Never-ending Local Beauty: Neo-Exoticism in Tourism Activities and Online Media Narratives

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the construction of cultural-related-locality discourses in tourism activities and media narratives that cannot be separated from market civilization in Indonesia. With the post-colonial exotics framework by Huggan (2001), we will analyze data derived from our field research in Banyuwangi regarding cultural activities undertaken by local actors in welcoming tourist. In addition, we will also analyze the data from online media narratives which bring the issues of local cultures and communities in Banyuwangi. We argue that through various cultural activities and media narratives under market civilization, local people and cultures are having new discursive constructions which emphasize the significance of beautiful, unique, attractive, exotic, traditional and glamorous cultural products with new invested-meanings that relate to the torusim market as well as the transformation the hegemonic stereotyping paradigm of eastern subject.

Neo-Exoticism Discourses in Indonesian Online Media: Normalizing Cultural Tourism Regime amid Market Economy

“…Huggan called the condition as post-colonial exotic. Adopting Huggan's post-colonial exotic to analyze online media reports on cultural events, two of the the authors formulated a concept called "neo-exoticism" to refer to discourses that emphasize the significance of transforming local cultures into glamorous products with new meanings to support the tourism industry (Setiawan & Subaharianto, 2018). In neo-exoticism, as the authors argued in our earlier work, media constructed various discourses about the efforts of post-colonial governments in producing extensive cultural events based on ethnicity to attract-tourists.…”

Pytanie 106: Jak odpowiadać na potrzeby egzotyki w ramach turystyki kulturowej?

“…Turystyka Kulturowa nr 130 (1/24) marzec 2024 www.turystykakulturowa.org DOI: http://dx. doi.org/10.62875/tk.v1i130.1472 przyczyną a co skutkiem -jest zjawisko określane mianem neo-exoticism [Setiawan, Subaharianto 2019] oraz słowem culture z dodatkiem phony ("nieprawdziwa"), fake ("fałszywa") itp. Jako przykład występowania zjawiska "sztucznej egzotyczności" może posłużyć niemal obowiązkowe odwiedzanie przez turystów przyjeżdżających do Kenii i Tanzanii miejsc zamieszkiwanych przez Masajów [Salazar 2009].…”