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Title
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Risky encounters? Risk in travel narratives of niche tourists from
Poland to the former Soviet Union / Lud 2012, t. 96
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Description
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Lud 2012, t. 96, s. 75-92
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Creator
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Horolets, Anna
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Date
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2012
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Subject
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antropologia turystyki, czas wolny, Związek Radziecki
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extracted text
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Lud, t. 96, 2012
Risky encounters? Risk in travel narratives of niche tourists from Poland...
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ANNA HOROLETS
University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS)
Warsaw
Poland
RISKY ENCOUNTERS?
RISK IN TRAVEL NARRATIVES OF NICHE TOURISTS FROM
POLAND TO THE FORMER SOVIET UNION1
One of the important motivations in tourism is the search for difference and
the exotic. In the case of niche tourism, be it low budget backpacking or adventure tourism, breaking free from the daily routines and indulging in the unknown
seems to be of particular pertinence. In the article I aim at demonstrating one
type of experience that is used in the construction of difference in niche tourists’
travel narratives. I will focus on risk, and treat it not only as a lived experience
of travel but also as a figure of travel narratives, thus linking its practical and semiotic
aspects. I will consider the ways in which risk is involved in constituting the meanings of travel and in drawing demarcation lines between „hosts” and „guests”
(cf. Smith, ed., 1989). I hope that tackling the issues of risk and the search for the
exotic can contribute to anthropological debates on tourism in Europe (Boissevain, ed., 1996), especially since it involves paying attention to the practices and
contexts of „othering” that are not always obvious.
Niche travel from Poland to the former Soviet Union:
research material
The empirical material for this article is derived from an on-going research
project „The cultural and social meanings of travel to the former Soviet Union in
1
An earlier shorter version of the paper was published in Polish (Horolets 2009b). This article is
a considerably extended and modified version. I thank the two anonymous reviewers of „Lud” for their
useful comments, yet all the shortcomings of the final version of the text are solely my responsibility.
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Anna Horolets
the narratives of Polish niche tourists”2. The practice of self-organized low budget active tourism to the countries of the former Soviet Union (excluding Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which are currently the UE members) undertaken by the
educated young adults3 from Poland is analyzed within the broader framework
of postsocialist transition and Europeanization. After 1989 the number of Polish
tourist visitors to the countries of the former Soviet Union (excluding Ukraine)
has steadily decreased. In a survey on tourist destinations conducted in 2009,
only 3% of the respondents mentioned Russia as a country where they travelled
for leisure in the last 20 years, in a similar survey conducted in 1993 the number
of people who claimed they travelled to Russia or former Soviet Union in the last
20 years amounted to 18% (Polacy o swoich wyjazdach... 2009: 6). Research by
the World Tourism Organization demonstrated that only from 2007 to 2008 the
number of Polish tourists travelling to Russia dropped by 18,55%, while the decrease between 2004 and 2008 was by 44,55%4. In statistical terms more people
go „to the West” than „to the East”. Yet, the practices of those who choose the
latter destination can be viewed as practices of drawing alternative mental maps
(cf. Norton 2002: 50-51) of the postsocialist East as well as alternative images of
the past.
The empirical material was gathered by the means of in-depth narrative interviews and observation as well as through the Internet: I surveyed fora, blogs
and sites devoted to the selected forms of travel and destinations (e.g. going to
Siberia, Baikal lake and Sajany mountains in particular; Kamchatka; Mount
Elbrus, Kolskij Peninsula; Pamir and Tien-Shan mountains in order to do trekking, mountaineering or kayaking). These tours took place in the period between
1998 and 2011, mostly in summer, with the exceptions of few winter tours. Niche
tourists prefer wildlife and nature sites to cultural sites although overall they can
be called omnivorous in their taste for tourist attractions. Importantly, they often
2
The project started in 2008; in 2010 it was financially supported by Warsaw School of Social
Sciences and Humanities as a statutory grant no. BST/WNHiS/01/2010.
3
The age of my interlocutors ranged from 20 to 56 years, with the prevalence of young adults in
their thirties and late twenties. In terms of the position in social stratification system they can be placed
within middle class on the basis of income as well as lifestyles. It has to be noted that sociologists estimate that over a quarter of Polish post-1989 middle class (approx. 25% of the population) is constituted
by intelligentsia (specialists) and their share in the class is continuously growing due to the increasing
availability of higher education (Domański 2000: 15; Wasilewski 2006: 79, 84). At the same time the
use of term the „intelligentsia” cannot be limited to income and life style but also has an ethical dimension. In Andrzej Walicki’s work, for instance, it is emphasized that this group is characterized by
a particular life path that makes intelligentsia representatives sensitive to the fate of those who are worse
off than themselves: less educated and less wealthy, the working class and peasants (Walicki 2007). Not
being able to elaborate on this point due to the limitations of space and different aim of this article, I only
would like to signal that all my interlocutors are intelligentsia in the neutral sense and most of them also
share intelligentsia ethos as outlined by Walicki.
4
These calculations are based on World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) data with regard to outbound tourism from Poland. I would like to thank WTO office in Spain for providing this information
for this research project.
Risky encounters? Risk in travel narratives of niche tourists from Poland...
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emphasize that they are interested in meeting local people who are also a kind
of „tourist attraction” to them. The word „travel” in the title of the project is used
instead of „tourism” because it is an emic term. My interlocutors and the authors
of Internet accounts describe their activities by the word travel (podróż) rather
than tourism (turystyka) in order to emphasize the authenticity of their experiences and the difference from mass tourists (cf. Hall and Page 2006: 5, 78).
Therefore the terms „niche tourists” and „travelers” are used interchangeably
in the article.
For the purposes of this article, I have selected fragments of interviews and
written texts containing the representations of risk and danger in travel accounts.
Despite acknowledging that the perceptions and representations of risk by local
residents can be rather diverse, I will not contrast the two in a systematic way.
First, my aim is to focus on tourists. Second, there is no single bounded group of
local residents in my material5. I will present several examples of what travelers
perceive as risk-taking and what emotions are accompanying the experience of
risk-taking. I will then interpret the meanings they attach to risk-taking by discussing several conceptual models of risk and applying them to travel narratives.
Finally I will demonstrate how risk participates in the construction of the meaning
of travel and in drawing the mental maps of the former Soviet Union that are
alternative to some mainstream images of this region.
Risk in niche tourists’ accounts: an overview
Generally speaking risk was not a central but a recurrent theme of travel narratives. When speaking or writing about hazards, Polish travelers concentrated on
nature-related hardships rather than on human-related risks such as crime. They
accentuated dangers hidden in elemental forces (storms, fires and floods):
It was already dusk when we put up our tent. The empty, open and icy space was
all around. There was no way to fix the tent in the ground because the glacier was
too hard. So we brought some stones and put them on tent ropes. Yet our choice of
resting location was dramatic in its consequences. Gale-force winds blew all the
5
This is quite unlike the Sherry Ortner’s account of the clash between Sherpas’ and Western travelers’ perceptions of risk and the meaning of mountaineering (Ortner 1997). She studied the two groups
engaged in a single practice in a particular place, therefore she was able to powerfully state: „For the
sahbs, the risk of death is what makes the sport glorious; for the Sherpas there is nothing noble about
the risk at all; there is only a kind of threat that must be managed, negotiated. For the sahbs, ordinary life
pales before the intensity of mountaineering; for the Sherpas, mountaineering is simply the best-paying
way to support ordinary life” (Ortner 1997: 140). In my research, which is multi-sited and concentrates
on individuals involved in various practices in different types of places, such clear-cut juxtaposition is
not possible in principle.
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Anna Horolets
night – we couldn’t stay still in the tent so we didn’t sleep a wink... The snow flew
inside, the tent masts bended as if they were from rubber. We had to hold the entire
structure so it didn’t collapse.
Other threats were coming from plants, animals and insects or the possibility
of an illnesses (e.g. Lyme disease):
The threat I encountered there for the first time were shepherd dogs. These dogs are
very wise and they guard sheep. If one doesn’t move to the sheep too closely, then
nothing happens. But if one crosses a certain magic line, it gets dangerous. We did.
Five or may be seven dogs surrounded us. We stood there, the three of us, close to
each other, surrounded by the dogs. These dogs are huge, so there’s nothing really
you can do.
However, alongside signalling the potential risks, Polish travelers also demonstrated how these risks were or could be overcome and how they are meaningful
to them. For example, travelers possessed „magic” objects (as they themselves
jokingly called them, e.g. the „silver tape” that was useful in everything from
putting parts of the kayak together to sticking bandage to a leg) that got them
„impregnated” from natural forces. The risks were also curbed with the help of
scientific knowledge and individual resourcefulness. One of the trekkers in Kolskij peninsula said that before going to sleep, they were: „building a fire as high
as an adult and [went – A.H.] to sleep holding metal bowls, mugs and whistles,
so [they could – A.H.] frighten a bear if it paid a visit”. Yet, the risky moments
are also memorable ones: „When I come to the mountains an immense horror
overwhelms me. I get dizzy on mountain peaks. But when you climb up the first
and second mountain, this fear gradually disappears”.
Moreover, the meaningfulness of risk is linked to testing one’s abilities and
challenging ones fears and limitations: „We somehow couldn’t master the map
and the water sources on it and from time to time we ended up without no water
at hand, and there was no rain. So we stoically accepted the fact that a person
doesn’t need to drink that often, and so we managed”.
In contrast to the nature related risks, human related risks, such as a risk of being robbed or beaten up were decisively mitigated or negated. Moreover, travelers
openly contested a popularly shared view that some places and/or situations were
risky. A woman who travelled with a colleague by train through Russia described
the night they spent at the train station in a provincial town: „Nothing happened
to us, despite all these notions that train stations in Russia are dangerous”.
One of Polish travelers told me a story about what happened to him in a border
region in Caucasus. He and two other men were stopped by the border control.
It turned out that the Polish travelers did not have necessary permits. They were
searched by a military patrol, and taken away by men with shotguns to a buil-
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79
ding. My interlocutor claimed that they were afraid that these people could actually be kidnappers camouflaged as soldiers. Once in the building, they were
waiting for the orders from some higher authorities, but as the time passed by:
„it appeared [that – A.H.] the soldiers started to feel a bit stupid and offered
us some food; we talked about what we did and what we were interested in.
Then they took us to a waterfall, offered us some vodka, and then the party
began”.
This story is quite typical and contains the themes that are shared by a number
of travelers’ narratives, i.e.: people are hospitable, cordial and open, although
a bit „wild” or unpredictable at times; rules in post-communist countries are negotiable. The two combined mitigated potential risks of the encounter with unknown local people. Sometimes such encounters triggered in travelers a set of
mixed emotions of fondness, irritation and awkwardness:
when we were getting water from a river, a young and rather intoxicated Buriat
approached us with an unshakable desire to drink vodka together. Our excuses that
we didn’t have time, that we had sick livers, or that he had no vodka didn’t help. In
two minutes he was back with a bottle. After rather long negotiations he agreed that
we share the drink with him only symbolically. We were not in the mood and were
fed up with local folklore, but these people simply never take no for an answer. He
also wanted to tell us about the mountains and their gods, explain to us what Buriat
people believe in. He wasn’t aggressive – we were his new friends. And although
we wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible at the same time we also wanted,
and had to, be respectful.
This quote is characteristic in that explanation of roughness of local dwellers
is achieved by ascribing them the features of Rousseauian „noble savages”. Even
when Polish travelers evoked stories of being pick-pocketed, cheated or forced
to give a bribe, they often tried to explain most of these incidents by claiming
that „it could have happened everywhere”, or juxtaposed mean behavior of some
locals with generosity of the others.
In short, selected nature-related risks were put at the foreground in most travel
narratives, while human-related risks were of secondary salience. In some cases
travelers took a moderate pride in being perceived as distinct from mainstream
tourists due to their risk-taking. The pride of being able to enter into risky situations was more prominent in written narratives of male interlocutors, while oral
narratives of female interlocutors more often mentioned fear as an emotion that
is part and parcel of such situations. The presence of risk in travel narratives
and experience calls for interpreting risk in the context of tourist encounter and
relations between „hosts” and „guests”. Below I will try to offer some tentative
interpretations of the representations of risk in travel narratives by referring to
various meanings of risk.
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Facets of risk in selected theoretical models and „lay knowledges
of risk”
According to Mary Douglas (1990) the term risk emerged in European public
discourse together with the ideas of „probability” or „chance” (e.g. in ship insurance or in business). It then took on the meaning of „danger” which has become
its predominant semantic component in post-industrial societies. Semantically,
apart from the meanings of danger and uncertainty the word risk also implies
both something unpleasant and freedom (Hamilton, Adolphs and Nerlich 2007).
The studies of „lay knowledges of risk”, i.e. its emic meanings, in situations of
symbolic border crossing (immigration and diaspora experience, sexuality and
ageing) bring to the fore more context-specific connotations of the concept including health hazards, fear of unemployment or personal failure, or the need to
decide whether to act or not (Tulloch and Lupton 2003: 7, 15). The authors have
also discovered that while women were more concerned with risks in the context
of sex and violence, men talked more often of risk in sports, travel and daring
acts (Tulloch and Lupton 2003: 25). Deborah Lupton argued that risk-taking is
a „gendered performance”, which in the case of men is part of the scenario of
leading a „heroic life” (the term coined by Mike Featherstone, quoted in Lupton
1999: 157). Some of the risk-related narratives of men travelling to the former
Soviet Union strongly corroborate with this thesis (e.g. Pałkiewicz 2006; Hugo-Bader 2002, 2009).
John Tulloch and Deborah Lupton come up with four types of risk: 1. embodied risks (health and physical risks; violence), 2. financial risks (employment,
retirement), 3. intimate risks (romantic, marital and family relations), and 4. risk
of foreign travel or migration (Tulloch and Lupton 2003: 25). Beside the fact that
the last category of risks is questionable (for it seems to be derived from a different principle than the previous three), the typology is useful as an overview of
the various areas of risk. Yet, it does not allow for differentiating between degrees
and means of risk control, which seems to be crucial for theorising risk from the
sociological and anthropological perspective.
In her analysis Douglas had a revealing anthropological point. By comparing risk to sin and taboo, she contended that risk „looks forward”, in the sense
that when speaking of risks we anticipate hazards (Douglas 1990: 5). The very
idea that risks can be controlled implies that human or institutional subjects are
responsible for risk. At the same time there are risks that are seen as beyond one’s
control – these are placed in the domain of fate. Tulloch and Lupton point out that
in contemporary public discourse as well as in „lay knowledges of risk” there is
a paradoxical conflation between seeing risk as something both under and beyond
human control. The post-modern (control-centred) and pre-modern (fate-centred)
notions of risk are thus conflated (Tulloch and Lupton 2003: 29).
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In his original essay on the philosophy of adventure Georg Simmel compared
adventurer to a gambler (Simmel 1958). At the face value, gambler may be seen
as the one who irrationally relies solely on fate, yet at a closer scrutiny gambler’s
trust in fate can be seen as an alternative means of control, i.e. they seek a deeper
meaning of the world by relying on „blind fate”. Thus in Simmel’s model risk
and voluntary risk-taking are theorized as an „alternative” means of control by
recourse to fate.
The tension between risk avoidance or risk containment, on the one hand, and
voluntary risk-taking, on the other, has an axiological dimension too. When the
increased ability for risk containment is viewed as a result of modernization, risk
control acquired a positive normative meaning of the ability „to rationalize and
regulate self and the body, to avoid the vicissitudes of fate” (Tulloch and Lupton
2003: 10). The authors argue that in the contemporary public, expert and popular
culture discourses the hegemonic view of risk maintains that people live in fear
of risk, try avoid risks and see those who take unnecessary risks as careless or
even deviant.
There is an alternative discourse of positively evaluated voluntary risk-taking
parallel to the dominant discourses or rather as the means of resisting it6. In his
new framework for the study of leisure Chris Rojek emphasized the necessity
of including illegal – and thus risk-laden – activities in it (cf. Rojek 2010: 41,
49). Apart from risk stemming from illegality, overall, high risk activities are increasingly more popular (or more acceptable) in leisure and sports (e.g. Stranger
1999). These are voluntary risk-taking activities (or „edgework”7) in the sense
that they are perceived as risky by those who undertake them and they are undertaken deliberately. The emphasis on choice allows to distinguish voluntary
risk-taking from the cases when activities of this sort are not subject to choice
(cf. Ortner 1997), or when activities are perceived as risky by those who observe
them but not by actors who perform them, like some of circus tricks (Tulloch and
Lupton 2003: 11).
Research on voluntary risk-taking in leisure and sport was devoted to the
groups and activities as diverse as American sky-divers (Lyng 1978), young male
criminals (Collinson 1996), Australian surfers (Stranger 1999), young men drinking and fighting (Canaan 1996) and female boxers (Hargreaves 1997). Overall,
the findings of these authors unravel several motivations of „edgework”: actors
wish to face and conquer fear, display courage. They seek emotions such as excitement, adrenaline rush, elation, the feeling of being swept-away. They can be
6
This is the matter of further studies, to what extent voluntary risk-taking has increased since the
1950s, and to what extent it has been systematically overlooked in social sciences in 1950s and 1960s
when they were more concerned with other aspects of social practice.
7
The term „edgework” was borrowed by Lyng (1978) from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by
Hunter S. Thompson (1972) and is currently used in social sciences to refer to voluntary takings risks in
order to break routine (cf. Lyng, ed., 2005).
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motivated by the desire for discovery, self-actualization, a sense personal agency
or may wish to either conform to or challenge gender stereotypes. „The emotions
produced by risk-taking are seen to give access to authenticity of self-hood by
confronting the barriers of convention or social expectation” (Tulloch and Lupton
2003: 35).
Edgework brings forth a purified and magnified sense of the self. Tulloch and
Lupton summarise their findings on the meanings of voluntary risk-taking thus:
Our study revealed three major discourses employed by our interviewees to describe the pleasures and benefits of voluntary risk-taking. The discourse of self-improvement was employed to describe the importance of working on the continuing project of the self through taking risks, while the discourse of emotional
engagement drew on a neo-Romantic ideal of the body/self allowed to extend
itself beyond strictures of culture and society (...). The third discourse, that of
control, in some way counters that of emotional engagement in privileging control
over one’s emotions and bodily responses as a valued aspect of engaging in risky
activities. All three discourses represent a life without risk as too tightly bounded
and restricted, as not offering enough challenge (Tulloch and Lupton 2003: 37,
emphasis original).
The findings of Tulloch and Lupton are instructive not only in that they discern several layers of meanings of voluntary risk-taking or edgework in „lay
knowledges of risk” but also in that they attempt to embed these in a social context, e.g. by indicating that risk-taking can be viewed as an alternative discourse
of modernity.
The notion that risk is linked to modernization has been developed in the
1980s with the rise of awareness of environmental and nuclear hazards and their
critical assessment by the social sciences. In their Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky
(1982) analyzed the cultural mechanisms involved in the social construction of
risk. Douglas contended elsewhere (1990) that risks are quite real in that there
are certain dangers typical of a given epoch (as high infant mortality in the premodern era), but the way in which risks are linked to power relations, legitimacy
and responsibility are culturally and politically constructed. Socio-historical perspective on risk that allowed linking risk to social change was presented in the
influential book Risk Society by Ulrich Beck (1992). The notion of risk can be
used to refer to „those practices and methods by which the future consequences of
individual and institutional decisions are controlled in the present” (Beck 2000:
xii). In this sense risk is a way of controlling uncertainties generated by individual actors and social institutions. It implies responsibility for taking risks and for
predicting the consequences of risky doings. Risk is conceptualized by Beck as
a product of modernization understood as a process of acquiring improved means
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of human control over the natural and social environment. According to Beck the
crucial change occurred in the second part of the twentieth century, when a new
category of risk emerged:
We are no longer talking about comets crashing to earth or accidents with a greater or
lesser degree of probability of occurring. Rather, what is at issue are rapid advances of
modernisation that are successful in terms of their degree of impact and range of consequences – the triumph of human genetics, for example – but which generate radical
uncertainty because no one is able to assess their consequences (Beck 2000: xii).
In other words, the late modern risks are beyond control not because actors
face powerful forces of nature or fate but because actors can no longer meaningfully define the scope of risk. The new meanings of lack of control over risks by
actors contribute to the crisis of rational thinking and rational choice, and therefore call for means of risk containment other than rational calculation. Georg
Simmel’s adventurer-gambler model fits this framework as a viable alternative
for risk containment in contemporary society: trusting in fate is no less rational
than trusting in human capacities of risk control. The propensity for undertaking edgework in leisure described above could be therefore interpreted in this
context. At the same time risk-taking as seen by onlookers should be opposed to
the subjective view of experiencing risk by those who undertake leisure activities
(e.g. niche tourists who are the subject of this article) and the explanatory framework should be expanded to meanings and motivations more complex than mere
search for adrenaline rush.
Risk-taking and „risk talking” in niche tourists’ narratives
Tourist experience can considerably alter what is perceived as risky and safe.
The liminality of time/space in travel shifts the definitions of danger, uncertainty
and control:
[b]eing a tourist seems to involve some striking changes in what is perceived to be
risky. For example, visitors to an area may be willing to risk illness, through eating
contaminated foods (such as local shellfish) or having sexual relations with strangers, because of the forms of exotic visual consumption that place such activities in
a different context from what is normal and everyday. It is claimed that tourism is
a liminal state in which conventional calculations of safety and risk are disrupted.
On the other hand there is social pollution (Urry 1995: 188; cf. Bachórz 2009).
Indeed, Polish niche tourists to the former Soviet Union were ready to try
local food in Kyzyl and Irkutsk, and these same people were afraid of foodpoisoning in fast-food bars in Warsaw or Poznań.
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Anna Horolets
After coming back home I started paying attention that, when I said I was in Russia,
all people – my acquaintances – would say: „wow”, Russia, it’s dangerous there,
isn’t it; but I felt safer in trains there, because there was a provodnik [Rus.: carriage
steward – A.H.] who kept watch over everything, while in Polish night trains there
was no one like this.
Some of niche tourists can be said to like active and adventurous recreation
both „at home” and „en route”, other prefer to spend time „at home” quietly
– practicing yoga or reading. I do not think that niche tourists as a group are
particularly risk-seeking. When embarking on a journey, however, they become
more carefree. The trust in fate and treating trip as a liminal time/space can be
held accountable for the tourists’ fearlessness of potential dangers (e.g. when they
purposefully engage in travel without a plan).
At the same time travel narratives contain evidence against straightforward
identification of travel with the state of liminality. Rather often risks were anticipated and perceived, but they were curbed with the help of scientific knowledge
and individual willpower. These narratives fitted into what Tulloch and Lupton
called the third discourse of risk, which concentrated on the individual ability
of control (Tulloch and Lupton 2003: 37). For instance, one professional traveler wrote: „fortunately, sheer willpower enabled us to escape the river, but the
dangers of hypothermia and freezing to death were ever present” (Pałkiewicz
2006). Low temperatures were combated with adequate training, diet and clothes,
but also with an appropriate attitude. The sense of personal agency was being
achieved (and re-enacted in front of the to the listeners/readers) through confronting and overcoming risks.
In order to face danger, however, one had to deliberately „arrange” travel in
such a way as to encounter hazards. Thus dangers are culturally constructed, although elemental forces of nature can be used as building blocks for these constructs. Gabriela Nouzeilles, for instance, paid attention to the link between the
state of being „in the wild” and the state of being „in the real” through the experience of going „back to the primitive” in alternative tourists’ project of travel
experience:
Living dangerously in the midst of nature is associated with the primitive as the marker of the real. By travestying rivers and deserts, climbing mountains, and surviving
on a minimal diet for long periods, the traveller not only visits the habitats associated
with the vanishing Other, pushed to extinction or irreversibly transformed by modern
civilization, but also experiences primitiveness by getting in touch with his own dormant, primal Other through physical exertion (Nouzeilles 2008: 198).
Risk and danger thus become figures or emblems of „being different” (a positive feature for a reflexive post-modern individual) and may therefore precede or
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85
be superimposed over the experience of risk as such in travel. Superimposing of
risk as an emblem of individuality over risk as an experience can be also read in
the narratives of some Polish niche tourists traveling to the former USSR. One of
them claimed for instance: „I value silence, wilderness, risk and powerful impressions”. This tourist described his return home as „going back to the Matrix”, thus
inscribing the tourist experience in the opposition between „the real” and „the
artificial” („out there” and „at home”, respectively). Balancing on the border of
control over one’s body and physical exertion brings thrill and excitement. Risk
thus becomes an emblem of a heroic attitude to life. The fact that they dared to
face challenges, experienced and overcame them gives tourists (and should give
the listeners/readers) the sense of their self-worth and uniqueness.
On average, however, risk component of travel experience (associated with
effort, exhaustion, fear as described above) is consistently backgrounded in the
narratives of Polish niche tourists. This is done by the means of backgrounding
or negating „human” risks as well as purposefully understating the centrality of
nature risks or negotiating risk. The explanation of the risk component of niche
tourists’ narratives should be therefore more nuanced. Possible motivations for
„backgrounding” risk in narratives include the motivation to:
1. be perceived as brave and to make a „face-embellishing”8 effort,
2. emphasize a very positive attitude to the countries and the people visited,
3. differentiate from other tourists who emphasize risk and personal attainment, especially affluent Western adventure tourists9,
4. generate a vision of the post-Soviet „East” different from the commonsensual and popular one and thus to differentiate between themselves and rank-and-file Poles who hardly travel.
Consider the third intention: the denial that travel to the former Soviet Union
involves risk-taking is juxtaposed to emphasis on risk and personal attainment
that constitutes the key motivation for Western adventure tourists who choose this
destination (cf. Kalder 2006:11). Polish travelers do not take risks for the sake of
risks, since they are not (yet) bored with quiet and predictable domestic life. They
take risks only inasmuch as it is necessary to come in a closer contact with wild
nature. Besides, Polish niche tourists claim that the „emasculated” Westerners
exaggerate the risks they face and ridicule them: „An American used an ice axe
for climbing a totally flat slope, and he was aided by two local guides, one pulling
him by a rope from the front and the other pushing him from the back”.
Another salient feature is the emphasis on „insanity” or „craziness” ascribed
to them by others (both at the destination and in Poland) often ascribed to their
8
In this phrase I relate to Erving Goffman’s (1982) concept of face and interactive rituals of maintaining face.
9
„As in many areas of tourism there is no definitive definition of adventure tourism, but many subsequent definitions have retained the centrality of elements of risk through active outdoors participation
in wilderness or exotic, away from home locations” (Kane and Tucker 2004: 220, cf. Ewert 1994: 5).
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risk-taking. This feature is paradigmatic of self-image of different types of adventure tourists (commercial and self-organized). For example white water package
tour kayakers described by Kane and Tucker (2004: 229) built their identity on
a reflected image: their neighbors at home called them „nutters”, „crack case”
and similar half-derogatory and half-praising epithets, referring to their choice
of the mode of tourism. The reflected self-image was positively evaluated by the
kayakers, they were glad to hear that others were shocked or surprised by their
experiences. This shock dignified them because it emphasized the uniqueness
of their choice and of their experience.
This meaning of being „out of the ordinary” is not the most important, however. The crucial one is the sense of spiritual journey that is assigned to travel.
It is worth mentioning that in the conceptual models of adventure tourism as well
risk-taking as a motivation is being gradually removed from a central place.
The dominant focus on risk in adventure recreation (…) obscures some of the other
experiences of those involved, such as problem solving, testing skills, meaningful
social interaction, stress management, fun, exhilaration, excitement, and accomplishment (Kane and Tucker 2004: 220).
Alf Walle suggested that the experience of adventure tourism, set within a natural environment, was „a quest for personal insight or enlightenment” and not
the search for risk (Walle 1997: 280). The deep experience of nature, not risk,
becomes a source of insight. It is comparable to exclusive authenticity, which
those alienated in modern society seek through the experience of tourism (Mac-Cannell 1999: 96-100).
The spiritual goals are articulated quite straightforwardly in Polish niche tourists narratives and written travel accounts. The search for the sense of heightened
living and discovery of internal strength or the quest for the truer and deeper self
appear to be important motivations for engaging in this type of travel:
We think that the world has emerged out of this place. The sun hides behind the
pines’ belt, but it is still light; dark blue clouds cluttered in a thick dense bulk
rapidly fly above us. There is nobody around within 200 kilometers... This place
is awesome, full of magic... There are even less mosquitoes here.
He went to all those places in the middle of nowhere all by himself and managed on
his own. This guy was totally unbelievable, the guy who – when in taiga – cried at
night out of fear of wolves, who faced his own weakness, the nature. For him these
trips are a spiritual experience.
However, unlike in many similar accounts by Western alternative tourists
(cf. Nouzeilles 2008), Polish niche tourists to the former Soviet republics repeatedly indicate the local people as a source for spiritual experience. The spiritual
Risky encounters? Risk in travel narratives of niche tourists from Poland...
87
elation is achieved not only through interacting with nature, not only as a result
of physical effort that pushes human body to its limits, but also in local people’s
openness and hospitality and their unique ability to break conventions:
They were poor people, one could really see it with a bare eye, but they hosted
us with everything they had, you could tell: they put the white table cloth, and all
these goodies: fish, cream, tomatoes, and they even did not sat near us but were just
making sure we helped ourselves. We were some complete strangers to them, and
still they shared with us all they had. We were touched.
These representations of people from the former Soviet Union expressed in
the narratives are indisputably linked to the second motivation I have above: the
wish to express a positive attitude to the visited places, to emphasize empathy towards the local population. Niche tourists repeat that they seek contact with local
dwellers. They often stress their ability to find common language with the locals
– not only because Russian language serves as a lingua franca. They also draw
parallels between their and local people’s daily occupations. As a consequence,
they separate themselves from mass tourists who treat local dwellers instrumentally and rarely interact with them.
The fourth intention distinguished above works through this narrative strategy
as well: by emphasizing their similitude and equality with the local dwellers they
challenge dominant representations of the former Soviet Union in Polish public,
private and semi-public discourses. They thus participate in constructing an alternative to the ideologically and politically entangled as well as historically rooted
image of this region.
The emphasis put on sameness does not completely eradicate representations
of difference. Yet again, the perceptions of risk play a boundary-marking role: local residents present nature (and sometimes other people) as a source of potential
dangers, while tourists present nature as a space of discovery and give accounts
of overcoming natural hazards. This relates to a distinction suggested by Beck
(2000) – the early modern fear of elemental forces as opposed to the late modern
control and containment of these. Niche tourists often question the local dwellers’
definitions of risk and danger.
A short essay on alpine tourism by Georg Simmel can be instrumental in tackling this issue. Simmel expressed his scepticism about ethical aspects of the quest
for enlightenment undertaken by adventure travelers (Simmel 1991; cf. Ortner
1997). He presented Western amateur climbers as posh and selfish risk-takers
who are motivated by boredom and egoism, rather than as romantics seeking
to reconcile culture with nature. Inequalities in risk perceptions are outcomes
of unequal power and economic resources. Perceptions of risk thus depend
on whether risk is taken voluntarily or constitutes a necessity. If a truck driver has
to go along a very dangerous mountain road or difficult muddy road several times
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Anna Horolets
a week as a part of his job, this is hardly part of his spiritual search (although
some elements of manly or heroic identity might by a by-product of this occupation), while hitch-hiking tourists riding on the very same truck might treat this
experience as something resembling a rite of passage.
Moreover, deeming some experiences risky or not often signals a boundary
between the powerful and the powerless. „[T]hose with more power and greater
socioeconomic advantage (...) are less likely to see the world as dangerous than
the others” (Tulloch and Lupton 2003: 8). Therefore when Polish travelers repeatedly claim they do not see dangers where other Poles and some locals see
them, they narratively place themselves in a more privileged social position by
suggesting this: we are strong enough to easily overcome what seems like a threat
to the weaker others10. One declares: „There are at least 10 poisonous species of
which the giursa, the efa and the cobra are the most dangerous. The locals say:
«There are lots of them», but, as all over the world, they exaggerate the risk”11.
Needless to add, the reasons why local residents tell tourists about potential
dangers can be rather different from what travelers assume. For example, a small
group of tourists stayed two nights in a house of a woman in a village by a lake in
Kyrgyzstan. When they talked and explained that they were going to the mountains, she expressed anxiety and tried to convince them to stay at the lake. While
travelers interpreted her behavior as described above, she most probably regarded
them as merely children and also her guests, so she was hospitable, protective and
polite towards them rather than afraid of mountains as such.
As already mentioned, Beck (1992) suggested to link risk with processes of
modernization. He argued that the transition from a pre-modern state through modernity to late modernity is at the same time a leap from nature-related dangers
through human-generated dangers that can be predicted and controlled to humangenerated dangers that dodge human control or even definition. Such a perspective
explains why Polish niche tourists go to the former Soviet Union in order to face
nature-related risks. Either as Simmel’s adventurer-gamblers they seek a deeper
meaning in life through their reliance on fate, or they use their knowledge and abilities to overcome natural dangers, thus enacting the modernist model of risk. Their
travel to the former Soviet Union becomes thus a journey to the earlier stages of
modernization. They view the imaginary or hypothetical past as represented by the
realities of the former Soviet Union slightly nostalgically. While back at home risks
are rather human-related, money-related and work-related, and increasingly escape
10
Compare a slightly different logic of an orientalizing explanation for the locals’ reaction to danger
by one of Everest climbers noted in 1951: „When confronted by real hardships and dangers [the Sherpas – A.H.] have their tails down like the majority of primitive people with whom the conception of
honour has not yet arisen” (Klaus Becker Larsen, quoted in Ortner 1997: 142). He connects meekness to
underdevelopment but emphasizes that axiological evolution (not growing technical or economic might)
is central to developmental project.
11
Jacek Pałkiewicz. Adventure & Explorations, http://www.palkiewicz.com/ekspedycje/index.
php?p=karakum (20.10.2010).
Risky encounters? Risk in travel narratives of niche tourists from Poland...
89
any means of containment; while travelling to the former Soviet Union niche tourists are free from the limitations of late modernity and indulge in the pre-modern
and seemingly less contaminated and more pristine world.
As a consequence, the former Soviet Union emerges as a pre-modern region
marked by purity and naiveté (cf. Urry 1995: 188). On the one hand, this image is
an alternative to the discourse of the postsocialist transition as the former Soviet
Union is not demonized (as is the case in the mainstream discourse), but romanticized or viewed nostalgically. On the other hand, this same discourse petrifies an
image of the former Soviet Union as an illusionary region, the one from the past12.
Key words: niche tourism, risk, Poland, former Soviet Union
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Anna Horolets
RISKY ENCOUNTERS?
RISK IN TRAVEL NARRATIVES OF NICHE TOURISTS FROM POLAND
TO THE FORMER SOVIET UNION
(Summary)
The article is devoted to the role of risk in tourist experience. It particularly concentrates on risk as a figure of travel narratives, the identity boundaries marker. The empirical
material comes from a study on Polish niche tourism to the countries of the former USSR,
the rarely chosen destination in post-1989 Poland. The niche status of tourists is defined
by the choice of destination and the mode of travel (budget self-organized tourism usually
involving some contacts with nature and local dwellers). Risk is present in tourist accounts yet it is not central – the interlocutors do not see themselves as adventure tourists.
The theoretical models of risk are presented in the second part of the article to the end of
establishing the cultural and historically specific meanings of risk such as uncertainty or
change as well as the correlation between risk and control, including control over one’s
destiny. In the final part of the article the empirical material is analyzed through the lens
of presented theoretical models. The strategy of backgrounding risk in narratives serves
several goals. It produces counter-hegemonic (affirmative) representations of the visited
region; it also creates the image of tourists as exceptional and different thus boosting their
social status at home. The side effect of these strategies of risk presentation is however
the image of the countries of the former USSR as pre-modern, outdated and pristine,
as opposed to the (late) modern sophisticated Europe, with which the tourists associate
themselves.
Key words: niche tourism, risk, Poland, former Soviet Union
T.96_horolets.pdf