CLCS seminar by Richard Ek and Can Seng Ooi

1st Presenter (14.00 – 15.30): Richard Ek, Associate Professor

Department of Service Management, Lund University

Title: The Inhuman Service Society?

Please find the paper here:  EK working paper.pdf

Link to Richard’s research profile

Abstract: "The Inhuman Service Society" outlines how the inhuman gains terrain in society, and how inhuman figures express the inadequacy of humans in an extrapolated capitalism. The experience-seeking, sophisticated and resourceful tourist, is that figure not similar to the eloquent vampire? That the brain-eating zombie is a figure that symbolizes insatiable consumption is well known. Another, more or less familiar figure is the service worker, sometimes depicted as a robot, sometimes dehumanized in another ontological direction - turned into a slave. The inhuman in different poetic guises, imagines a service society in which some (inhuman tourists) are bound to always be served by others (objectified service workers). The service society is therefore an increasingly inhumane society, with branded cities, servicescapes and cadres of oppressed service workers. Further, it follows a certain spatial logic, the logic of camps. The all-inclusive tourist resort is a typical example of the inhuman service society as an organized spatiality in which different service discourses are materialized. There you have the passive nihilistic tourist and the oppressed service personnel, and you got the managerial practices that make both these two desubjectified figures inhuman. 

2nd Presenter (15.30 – 17.00): Can-Seng Ooi, Associate Professor

Department of International Economics and Management

Title: Tourism Policy Challenges

Link to earlier version of paper

Abstract: Many tourism policy studies draw three inter-related conclusions. One, tourism policy must be inclusive and require the support of different stakeholders. Two, a balanced approach to tourism  policy is needed to harness the benefits of tourism while mitigating negative effects. Three, tourism policies should  accentuate and maintain the cultural uniqueness and authenticity of the destination. It would seem that many tourism authorities are ignorant of local interests, unaware of the touristification of local cultures and uninterested in promoting local cultures. But many tourism authorities have demonstrated that they are aware of the issues just mentioned. They will concur with researchers on the need to be inclusive, to find a balanced approach to tourism development, to keep the uniqueness and authenticity of local cultural products. The disjuncture between researchers’ conclusions and tourism authorities’ intentions gives rise to  two questions: Are tourism authorities not doing the things they say they are doing? Or are tourism researchers ignorant of the complexity and nuances of policy making and have become too idealistic in their conclusions? This article answers these two questions.