Is travel just cultural consumption?

One of our core desires when traveling is to better understand our world and each other. But is traveling really the best way to achieve this?

If I had a dime for every time I was speaking to an environmentally conscious person who admitted that their one “environmental sin” was traveling, I would be traveling rather than sitting here writing this.

In today’s striving to be more open-minded and culturally connected, travel has been hailed in social circles as one of the few lasting goods that gives us leisure while increasing our understanding of the world. For many individuals struggling with the self-centeredness of modern-day capitalism alongside its focus of materialism, travel is a form to try and escape from this system by exploring new cultures and societies. Or so we think.

As culturally authentic as possible

I spent the majority of my life growing up in Southeast Asia due to the work of my parents. The region I lived in was a beautiful natural oasis when we first arrived, but when I left the country ten years later, not much had remained. The influx of tourism (especially low-cost backpacker tourists) had stimulated a rampant increase in both prostitution and drug-trade, and took its toll on the mentality and well-being of the population. This can be one of the bothersome traits of travel-giddy individuals — to subvert the material cost of traveling, at cost to its host population.

A further phenomena I realize is when I talk to others about the places I grew up in (note: I spent 18 years living in Asia); the most common response I get is “ah yeah, I’ve visited that region for two weeks” or “yeah I have been there multiple times”. Besides the fact that many people cannot differentiate visiting countries from living in them, it is more sobering that many do not realize they were never actually there.

Reality check: when you visit a country for three weeks, you barely scratch the surface of their cultural and linguistic complexity. It does not matter if your guide took you to visit their home village, or you by chance visited a local funeral service, or spent two weeks meditating in a monastery, or did a week-long trek “in the real part of the country”, or went to “hidden spots” you found on some travel blog, or spent a few nights in jail, or got a authentic religious/tribal tattoo, or — you get the idea. In this regard, we often mistake the charity of individuals welcoming us into their culture as validation of our cultural knowledge — it isn’t.

Photo by angpw napt on Unsplash

I remember talking to a friend about this who recapped that in his travel days he encountered a lot of discussions in hostels where individuals attempted to one-up each other in their “authentic cultural experiences” that were supposed to validate that they, unlike all others, had really understood their host culture. It led me to wonder why, in an age where we strive to be less materially focused and rid ourselves of our colonial roots (at least us Westerners), we try to be so possessive of another culture?

Travel as consumptive behaviour

I have drawn the conclusion that, in our attempts to throw of our capitalist behaviour, we have moved from consuming products to (in some degree) consuming cultures. By visiting other cultures and creating “culturally authentic” experiences, we run the risk of consuming cultures rather than experiencing them. The irony is, even though we believe we are becoming more open-minded, experiencing a plethora of different cultures can end up making us close-minded instead. This is expressed in the following attitudes (not exhaustive):

• I am not materialistic because I am collecting experiences not things
• I understand certain cultures in a way others don’t
• This culture has helped me understand myself better

After reading Ashely L. Crouch’s article regarding capitalistic mysticism, I would even go so far as to argue that cultural consumption can tie into our contemporary (capitalistic) self-help longing, where travel and cultures become a means in the end of “finding ourselves” rather than actually finding out about the culture. In the same way we dispose of the products we consume, when we travel frequently we are more likely to dispose of the cultures we visit.

Photo by Evan Krause on Unsplash

From consumption to appreciation

When interacting with other cultures, I assume you have the same desire as I do: to leave countries in a better place after your visit than before — or at the very least not in a worse place. Additionally, I assume you are as fed up as I am with the way Western capitalist is ingrained in our behaviour. Neither of us wants to approach other cultures with the intent of simply consuming them.

So how can we avoid cultural consumption?

1. Travel less. When we travel (i.e. spend time in countries outside of our linguistic, cultural and geographic sphere), the truth is that we often end up creating more harm than good. This happens especially we approach cultures with any of the following attitudes:
   (1) Reducing their culture to a notch in our travel belt, (2) seeing their culture through the lens of self-improvement, or (3) robbing the country of rightful tourist income by scrounging on our spending.
2. Speak less about the places you visit. If you truly want to visit a culture for the benefit of understanding that culture, then strive to talk more qualitatively than quantitatively about that area. If your visit to a country can be reduced to 12 insta stories, you have taken a step into reducing that culture toward others. The less people you talk to about the places you’ve visited, the more you can control the narrative you give and, if you really are interested in sharing authentic experiences, the more you can do this.
3. Understand your own culture before trying to understand others. When I speak to individuals that long for certain spiritual or cultural conditions found in other regions, I believe many have been disappointed by the spiritual/cultural conditions of their home country. If this is the case for you (it certainly is for me!), endeavour to understand your own culture first: visit spiritual places in your culture, seek out conversation with the people groups you most ardently disagree with, identify the cultural vices you carry. Why?
   Because no matter how many cultures you visit, you will always bring along the problems and attitudes which you are responsible for. Since all cultures are made of fallible humans, sooner or later, these same patterns will surface in every region. If you are not happy in your current culture, to a certain degree, you will not be happy anywhere else.
4. Seek to help people from other cultures in your own country. It is ironic to me how often we aim visit other cultures, but ignore/sideline/judge individuals from other cultures that inhabit our own. These people do not have the luxuries that we do when we travel, and they are often candidly honest in admitting they do not feel at home in our culture. Rather than by traveling to other countries, the most effective way to grow in intercultural interaction is to consciously create communities with migrants and refugees that inhabit your own country.

We all have our own consumerist patterns. We are subject to a belief system that puts us and our well-being before that of our community, country, world. Sadly, this affects most parts of our lives, even our travels. By traveling less and increasing our understanding of our own region and engaging with sojourners in our culture, we can take a step in throwing off the capitalistic yoke that reduces cultures to objects we can consume, and countries to notches on our belt. Who knows, after engaging in intercultural communities, maybe we will even want to travel less? Countless host cultures and the environment would thank us for it.

Sidenote: I made the realisation in the past years that my own time spent living abroad made me equally prideful in relating to the countries I lived in. I too behaved like a self-proclaimed cultural expert (and sometimes still do). The reality is, even though I spent more than ten years living in a Southeast Asian country, I had barely scratched the surface in understanding the host culture. The more you know about a culture, the less you do :)