Whose “Place” Is it Anyway?

I have just finished a terrifically positive, inspiring conversation with Ethan Gelber, co-founder of the Local Travel Movement in which we recognized that the essence of his movement and Conscious Travel is the same.

• All travel purchases are made locally even if the benefits do not always stay there.
• Travel is motivated by the differences that exist between origin and destination – we travel to see somewhere different than home. As the industrial model tends, over time, to standardize and homogenize, it contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. The Local Travel Movement is one path towards celebrating what makes a Place unique and scarce and, therefore, more valuable to guests and generate a higher return to hosts.
• Conscious Travel focuses on supporting hosts in celebrating and differentiating their “PLACES” as this is the only way in which they will be truly valued and can return real net benefit to all.

Not long after putting down the phone, my attention was drawn to the plight of the Cinqueterra.

This beautiful part of Italy appears under threat from a minority of its own locals. A local population of some 5000 residents is responsible for protecting what has been recognized as a world heritage site from the greed of a few “locals” who wish to tap into short term income associated with 3 million visitors. Years of work associated with revitalizing local crafts, developing local food and crafts and the creation and maintenance of a National Park have been halted. The region’s economy has suffered from the recession (caused largely by greedy bankers located miles away) and flashflooding.

It seems that a little tourism can be a good thing – when I visited the area in 1969, the villages were poverty stricken and in a state of dilapidation. A tourism industry provide the economic rationale for their restoration. But too much tourism can be harmful. More is not always better. Two communities, Vernazza and Monterosso along with the mountain paths that connect the five communities, were severely damaged in the storms of October 11th. While tourism activity was negatively affected, some also cite tourism along with climate change as a cause of the damage. Regular mantenace of the terraced hillsides has lagged as residents turn to more lucrative and less onerous occupations than farming. In 1951, about 3,500 acres were cultivated in the Cinque Terre. Today, there are fewer than 275.

I write this post in the hopes that my readers will share the link to the source of the video below. Film makers, Kristie Lee Weller and Sharon Boeckle of Harvestfilms, who had already chronicled the revitalization of the local economy, are seeking to raise $2500 to film the current conflict and draw attention to the issue.  Click here  to see the film and here to read their blog. 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1965817586/vendemmia-a-documentary-film/widget/video.html

The second reason for writing is to open up the conversation regarding the question: whose place is it anyway? Do non-residents like me and the American film-makers have the right or a responsibility to influence local opinion and show we care? If a place can be recognized as being of global significance, what safeguards and support can and should be given to local communities to protect that which is deemed as scarce?  The opinion broker, AVAAZ, has been effective in demonstrating that a global community can influence, even determine what happens in a locality.  How does that fit with an ethos of “self-determination” when local preference might be equated with “self-destruction” ??? Note: some of these questions parallel those raised in Andy Jerosz blog Challenges That Occur When You Meet the Locals discussed earlier here.

Regardless of your response to these questions, I urge you to help these film makers document the issue and its possible resolution. Given the doubling of tourism (as forecast by the UNWTO), you can safely expect that the Cinque Terra story will be commonplace and we’d better be ready to deal with this conundrum all over the world.

POSTCRIPT
For up to date information about Cinque Terra, please visit
http://www.cinqueterre.com/blogc

Challenges that Occur When You Meet the Locals

This post is in direct response to the latest thought provoking guest post by Andy Jarosz, owner of the 501 Places, on the Local Travel Movement Blog. The original article,  When Local Cultures Aren’t So Great, can be found here.   I thank you Andy for raising this topic and hope it will stimulate sustained discussion as, to me, it’s core to the topic of Conscious Travel. Parts of Andy’s post are repeated here in blue; my comments are in black.

Source: Andy Jerosz & Local Travel Movement

Travel exposes us to many strange sights and experiences. By setting foot beyond our own borders we might explore palaces and temples that we’ve seen before in movies; we might meet people of races we’ve never encountered and see their colourful national dress; we’ll probably hear many languages that we don’t understand.

Most of our experiences are overwhelmingly positive and reinforce for us the value of expanding our horizons through travelling. But what of those moments when we see things that make us very uncomfortable, or even angry? How do we react when we come face to face with those practices and local traditions that we view as morally wrong, yet have persisted for many centuries? ……. (In the original post, Andy cites two examples of culture shock at the place in his article)

How does one challenge such deep-rooted beliefs and hope to create a change? Or is it in fact our place to challenge these practices at all? Do we accept that we are witnesses to practices and behaviours that are derived from many generations, and that as witnesses we have no power other than that of observation?

Some will argue that observation without action makes us complicit in the wrong that is done. Others will say that by informing ourselves at first hand of some of the physical and mental abuse that takes place in the name of culture, we can become advocates for change and perhaps influence enough people to make a lasting difference.

Whatever the answer, there is no doubting the power of our travel experiences in exposing us to the many beliefs and value systems that exist throughout the world. What we do with those experiences is another matter altogether.

For me to frame a response to these deep questions, I had to define for myself what a society is and I came up with the following

Societies are groups of people who have shared a common geography (place) and history (time) and developed a culture i.e., a way of “making sense of their world” that works. This culture is based on a set of shared assumptions often called a worldview or paradigm.

A few decades ago there were many opportunities for travelers to experience “culture shock.”  (I refer to my first time in a Desticorp post here).  But with every year that passes there are fewer opportunities for such transformative encounters. Wade Davies, the Canadian ethno-botanist, has suggested that we are losing at least one unique culture approximately every two weeks.

Is it irony or a simply inevitable result of the “law of scarcity”  that we’re witnessing a rise in interest in local travel and a growth in the demand for “immersive cultural experiences” just at the point when most exotic cultures are being rendered  extinct?

Ideally the purpose of travel is to become aware that one’s own worldview is not the only one or necessarily the “right” one. If a traveler recognizes that then the term conscious travel will be well and truly justified for it will have caused the traveller to wake up and perhaps start to examine the unexamined assumptions that shape his or her perceptual filters.

Supposing your culture had lived in harmony with the natural world for thousands of years but was transported to a North American city out of the Amazon jungle, and perhaps Annie Leonard’s A Story of Stuff was translated into your native tongue so you could understand the local culture. Chances are that you would quickly form a judgment that our culture was highly destructive as it caused its citizens to fall into some form or trance or madness. Supposing too that your Amazonian culture had the power to turn off the electrical grid and you took action out of a desire to help right a wrong. You may have had the best of intents but were likely oblivious to the impact of such a seemingly curative act. Not surprisingly resistance by the local “natives” would have been fierce.

I support the Local Travel Movement because, by respectfully meeting and engaging with “locals,” (people whose perception of reality is different than ours), we can be woken up from the trance of our own culture – we can become conscious.  And this surely, is the deeper purpose behind travel. For all cultures are just that – a form of trance; a set of agreements that hold our collective worldview together. In short, local travel provides opportunities for us to become conscious and that has to be its biggest gift.

So as travelers to exotic communities, it would be wise to spend more time observing and understanding than judging and tampering – before taking well meaning action that righteously but unwittingly can unravel a complex cultural web we can poorly understand.

The Beauty, Sensuality and Transformative Power of Bread

Bread: the stuff of life.

Millions of people daily ask their God to “give them this day their daily bread.”

Millions also consume something akin to cardboard sold erroneously in the name of bread. It is stuffed hurriedly and unconsciously into millions of mouths as people rush to start their day.

Supposing we could change the way people think about, savour and consume this most staple of foodstuffs in the temperate regions of western world?

Perhaps the act of making and eating hand crafted bread – which has to be locally sourced – could help us slow down and in so doing reflect on the important stuff of life? Bread as a tool for consciousness raising.

Far fetched?  Not at all.  Here’s the inspiring story of Dan Lewis, a bread maker in New York, who is doing just that – changing the way we approach the making and eating of what would otherwise be a commodity.By teaching us to savour a staple like bread we might learn to savour our travel experiences, and rekindle a sense of place and wonder?

Let Dan tell you his story in this video and then read David Sampler’s inspiring account here.

Handmade Portraits: Wild Hive Farm from Etsy on Vimeo.

(P.S. the source of this tale was actor Edward Norton who just happened to be at the S.L.O.W. Life Symposium on an alternative form of travel held in the Maldives a week or so ago and that is another inspiring source of change stories. Catch his conversation with Mark Lynas on why tourism has to recognize that it is an extractive industry that must pay the full cost of the services it uses here.We’ll be adding some of the videos to The Conscious Travel Channel soon.)