Paradise in Peril: Exploring the Relationship Between Tourism, Culture and Social Discrimination in Hawaiʻi

The first records of people reaching Hawaiʻi as tourists dates back to the 1870s, when steamships started to be used in the trans-Pacific passenger travels instead of sailing vessels. The American Matson Navigation Company played an important role in the development of tourism in this period. It served the trips with its ships, and it also financed the opening of several hotels in Waikīkī. Tourism activities where then suspended during the World Wars period and restarted in the form of mass tourism in the 1950s. In particular, travelling was fueled by the beginning of air travel, which replaced cruises and ships. Furthermore, Hawaiʻi as a touristic destination was being romanticized by the media, especially by Hollywood movies, which contributed to the popularity of the Islands.

However, the industry of tourism was not just beneficial for the local population by bringing economic flourishment. In fact, the dark side of tourism development in Hawaiʻi was and still is an issue, consisting of its detrimental impacts on the natural and cultural environment of the Islands. The negative effect of tourism development can even be found in the correlation between the increase in the number of annual visitors arrivals and the decrease in residents' positive feelings towards tourism, as shown by the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority graph below. [...]

Problems that can be identified as being caused by the tourism industry are "environmental degradation, low wages, land dispossession, and the highest cost of living in the United States" (Trask, 1999, p. 144).

Commodification of culture and misrepresentation of Natives

Commodifying consists of transforming something into a commercial product that can be bought and sold (La Salle, 2014). When it concerns culture, commodification corresponds to monetizing a cultural practice or object that did not belong to the market before and make it generate economic transactions. Cultural commodification is often seen as an inevitable consequence of tourism, but it puts into question the authenticity of the touristic product.

For Hawaiʻi, the most representative example in this sense is the hula and its beautiful dancers. Present in Hawaiian culture since ancient times, the hula was used to bequeath myths, religion, and tradition. The tourist industry, instead, commodified the performance and the bodies of its dancers as sensual attractions for the audiences, making the hula subject to cultural appropriation. The ritual lost its sacrality and became a mere entertainment show. Particularly due to the role played by Hollywood movies in picturing and stereotyping Hawaiʻi and its inhabitants, a whitewashed interpretation of the hula started to become popular, picturing it as mere dancing, hip movements and arms swinging.
 
It has also already been mentioned how much Hollywood movies contribute to giving a misrepresentation as well as underrepresentation of Native Hawaiians and their culture. Suganuma (2018) assessed how the Hollywood movie industry idealizes Hawaiʻi as the perfect heavenly place where people can go to escape from their busy and frenetic lives. However, this is just another whitewashed interpretation. Hawaiʻi experiences socioeconomic problems, diffused homelessness, high costs of living, and social discrimination, which are often exacerbated if not caused by that very same whitewashed vision that the world has of the Islands.

It is concerning that what is being commodified by the tourism industry in order to attract visitors are not only practices, objects and landscapes, but also the values that permeate the Hawaiian culture. Among these, the aloha spirit of generosity. Hawaiʻi is also known worldwide as the Aloha State, and the word is affixed on anything that the industry wants to "make Hawaiian". In doing so, though, the true and cultural meaning of love between people and between people and land that is included in the term aloha is lost. Aloha is not something that can be demanded and supplied, and it does not expect a compensation. In its deep meaning, then, aloha does not fit into the commodification picture. Still, the marketing discourse uses it as a way to advertise the Islands and, eventually, generate profit.

The Native Hawaiian activist Haunani-Kay Trask (1999) used a very strong and yet reasonable metaphor to define the effect of tourism on her culture. She described what was (and is) happening in Hawaiʻi as a "prostitution of culture" carried out by multinational corporations, landowners, and collaborators at the state level (Trask, 1999, p. 136). The metaphor of prostitution perfectly fits the Hawaiian framework: like a prostitute is a woman who is objectified and used in her sexual value for monetary exchange, in the same way Hawaiian culture is commodified, with its values, products and practices being sold for money. The Native Hawaiians themselves have become "artifacts" to be looked at, adornments that the industry displays.

Moreover, by purchasing territory and removing the Natives from their land, the Westerners caused deep harm to the local population in that according to the Hawaiian tradition and genealogy land is equivalent to an ancestor. More recently, the connection between Native people and land has been furtherly strained by the construction of huge resorts and tourism facilities, which occupy wide spaces and consume plenty of resources. These buildings put at risk the ecology of Hawaiʻi, as well as activities like fishing and farming, thus raising the discontent of the Natives.

Trask (1999) also spoke about how destructive the near extinction of the language during the period of Americanization was. In fact, the Westerners almost totally canceled what Hawaiians believe gives the sense of history, their language. So, the quasi-total disappearance of their way of speaking was a hard blow to the local cultural identity. Today the situation seems to be less critical, thanks to the cultural renaissance of the 1970s – even though nowadays the non-authentic Pidgin Hawaiian is widely spoken. Trask affirmed that such a cultural revitalization is a clear evidence of the will of the Native population to "repudiate" colonization and to "reclaim" their own past ways of living (Trask, 1999, p. 143).

A very problematic point in the Hawaiian context, then, is that similarly to how the prostitute being victimized often participates herself to her own victimization by accepting to sell her sexual service, Native Hawaiian people are accessory to the commodification of their culture. Natives have started to see themselves in the same way the tourists see them, sometimes even internalizing the Hollywood-made stereotype of the Hawaiian resident. This point links back to Cooley and Mead's looking glass self theory (mentioned in paragraph 2.1), whereby individuals shape their own identity according to what they think other people think of them. As a matter of fact, Hawaiians are now working in the tourism industry as dancers, waiters, singers, housekeepers, bartenders, tour guides and few as managers. Trask (1999) though specifies that they do so because they have no alternatives, because unemployment is seen as a problem greater than the participation to the commercialization of culture, because they lack high education, or because they are so indoctrinated that they see such employment opportunity as the only option available for them. Trask wrote "as colonized people, we are colonized to the extent that we are unaware of our oppression" (Trask, 1999, p. 145).