Intercultural Understandings
Re-visioned for Fun and Leisure: African Cities and Pharrell Williams' “Happy”
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wairimu Njambi, William O'Brien
The 2013 song “Happy,” written and produced by performer Pharrell Williams, can be viewed as a useful tool in fighting stereotypes about cities in Africa. The song, along with its music video, was a global phenomenon that spawned numerous tribute videos, including examples from residents of Ouagadougou, Lomé, Bujumbura, Harare, and elsewhere, replicating the original’s visual presentation of ordinary people dancing in city streets. This paper uses tools from cultural studies to show how such productions challenge the common image of African urban despair and decay, replacing it with images of unrestrained fun and leisure. Of course, stereotypes are durable and hard to dismantle, but we suggest that these “Happy” tributes help to undermine emergent “Afropessimist” views, which suggest that continent-wide, urban poverty, despair, decay, and conflict has deepened to the point of hopelessness. In particular, these tribute videos’ representations of middle class urban lifestyles provide effective alternatives to such prevailing views of African misery. They provide examples of people taking charge of how their cities are represented, potentially re-writing urban Africa as spaces for tourists to embrace rather than avoid.
Culture and Social Interactions: Accessing the Frontline Employee and Their Lived Experiences
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lynn Beckles
Increased access to travel alongside a growing multi-ethnic global population gives rise to a myriad of cultural influences that may be in effect within the social interactions that occur within tourism service experiences. The role of the front-line employee as a co-creator of value and its consequences for creating a quality service experience is well researched in the services literature. In discussing service quality in the tourism and hospitality industry, there are a myriad of contested roles and theories of the front-line employee in the co-creation of the service experience. A review of the methodologies that inform the empirical studies embracing cultural studies in both services and tourism is examined and the challenges inherent in the articulation and commoditization of the lived experience discussed. This critical discussion highlights the ontological and epistemological concerns that are raised when including cultural perspectives in the delivery of quality tourism service experiences. The discussion responds to the call for innovative methodologies that can be used to explore the ever changing nature of culture across time and spatial contexts and the need to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of both services and tourism knowledge. As the primary agent in the production and delivery of quality service experiences, theorizing the perspective of the front-line employee, provides an opportunity to explore the latent potential within culture that may have social, economic and political influence on what is available should be kept sacred, not available for commercial use within host communities.
UNESCO Designation of Archeological Sites : Managing the Challenges and Opportunities of Tourism at the Ancient Temples of Angkor, Cambodia
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Claudia G Green
In 1992 the temples of Angkor, the largest archeological site (400 sq km) in the world, received UNESCO World Heritage designation. Subsequently, there has been growth in the numbers of tourists. The Angkor temples are expected to receive 2 million visitors in 2020. With the growth in international and domestic visitors, the governing body APSARA, is faced with the challenge of maintaining the cultural integrity of the area and meeting the expectations of the visitors. Overtourism is a threat to the physical, social and cultural integrity of the area. In 2018 the Tourism Authority of the Kingdom of Cambodia invited the Pace University Research Team to collaborate on a project to assess the nature of the increasing numbers of international and domestic visitors (overtourism) to temples of Angkor. Working with the Cambodian tourism officials in cross cultural teams, we developed a two page survey, piloted tested it and administered it to 750 visitors in the temples, city and the airport. The results of the survey provide recommendations on survey develop, language, multicultural research team development as well as strategies for addressing the diverse needs and expectations of multicultural and multigenerational visitors to cultural heritage sites and visitor interpretation centers.
