Two summers ago, my family took a trip to Ireland, and I spun several quick columns out of that excursion. Last summer, we took a Mediterranean cruise, but it has taken me a while to process my reaction to that trip. Let me explain.
My family was introduced to cruising by my generous in-laws, who treated the whole clan to a cruise to Bermuda to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary. I had always been cruise averse, but once I stepped off the gangplank, I was won over. We have taken several more cruises since then. Still, I have been a somewhat snobby cruiser, preferring cold water and shore leave in “real” place rather than touristy ports of call. I’ve never been on a warmwater cruise, but have avoided what I imagine them to be: ships full of revelers visiting exquisite beaches surrounded by razor wire to keep local people at bay. No Cabo San Cabo for me.
Last summer, we flew to Athens, boarded a ship, and cruised to Santorini, Rhodes, Cyprus, Turkey (Miletus, Magnesia and Ephesus) and Mykonos. Our destinations were not the bustling Northern European cities we visited on our Baltic cruise, but neither were they the Caribbean beach resorts I have shunned. They were something in between.
I got my initial clue to that ten minutes into our tour around Santorini. Riding a bus to our first stop of the day, our guide told us that about ninety percent of Santorini’s economy involves tourism. Ninety percent. We heard similar figures from guides leading many of our shore-excursion tours. My first reaction was disappointment. I didn’t like the idea of partaking in experiences created expressly for the tourist trade. I lamented the lack of authenticity.
Over time, I changed my view. Yes, we were engaging in shore-leave activities targeted at tourists. At the same time, however, nearly everywhere I looked, I saw local agency. The people whose towns and historic sites we were visiting had an active role in shaping and telling the stories of the places they called home. While dependent on income from tourism, they were in charge, at least to some extent. That made all the difference in the world.
And I saw something else, the reality in places I had too casually written off as mere tourist traps. Santorini was not always a tourist attraction. But, and this is the important part, work in the tourist trade in Santorini today is just as real to contemporary residents as fishing and other traditional occupations were to their ancestors. So much for my easy dichotomy between real places and tourist spots.
My discovery of local agency in the tourist destinations on our Mediterranean cruise reminded me of two very different experiences I had decades ago during a previous life as an anthropologist. In the early 1990s I went to Santa Fe, N.M., to co-chair a seminar at the School of American Research. One afternoon, we visited San Ildefonso Pueblo. I was particularly interested in that field trip because Nancy Jo had given me a beautiful little pot, made by San Ildefonso potter Barbara Gonzalez, as a wedding present.
When we visited, San Ildefonso was essentially a residential neighborhood where some of the houses had small pottery shops. The place was all but deserted, and I felt quite ill at ease, as if I were a prowler.
Not long after my disquieting visit to San Ildefonso, I visited Canterbury Shaker Village with a class of graduate students I was teaching at Plymouth State University. At Canterbury Shaker Village, I had the exact opposite of my San Ildefonso experience.
During a tour, our guide explained why the Shakers had opened their village to visitors: their hope that by putting their way of life on display, they might attract new converts. That simple statement put my hosts in charge of my visit and warded off the discomfort I had felt in San Ildefonso.
When I visited Canterbury Shaker Village, there were still two living Shakers. My tourist destination was their home. Telling me why I had been invited in was an act of agency on their part, and by exercising that agency, they gave me a gift. That expression of their own interests made them more than quaint historical throwbacks performing for tourists.
In short, my Shaker hosts made me feel that I was not a grudgingly tolerated voyeur at a historical/cultural zoo. Rather, they cleared the way for a conversation about their world and mine, a conversation as free as it could be from the often-awkward power relations that can surround interactions between tourists and local residents.
And isn’t that the point of setting out from home to visit other places, having the chance to converse with and learn from people and cultures that are both similar to and different from our own?