Sex and Tourism: Journeys of Romance, Love and Lust.

Tom Bauer & Bob McKercher (Eds.) (2003). New York: Haworth Hospitality Press. US$24.95; ISBN 0-7890-1203-0

This book unambiguously sets out to explore the range of sex tourists and tourist destination behaviours to be found ithroughout the world of tourism --and by and large succeeds.

It is divided into three main sections, each containing four or five chapters loosely organised around a common theme, plus a "settings" section incorporating an introduction by the editors and a chapter of theory by Tom Selanniemi. While I am always tempted to ignore the publisher's reviews contained within a new book announcement, having read it, I now sfind myself agreeing with Geoff Wall's blurb. He wrote that this book is more wide-ranging than most on the topic of sex tourism (except perhaps Martin Oppermann's seminal work of 1998), but more importantly, it largely manages to avoid moralistic judgements or a descent into polemic, while being soundly constructed and easy to read. Of course, the depth of traditional scholarship does vary between chapters. It would be hard to write about some of the topics from a rigorously academic viewpoint in any event, but the authors most obviously affected are well aware of the limitations of their material. This review will examine the book chapter by chapter to provide an overall impression and a (limited!) discussion of its relevance to our understanding of the complex relationship between sex and tourism in the 21st century.

Section 1 begins with an overview chapter by the editors Tom Bauer and Bob McKercher, both of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic, in which they set out to widen the debate on sex and tourism from its recent preoccupation with commercial sex. The authors develop a multidimensional continuum model as a conceptual framework in order to explain the role of sex in tourism, covering the sorts of topics (such as travel motivation, facilitation of romance and encounters, liminality, providers of partners, contexts and settings, likely venues and importance of encounters) that we have come to expect from such well-read and experienced tourism analysts. However, they make the point that so many recent analyses have missed: it is not only tourists that engage in commercial sex at destinations, and commercial sex is certainly not the only form of sex that is either available to or indulged in by tourists. Indeed this chapter, and the book itself, may be the first attempt since Oppermann's to fully portray and understand sex in tourism in all its facets. This discussion is followed by an interesting attempt by Tom Selanniemi, in "On Holiday in the Liminoid Playground", to describe the process of travelling through an analysis of place, time and self. He shows that different behaviours are possible and that the liminoid state is a better descriptor of actual tourist behaviour than the ocular-centric (external gaze) behavioural theories of Urry and others. How we experience a destination becomes much more important in trying to understand how sex (and romance) become a part of tourism at that destination. I think my only criticism of his analysis may well be of his comment that only in the West has tourism become so commonplace in culture that travelling as a way of getting away from it all is positively sanctioned. Tell that to the Japanese, Koreans and Taiwanese!

Section 2 begins with a delightful chapter from Lina Wong. If there is any contribution that makes this book different, it is this. The "road less travelled" is more easily understood once this chapter is read and absorbed. No theory here, but the chapter definitely contributes to a better understanding of just how important human encounters are in tourism. It is well written and empathetic, as is the chapter by Hillary and Dominique du Cros on their experiences of backpacking in Crete. Using the island of Crete as a background, the authors explore the topic of travel and the single woman, in the off-season for tourism on the island. This chapter is interesting for its portrayal of the types of people encountered, the revelation that there are conwomen as well as conmen to be found in sex tourism, and that friction between foreign women and locals can also complicate our understanding of the pleasure motivation in tourism. Double standards abound of course, but it is interesting to note that "give and take" appeared to be about equal in casual encounters between men and women, if not in the longer-term ones where exploitation can occur!

The final chapter in this section is by Eric Cohen and discusses transnational marriages (limited to Thai-Western ones, however, so that the perhaps larger flows from Philippines and Indonesia are not covered). This is an excellent chapter and makes a significant contribution to the literature on transnational marriages, as well as providing an analysis of their importance in tourism terms. He notes that transnational marriages have been studied more as a measure of assimilation than for themselves in the literature, that the analytical difference between mixed marriages and transnational ones is disregarded, and that there are many different reasons behind these marriages, including, but not limited to, their being the result of organised sex tours, and the desire of Thai women to migrate to the West. The result, he says, is a need for systematic and substantial local study of this phenomenon in both foreign and local settings.

Section 3 changes the focus to the tourism industry as a facilitator of sexual contact, and starts with chapter 6 by Leo Jago, in which he describes the perspective of accommodation providers (i.e. his own perspective). Leo is in a good position to analyse sex tourism, having both studied tourism and been part of the industry at the local level, and this unique perspective shows in his chapter. He looks at the motivation of motel owners and notes that as beds are perishable (economically), sex tourism can be locally important in the survival of a business--and that therefore moteliers cannot afford to be judgmental while not allowing sex tourism to be a publicly dominant part of their approach. Following these insights, Mark Bazerman gives us a good look in chapter 7 at all those stories you have heard about the activities of tour guides. He notes that groups tend to be composed of the careful, the obvious, the tired, and the predators (and that guides have to be careful!), and argues that guides are the cement that help create group bonding as well as making room for romance and relationships within the group. In chapter 8, Martin Fluker and Margaret Deery carry this analysis further by looking at the sexual relationships that can form within those tour groups that go white-water rafting. They note that these relationships, while infrequent, nevertheless do occur, and can have consequences for the vital teambuilding that must happen for longer trips to be both safe and successful. Again, the author's analysis shows that where guides are likely to be involved (and they have a strong bargaining position), they need training to recognise the good and bad in the situation for the business, as distinct from their personal life. Chapter 9, by Jon Donlon and Jerome Agrusa, rounds off this section. In their analysis, the "naughty" gentlemen's club (typified by the establishments of New Orleans' French Quarter) is given a close once-over, and is shown to be a normal business space designed to create intimacy for a fee. In other words, they are part of a market-induced pull matrix, which accounts for at least part of the behaviour noted, although it is an intentional act to visit one of them.

Section 4 is perhaps deliberately depressing. Sallie Yea (chapter 10) opens the discussion of the "dark side" of sex and tourism in a forthright manner by detailing the history and current status of the military sex slaves controversy in Korea. She notes that both the Japanese and Korean governments have left the matter to others--the Japanese government argues that all matters pertaining to the activities of its troops in World War Two were settled by post-war treaties, while Korea has turned the question of the former sex slaves over to a war-crimes tribunal that the Japanese do not recognise. However, Japanese and Korean private citizens do visit the comfort women museum near Seoul within broader tourism activities, so that the political issue of the comfort women has been inserted into tourism between the two countries. Nina Rao then takes the discussion of sex slavery further with her treatment of the modern phenomenon of the trafficking of Nepali girls to India. However, while I do not wish to discount the obvious fact of this flow of young women, for me this chapter is heavily biased towards finding an explanation for the fact that sex tourists are generally only men, and in arguing that the relationships are still ones of the colonised versus the colonisers. The fact that there may be other explanations is only briefly touched upon, although the force of custom, power (of patriarchal societies and the police), and a legal system that puts the burden of proof on the victims are recognised. Both descriptive of the reality facing these women but also a forceful polemic, this chapter was less satisfying than many of the others.

The final three chapters in this final section of the book cover two of the major problems facing sex tourism in the 21st Century, AIDS (chapter 12, by Jerome Agrusa), child sex tourism (chapter 14, by Christine Beddoe), and the situation in Cambodia (chapter 13, by Paul Leung). However, the chapter by Agrusa is in fact more a description of the current situation in Vietnam than a discussion of AIDS itself, and the author is quick to point out that there is no contemporary data on HIV/AIDS in the sex industry of Vietnam, merely a rise in the number of inbound tourists on packaged tours to that country. He notes that Vietnam therefore has an opportunity to set an example in controlling the spread of the disease. Paul Leung makes the important point that it is impossible to judge the appropriateness of the sex trade (organised brothels, upwards of 40,000 child prostitutes), even if we were able to examine the motives of the buyers (which he does, using a sample whose bias he acknowledges), since prostitution does not always mean abused victims or a means to escape from poverty, but may also involve romance and the marriage market. Christine Beddoe rounds off the section, and the book itself, by discussing the global problem of child sex tourism. This is a good analysis of the problem, and a good description (by case study) of the international effort to control and hopefully eradicate it. Her conclusion is that there is no excuse--economic, social or personal--for tolerating its continuation, because it is nothing more than child abuse.

Overall, the book is of a surprisingly high quality, though the fact that there is no conclusion does detract a little bit from an otherwise very good compendium. Perhaps the book is not as original as the editors would like to think, however, and the references could have been collected together at the back (but this is a personal preference). However, the index is up to Haworth's usual high standards and the content is quite uniformly good. The publishers must be very pleased with the outcome of this project: it is a very good update of the evidential material and the thinking advanced by academics and others concerning the topic of sex tourism.

Malcolm Cooper

Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University