2. El supercapacitor o EDLC
2.7. Banco de Supercapacitores
2.7.2. Dimensionamiento del banco de SCs
‚What are you doing here?‛ The American woman suddenly lowered the shiny Nikon from her eye, having just trained its peering lens directly upon me, and stared at me directly, her view now unmediated by the camera’s authenticating frame < To say our encounter, here at the gateway to a Miao village deep in the misty folded mountains of southwestern China, was laden with irony would be an
understatement. Not only was this American tourist meeting another American among the women and men welcoming her to their village with an elaborate ceremony of music, wine, and song, but I was myself dressed – like the rest of the welcomers – in elaborate Miao festival costume < The dissonance between the humor of my role playing and the woman’s shock and anger at the immediate and complete bursting of her carefully honed bubble of authenticity speaks volumes about the forces at work in the ethnic tourist encounter.571
Tourism scholars have long argued that many tourists strive to discover the ‘authentic’ in a destination.572 Their travels are a quest to locate the ‘reality’ of a place and/or encounter.573 They do not want the standardised tourist experience but, rather, an ‘authentic’ one; one that allows them to discover the ‘real’ country, the ‘real’ village, the ‘real’ people, of the destination they are visiting. Tim Oakes’s recounting of his meeting with a group of discriminating American tourists informs us of this quest. His presence within the host Miao community – and his role playing dressed as a Miao woman – shattered the illusion of authenticity for the American woman who encountered Oakes.
570 Hands up Holidays, www.handsupholidays.com, Accessed 7 February 2011.
571 Tim Oakes, Tourism and Modernity in China (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 1.
572 For example, see: Oakes, Tourism and Modernity in China; MacCannell, The Tourist; Urry, The
Tourist Gaze.
Oakes presence in the Miao village meant that not only had the American woman not found the ‘real’ China but, also, the ‘traditional’ village she was visiting had already been infiltrated by Americans before her. Oakes had crushed the romanticism of what was going to be an ‘authentic’ encounter with peoples living traditional lives in the ‘untouched’ mountains of China. Arguably, volunteer tourists seek a local experience via the backstage well away from the tourist traps, as did the American tourists Oakes encountered.574 And as with the American woman in Oakes’s story, volunteer tourists are under a similar illusion that they will have an unmediated encounter with people who are untouched by modernisation and who they view as living simpler lives. The seeds of this illusion start with the way that volunteer tourism is marketed as a people to people, ‘authentic’ experience:
This summer you will live like a local and commute to remote communities by canoe.575
You’ll become part of the local community and have the kind of authentic cultural experiences that backpackers and package tourists daren’t even dream about.576
In the tourism literature, much has been much written about authenticity. Although earlier writings discuss the concept as built upon the notion of unchanging ‘pure’ cultures there has been a noticeable shift in recent years with acknowledgement in the literature that no culture or society remains static. Authenticity, therefore, is a social construct. Individuals now live in a fragmented, post-modern and globalised world that makes their day-to-day existence confused and difficult to interpret. Consequently, individuals are seeking meaning in their lives beyond the increasing commodification.577 The
574 K. A. Carter, Volunteer tourism: An exploration of the perceptions and experiences of volunteer tourists and the role of authenticity in those experiences (Lincoln University: Masters of Applied Science Thesis, 2008), 72.
575 Volunteer Eco Students Abroad [VESA] flyer. Distributed at the University of Tasmania in March 2012.
576 i-to-i, www.i-to-i.com, Accessed 15 July 2011.
577 Rebecca Sims, ‚Food, place and authenticity: Local food and the sustainable tourism experience,‛ Journal of Sustainable Tourism 17, 3 (2009): 325.
search for authenticity becomes part of this process, an ‘elusive’ search for the non-commodified ‘authentic’ culture.
Tourists from western, developed countries have an obsession with the ‘authentic’ experience, yet, ‚what counts as authentic < depends on the cultural lens of the seekers‛.578 This is demonstrated by Shepherd in his discussion of what is viewed as ‘authentic’ Chinese food when dining in America:
Chinese food served by Chinese people in a Chinese restaurant < to look ‘Chinese’ is seemingly naturally more authentic than Chinese food cooked by a Salvadoran immigrant at a fast food restaurant in an American suburban shopping mall. Yet this apparent authenticity is largely dependent on fulfilling the criteria used by, in this case, Americans to evaluate what constitutes ‘real’ Chinese food and a ‘real’ Chinese restaurant. For example < not only is the food served in American Chinese and Beijing restaurants different in taste, but so, too, are the aesthetic markers that mark a restaurant as Chinese <579
This example not only illustrates that ‘authentic’ Chinese food cannot exist, but, ultimately, what is considered to be ‘authentic’ is based solely on the subjective criteria of individuals. An understanding of the criteria is important for the tourism industry as it provides an indication of the ‚direction in which authenticity is sought‛ and, therefore, provides tourism operators with an insight into what needs to be offered to meet the desires of tourists.580
Authenticity is an objective truth in the minds of tourists. This belief is perpetuated by a tourism industry that makes distinctions in their marketing between the inauthentic ‘plastic’ industrialised world in which ‘westerners’ live and the pristine and unspoilt traditional ‘non-western’ cultures which can offer tourists an ‘authentic’ experience that will transport them back in time to
578 Shepherd, ‚Commodification, culture and tourism,‛ 191. 579 Shepherd, ‚Commodification, culture and tourism,‛ 191.
580 Shepherd, ‚Commodification, culture and tourism,‛ 191 (quote) and Kjell Olsen, ‚Authenticity as a concept in tourism research: The social organisation of the experience of authenticity,‛ Tourist Studies 2, 2 (2002): 161.
a more simple ‘authentic’ existence.581 Such a portrayal demonstrates that ‚authenticity is valuable only where there is perceived inauthenticity‛.582 Promoting destinations in this way draws out the ‘Otherness’ of locations that attracts tourists.
The search for greater meaning in a modern existence takes individuals on a journey in search of ‚a lost authentic and primitive self‛, and it is the past that holds the key.583 An assumption is made that the past is more ‘authentic’ than the present because it offers a culture in its pure original form.584 Destinations are therefore sought where the cultural practices most closely imitate inherited traditions perceived as from an ‘authentic’ past. This search results in tourists seeking an alternative that they believe is located in ‚Others more ‘primitive’‛ than themselves.585
The concern that tourism development changes local cultures for the worse was raised earlier in this chapter. It is difficult to know, however, to what extent tourism can be held responsible for changes to culture. Such concerns rely on the presumption that tourism impacts can be easily measured against ‚the existence of pristine pre-tourist cultures‛. This presumption is unrealistic because no society remains constant. Socio-cultural practices continually adapt to keep pace with the many internal and external influences societies face.586 Yet it is the attraction of a ‘different’ culture that tourists seek. If a traditional society is influenced by western tourist influences, then that society may no longer hold appeal for tourists, or ‚< in other words, as ‘they’ become more like ‘us’, our desire for them is said to diminish‛.587 The merging of cultures to a point where differences diminish may have an impact upon volunteer tourism. It is possible that the appeal of volunteer tourism as a
581 John P. Taylor, ‚Authenticity and sincerity in Tourism,‛ Annals of Tourism Research 28, 1 (2001): 9 – 13.
582 Taylor, ‚Authenticity and sincerity in Tourism,‛ 10. 583 Taylor, ‚Authenticity and sincerity in Tourism,‛ 10.
584 Olsen, ‚Authenticity as a concept in tourism research,‛ 160 – 161. 585 Shepherd, ‚Commodification, culture and tourism,‛ 192. 586 Shepherd, ‚Commodification, culture and tourism,‛ 185. 587 Shepherd, ‚Commodification, culture and tourism,‛ 186.
tourism pursuit may wane if the assistance a volunteer tourist provides to a community contributes towards a less ‘authentic’ culture.
The introduction of alternative tourism products has been criticised for perpetuating Eurocentric ideals as the tourism industry seeks to meet the tourist desire for authenticity. Disregarding local communities, tourism operators look to provide tourist experiences where the tourist has a sense of stepping back to a time more primitive and untouched and that is rarely viewed by the ‘western’ eye.588 It is the appeal of locating an ‘authentic’, people to people experience that is, arguably, why NGOs are not given a presence in the marketing of volunteer tourism. It is unlikely that volunteer tourists, just like the American tourists in Oakes’s story, want their vision of authenticity infiltrated by those they view as ‘outsiders’. The dream of authenticity involves people from an earlier time living traditionally and/or primitively. An educated NGO representative does not fit into this picture. Volunteer tourism is, thus, modelled as an unmediated process even though in reality it is very much a mediated one.
Conclusion
Although this thesis predominantly places volunteer tourism within a development framework, it is also important to examine it within the context of tourism because it is positioned as a tourism concept within scholarly literature. Volunteer tourism is firmly portrayed and widely understood as a tourism product despite its not-for-profit, voluntary sector origins.
This chapter has examined how tourism has evolved to keep pace with societal demands and the changing tastes of individuals in a globalised world. These changes have culminated in many people searching for greater adventure and challenge in their tourism experience, not to mention, a ‘local and authentic’ one, as well as a means to enhance cultural capital.
Furthermore, concern over the detrimental impacts of mass tourism has led a drive to develop alternative tourism products that are considered more ethical and low-impact products. Volunteer tourism, arguably, meets these desires and demands.
Tourism in developing countries has evolved in a comparable way to that of development. Tourism and development have had to evolve beyond the economic imperative to account for social, cultural and environmental consequences. The alternative tourism products that have been developed as a result of this move not only concentrate on eco-friendly and sustainable products but also include partnerships between tourism operators and not- for-profit NGOs. Significantly, this chapter has argued that NGOs play a key role in volunteer tourism and are a common conduit between host and volunteer tourist.
This chapter argues that volunteer tourism has evolved from charitable origins. Initiated by the not-for-profit voluntary sector, volunteer tourism has been, overtime, appropriated by the tourism sector as an alternative tourism product. One of the appeals of volunteer tourism is that it is viewed as providing an ‘authentic and local’ experience. Although modelled as an unmediated ‘people to people’ or ‘host to volunteer’ tourist process, it is in reality a mediated process where the volunteer tourist is linked to a host via a NGO. The following chapter narrows the focus on volunteer tourism from the wider tourism context discussed in this chapter. An examination of the literature draws out the ways in which volunteer tourism is understood by scholars and identifies the research carried out thus far in the volunteer tourism field.