating reading and rereading this book in, in, in part to be able to give voice to not just migrants and not just migration issues in the places that people move to or migrate to, but also in the places that they, that they leave behind and the voices of the people that they leave behind.

And you know, I think for. Many North Americans, especially those who are first or second generation citizens of those countries of Anglo North America, of Canada and the United States, that these are, these are the stories these are the voices that that maybe they haven't heard of in their own families as well.

And so, you know, you started to mention a little bit about this. the kind of superficiality, perhaps, if I'm, if I can say it in that, in those terms, of the [00:33:00] political conversation around migration in the United States, in Canada, and perhaps even in Mexico. And so I'd like to ask you about the reception and perhaps the fallout Once the book was published, and I'm curious how the declaration to the right to stay home or the right to not migrate has altered at all the political or social social landscape in rural Mexico, you know, at least in terms of the people that you know in these places.

And also if there was any response, any, any ground shaking movements as a result of the book coming out among activists in the United States.

David: Well, I think that the book contributed to an important change. In the immigrant rights movement in the United States here, because, you know, having participated in that movement as an activist [00:34:00] for, gosh, 40 some odd years now, maybe more, Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 with the so called amnesty law.

Which not only gave amnesty to undocumented people, but also made it illegal for undocumented people to work in the United States after that and started the whole process of the border militarization. In fact, you know, the negative parts of that bill were so bad that many people like myself opposed the bill, even if it had amnesty in it, saying that it was not a this was not a good deal.

And I think that over time. You know, history has proven that we were right not that amnesty was unimportant and not worth fighting for, but that the price that we paid turned out to be much higher than people were willing to give it credit for, you know, at the time. But what was also really missing from that debate, for instance, in [00:35:00] those years, was any sense that we had to really deal with and think about the causes of migration and the roots of migration, the displacement.

It was really all about the status of people when they were here. You know, should it be legal or illegal for people to work? Should people get papers or should people not get papers? And that was a very limiting Conversation, because what really, what it really meant was that it could not acknowledge the fact that the migration from Mexico is not going to stop.

For instance, the, in that, in that bill, the, the qualifying date for amnesty was January 1st, 1982, meaning. That if you came before that date, you could apply for the amnesty and get legalization, and if you came after that date, you couldn't get it. For people migrating from [00:36:00] Oaxaca, for instance, almost everybody came after.

So all the Oaxacans who came to the United States, hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people really hardly anybody. Qualified for amnesty because of that bill, which is one reason why legal status is such an enormous question for the Oaxacan community here in the U. S. So it, the, the discussion of that bill didn't acknowledge that and also by setting that date, it was, I think, very cynical because Mexico had what was called the Peso Shock in 1982, where the economic crisis in Mexico got so bad that Mexico had to devalue its currency.

And what that meant was that thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in Mexico lost their jobs and had to come to the United States. And by setting that date, January 1st of that year, what you were really saying is, none of those people are going to qualify for amnesty. So they were [00:37:00] already here. But also it didn't acknowledge that, you know, in the, that, that bill set up a a commission to study the causes of migration, supposedly.

And that commission came back and recommended the negotiation of a trade agreement between the U. S. and Mexico. And it said, well, in the short run, maybe this would result in the displacement of a lot of people, but in the long run, it would lead to the economic development of Mexico, and then people would have jobs and they wouldn't have to come here.

Well, that was another very, very cynical kind of thing, because the negotiations of NAFTA started not long after the report of that commission, and in fact, NAFTA did lead to the displacement of millions of people in Mexico. There were four and a half million migrants from Mexico living in the U. S.

when NAFTA went into effect and by 2010 it was [00:38:00] 12 and a half million people. So an enormous increase in people and the rise in Mexican living standards. Never happened. Well, that's not true. When López Obrador finally came into office he began taking measures to raise wages and raise the living standards in Mexico, which previous administrations had resisted bitterly because they wanted to attract investment.

And things have started to improve economically for workers and farmers in Mexico a little bit. But up until then, so being unable to face the roots of migration and its connections to corporate America and the way our government was on the one hand producing migration or doing things to produce migration on the other hand making The status of migrants, illegal criminalizing it here.

It was a really, a very difficult debate for people in [00:39:00] the immigrant rights movement. As a result, a lot of organizations said, well, MSD, we need MSD. Let's just forget about a lot of other stuff. Let's just get down to seat on what we paid a really bad price for it. Today I think there is a lot more discussion in the immigrant rights movement about what happens in Mexico and Central America in particular that causes people to come to the United States.

I think still there's not enough of a willingness to deal with the economic part of it. the poverty. So these days, the way it gets dealt with is mostly by talking about the violence in Honduras. For instance, San Pedro Sula, which is called the murder capital of the world. You know, I wrote a whole article about how did San Pedro Sula become such a violent place to begin with?

And what did it have to do with U. [00:40:00] S. companies going and growing bananas in Honduras? But in any case it gets put down, I think too much to violence, to the exclusion of the causes of the violence. What is the, what is the root cause of violence in Central American countries? The Civil War in El Salvador was fought about who was fighting on what side, what kind of changes were people proposing.

The more you unpeel it, the more you look at it, the more you see that this is really, again, about the economic and political relationship between the U. S. and China. Those countries. And so I think that books like Illegal People, like The Right to Stay Home, played a role in trying to get us to look more at this as a whole system, what produces migration, and then criminalizes migrants here.

I think that it's a very [00:41:00] limited accomplishment. Because we still have an extremely unjust immigration system. You know, we all hated Trump and the detention centers and, and his racist orders. But the reality is, is that we have more people crossing the border this last year than any other previous time in our history.

And we have thousands and thousands of people living in detention. In the United States in detention centers and in detention centers on the Mexican side of the border. And this is under a democratic administration. So, I think that we have to be real about how limited our impact has been up to now.

But, having said that, I think it is still a big advance for us to be able to talk. in this country, in the United States, about the roots of migration, and also be able to reach out to organizations and people and communities in Mexico and talk about, well, [00:42:00] okay, what is our, what should our relationship be?

Well, how do we work together? How are we going to be able to try and change this system together? I think those efforts are kind of only starting, really. I don't think there's nearly enough of it, but I think that's the future. That's where the change is going to come from.

Chris: And I can't stress enough, you know, how devoid of complexity and nuance most any political conversation has these days, and that most people don't go looking for it, in part because You know, most people haven't been taught.

So, you mentioned a little bit earlier, as you wrote in, in your book, The Right to Stay Home, about the consequences of mining companies, as an example, in, in Mexico. Foreign owned mining corporations. And Here in Oaxaca, it's very well known that these corporations undertake geological testing without the [00:43:00] consent of communities, that they lie to the communities about concessions when trying to push their way into the territory, and then sponsor community violence by dividing the people against each other through bribery, corruption.

Intimidation, threats, and sometimes assassination. And so, I'm curious, first, if you could offer a little bit more of what you've seen in this regard, and secondly, why do you think that in this example that, you know, Canadians, in the context of the one particular mine here in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, is a Canadian owned mine, why they have no idea that this is happening on foreign soil in their names?

You

David: know, I wrote a long article about San Jose del Progreso in the Vice Centrales in, in Oaxaca, and Fortuna Mine there, which is a Canadian, Canadian company. And I think this is [00:44:00] another way of seeing what this kind of, just to use shorthand, this free trade arrangement between the US, Canada and Mexico, what it really means for people on the ground.

Mexico in previous administrations changed this mining law so that it became possible. And the purpose of to make it possible for foreign corporation to get a mining concession anywhere in Mexico and develop a mine without having to get the consent of the people who live in the community around it.

Basically saying that, you know the Mexican government was entitled to sell off these concessions regardless of what the people there thought about it. And so the purpose of this was to, again, attract foreign investment into Mexico. This is part of the neoliberal policy that says [00:45:00] that the economic development policy of Mexico should be to sell pieces of Mexico to foreign investors, to foreign corporations.

And supposedly this money is going to make life better. For people in Mexico well, first of all, it's a very corrupt system, so the selling of mining concessions involves, you know, millions and millions of dollars that wind up in the pockets of those people who grant the concessions. So it was a source of enormous corruption in the Mexican government in granting those concessions and in passing that change in the law to begin with.

And then in fighting for changes in the legal system, the free trade set up, those mining corporations could then, basically, it gave them not only a kind of impunity against communities that protested about it, but in which they could even sue the Mexican government. If the Mexican government tried to stand in the way and say, well, you [00:46:00] can't develop the mine, then the mine could sue the Mexican government and say, well, you deprived us of potential profits and you owe us millions of dollars.

And there were decisions like the metal cloud decision that allowed for this kind of thing to happen. So what this meant is on the ground, you have mining mining concessions sold and mines being developed all over Mexico. In the face of local opposition, and the mine in San Jose de Progreso is a really good example of that, where you have a Canadian company that comes in and says, okay, we are going to, in fact, they weren't the originators of the mine, they basically bought a mine that had been played out by previous owner.

And so we are going to dump a lot of money into this and we are going to make it a producing mine and the impact on the community. We don't really care. And so the impact is really enormous. You know these are open pit mines. They're a scar on the land. They [00:47:00] contaminate the water, the aquifer, so that these farming communities can no longer support themselves in the same way.

In order to develop the mine, what they do is they divide the communities. And so, as you said, in San Jose de Progreso, they bought off the town's, the town's government who basically gave the company permission to do whatever it wanted to in spite of local opposition. Then when local opposition got organized to, to oppose it, the company cooperated with the with the local leaders that it had bought off to basically go after those leaders in a very violent way.

So, Bernardo Vazquez. who had was from this community. He had actually gone to the United States and become a farm worker in Petaluma, in California. And then seeing what was happening in his community, went back to San Jose de [00:48:00] Progreso and to and began leading the opposition. And he was then ambushed and assassinated.

Other people in his, around him were also killed, and then the violence went both ways. People on the other side got killed. And so this whole community became a warring camp, camps against each other. You know, I remember when I visited there, there are two taxi companies in this community. There's a taxi company that's associated with the People who are pro mine and the taxi company is associated with people who are against it.

And you better not get into the wrong taxi because you could, some terrible things could happen to you. I took pictures of these threats that were spray painted on the walls of, some of the irrigation canals there, Bernardo Vasquez, your time has come, you know that was before he was assassinated.

A lot of the people who work in the mine come from somewhere else, some of them from Canada[00:49:00] but it takes a few of the jobs in hand somehow. to certain people in the community there as a way of buying them off and giving them a stake in the continuation of the mine. And so what happens is that you have a community that's a continuing, a continuous war with itself.

And this happens all over Mexico. In fact, it's not just Mexico, this is happening in El Salvador, it's happening in Guatemala, and actually mostly by Canadian companies. So you ask, do people in Canada know about this? I think there are some journalists like Dawn Bailey who have Canadian journalists who have tried to write about it, and tried to make people in Canada aware of it.

I don't think that most people in Canada have the faintest idea of what those corporations are doing, and that's because I think the corporate media in Canada has very little interest in showing that, partly because, you know, they have the same basic set of economic interests that the mining corporations themselves do.

[00:50:00] Probably share, same shareholders, who knows? In any case That's something that could happen and that should happen if people in Canada became more aware of what these companies were doing and then began taking action in Canada to try to restrict them. I think it would have a big impact on the ability of these communities in Oaxaca to survive.

I think that San Jose the Progresso is going to be a war with itself and this continuing political violence is going to happen. Until the company, basically until the company leaves, really. I don't see any other solution, I don't see how the mine can continue operating there under any ownership and not have this war taking place there.

So, but I think that the way to get that company to leave is for people in Canada to take some action in cooperation and in solidarity with the people in that [00:51:00] community. So, maybe by Organizing delegations from Vancouver or Toronto down to San Jose del Progreso would be a way of helping that to develop.

That's possibly something that might happen, but basically you need that relationship in order, I think, in order to stop this from happening.

Chris: Hmm. Thank you. Yeah, and you know, of course it just ends up contributing to migration, right, and exile, displacement within those communities. And and so I'm curious, what do you think the right to stay home or the right to not migrate can offer us as modern people, as citizens or migrants in the context of the current crises and perhaps the crises to come?

You know, you mentioned that Immigration the numbers, the number of people coming into the United States over the last year has just been unprecedented. The number of migrants [00:52:00] flowing through Oaxaca, for example, in Southern Mexico right now is unprecedented and it really seems, you know, like.

not just my opinion, but in terms of statistics and predictions and all of these things, that it's only going to get more unprecedented. So I'm curious what you might, what you might think that this, this declaration, the right to stay home or the right to not migrate, might offer us going forward.

David: Well, I think it offers us something to fight for.

That it gives us a vision of what a future could and should look like in the communities where displacement is taking place. In San Jose de Progreso, for instance, the right to stay home means a community that's not at war with itself, which means that the mining operation has to end. But, Ending the mining operation doesn't necessarily mean that people are [00:53:00] going to have an educational system or a health care system that's capable of meeting their needs.

So you need political change in Oaxaca, San Jose de Progreso, and Mexico in general, that is able to deliver those things. For people. I think we could take that same thing and and look at people coming from Venezuela. There are a lot of Venezuelan migrants who are crossing Mexico coming to the U.

S. border. On the one hand, the U. S. government is sort of a little bit more friendly. to Venezuelan migrants, although it's still doing whatever it can at the border to try to keep people out. Because, you know, this gets used in the media in the U. S. as a way of saying, well, this is the proof that the socialist government in Venezuela is incompetent and corrupt and ought to be removed, which has been U.

S. policy for a long time. But in reality, the economic problems in [00:54:00] Venezuela would certainly be a lot less if Venezuela wasn't subject to the U. S. sanctions regime, which is basically sought to strangle the Venezuelan economy. And so the people who are leaving Venezuela, whether they're middle class people who are, you know, fed up with the problems of Caracas or whether they're poor people who have you know, have to migrate in order to survive those are due to U.

S. policy again. So really, the right to stay home means in the United States that people in the United States, progressive people especially, have to seriously take a look at what the impact of U. S. policies are on the people that are being subjected to them, and to begin with, cause no harm.

That would be a good starting place to stop those policies that are actively producing migration. You know, the people who drowned in the Mediterranean, those 600 people who [00:55:00] drowned in that horrible boating accident, who were they? A lot of them were Afghans. A lot of them were Iraqis. Why were they leaving?

What were they doing on that boat? They were the product of that U. S. war. Now, I was a very active, you know, opponent of, of the war. I went to Iraq twice to try to make connections with trade unionists and other people in Iraq who were trying to fight for kind of a progressive nationalist solution to the economic problems of Iraq in the wake of the occupation to end the occupation.

But you know, that's kind of what we need. We need to take responsibility for the impact of what this government has done. When we take a look at what the, what is going to happen to the people of Palestine and Gaza, [00:56:00] Under the bombardment, you know, if people were able to leave Gaza, there would be literally hundreds of thousands of people going wherever they could.

And the Middle East simply in order to get out from under the Israeli bombs. And those bombs are coming from where? They're coming from the United States, that military aid package. You know, you cannot have a military policy and a military aid package the way the U. S. passes them without its having enormous impacts on migration, on the displacement of people, and at the same time it also Produces impacts here in the U.

S. that we also need to take a look at and see what the relationship are. You know, people migrate in the U. S. as well, too. We have factories to close when Detroit stopped being an [00:57:00] auto manufacturing center and the Factories in Detroit closed, the car factories, thousands and thousands and thousands of auto workers became migrants in the U.

S., going from city to city to city, looking for. So the price of the economic crisis that exists for us isn't felt just by people in Mexico or Palestine or Iraq. It's felt here in the United States and in Canada too. These problems They require a political solution, you know, they require us to organize ourselves in a way that is strong enough to force political change on our government here, so that it takes responsibility for the past devastation.

And the past displacement and also stops doing the things that are going to keep on causing it in the future. And then I think we can think about kind of repairing the world. I think we have to repair the world, too, after this. But the first thing we have [00:58:00] to do is we have to stop hurting it. We have to stop the damage, and that means having enough political courage and enough political power to make our government do that.

That's a tall order. That's a tall order. I don't think it's something from today to tomorrow. But it's a long process. You know, I'm a, I grew up during the anti Vietnam War movement and the civil rights movement, and I saw this country at a time when it was possible and when we did it. So I'm the optimist.

I believe that it's within our power to do this. But looking at where we are right now, I think we have a long way to go. And so, you know, if what I do contributes is granito de arena to it, you know, a lo mejor.

Chris: Thank you so much, David. Yeah, it's definitely really, really important to hear words such as yours in a time of deep nihilism.

[00:59:00] And, and also the absence and I think the disregard of, of Elder Voices in our midst and in our movements. So, I deeply appreciate your willingness to speak with me and, and to our listeners today. And just finally, before we depart, how might our listeners find out more about your work?

How might they purchase your books?

David: I have a blog and a lot of what I write and the pictures that I take are up there and I put them up there pretty regularly. And so the way to find it is to Google my name, David Bacon, and the blog is called The Reality Check. And so if you Google that together, you'll find it and that's how you can connect.

Chris: Thank you so much, David.

David: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.