The Archaeology of Citizenship

3. Tourism and Citizenship

3 Tourism and citizenship At the dawn of the twentieth century, the diversity of America’s citizenry was increasing exponentially. With the exception of the relatively recent exclusion of individuals of Chinese heritage in 1882, people from all parts of the world were entering the United States in search of equality, freedom , and all that the “American dream” embodied. American politicians languished over the nation’s new citizenry and expressed xenophobic fears about their new multicultural empire. No longer able to routinely massacre or displace large populations of non-Anglo ethnicities, pundits proposed and initiated methods of cultural assimilation as a solution to turning a heterogeneous population into a homogeneous one. Many twentieth-century thinkers postulated that a diverse citizenry would lead to political strife and social upheaval. Native American boarding schools as well as orphanages and almshouses for the poor were just a few of the many Americanization initiatives enacted during the Progressive Era to quell and subdue what were perceived as troubling cultural and social differences. This chapter and the next profile two citizen-crafting processes at work during this time period. This chapter takes the first of these processes, tourism, seriously by seeing it, as a number of scholars have argued, as an expression of American nationality, exceptionalism, and a love for one’s nation. Tourism initially began as an “expensive status marker” (Bruner 2005, 196) for upper-class Anglo-Americans that served to naturalize their class status and remind others that the right to tour was restricted to a select, wealthy few. But as resorts and tourist destinations grew in size and numbers and the practice of touring became more popular, tourism started to be seen as a unique facet of American identity and citizenship irrespective of one’s economic position. Yet in reality not all could afford Tourism and Citizenship · 73 to partake in leisure, which meant that not all American citizens could fulfill their civic responsibilities as tourists. This chapter looks at how one of the most popular tourist sites in the western United States, Mount Lowe Resort and Railway (MLRR), provided object lessons on what constitutes American citizenship and identity . At MLRR, middle- and upper-class tourists visiting the resort learned behavior expected of American citizens who shared their socioeconomic standing. Following the lead of other tourism theorists, I liken the practice of tourism to a ritual. Rituals remove members from their culture and place them in a temporary state of being that anthropologists have termed “liminality.” This liminal existence has “few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state” (Turner 1969, 94), meaning that the activities, environments , and expected behaviors differ vastly from the previous state of being to which those undergoing a ritual are accustomed. Individuals who partake in rituals together form an “intense comradeship,” which reinforces cohort membership, the formation of a collective thinking and class solidarity, and the emergence of a shared set of values and beliefs (94). By seeing tourism as a ritual that encourages the development of a group consciousness among individuals involved in the ritual, the practice of tourism becomes a vehicle through which certain classes of society form an identity separate from those excluded from the ritual. The ritual of tourism in historic America served to divide and segregate Americans into different classes of citizens. Tourists repeatedly viewed exhibits that affirmed widely held beliefs about biological differences between whites and nonwhites. Native Americans and other castigated racial and ethnic groups were placed on display in exhibits at tourist sites and World’s Fairs that highlighted physiological differences between the toured and the touring (Burton 1983; Rydell 1984). By repeatedly encountering these displays of difference, white tourists developed a sense of cultural superiority over those who were not able to tour or were being toured. Noted tourism theorist Dean MacCannell chooses to describe the process of “sightseeing” as a “ritual performed to the differentiation of society ,” where “the totality of differences between social classes, life-styles, racial and ethnic groups, age grades (the youth, the aged),” and “political and professional groups” is made evident to tourists (1999, 11, 13). The following chapter, “The Archaeology of Citizenship,” looks at a very different citizen-making ritual underway at the resort, a process that 74 · The Archaeology of Citizenship targeted the resort’s Mexican immigrant employees. Although lessons in proper citizenship for employees and guests took place simultaneously at the resort, the lessons were...