Prof Julio Aramberri on freedom, progress, and academia’s ‘scissors crisis’

February 20, 2024

Julio Aramberri. Picture (c) by Antonio Heredia for an 'El Mundo' article, May 22, 2020. https://www.elmundo.es/opinion/2020/05/22/5ec7cd5f21efa0e55b8b45b0.html
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Julio Ara­m­berri reck­ons con­tem­por­ary tour­ism aca­demia tends to focus on either “point­less prag­mat­ism” or “shrill reproof”; the excesses of ‘Right’ and ‘Left’.

But ‘pro­gress’ is nuanced and can be poin­ted to in amus­ing ways: “Little could Marx ima­gine that the wish­ful ‘work­ers of all lands, unite’ carved in his Highg­ate grave would come true … on the sunny beaches and while wear­ing swimsuits.”

Saverio Ber­to­lu­cci and Peter Smith inter­viewed Prof Ara­m­berri for a Tourism’s Hori­zon Inter­view. For this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, here’s a short reflec­tion by Jim Butcher. [The full tran­script is on Substack.]

Who is Professor Julio Aramberri?

Julio Ara­m­berri recently returned to his nat­ive Spain after a life­time engaged with the world of tour­ism; as a tour­ist, as Span­ish state tour­ism exec­ut­ive, and as an academic. 

Fol­low­ers of dis­cus­sions on tour­ism in the uni­ver­sit­ies will know that Pro­fess­or Ara­m­berri has swum against the tide. He has writ­ten, often in uncom­prom­ising fash­ion, against man­tras related to sus­tain­ab­il­ity, the influ­ence of ‘post­mod­ern­ism’ in the uni­ver­sit­ies, and much else. 

Full dis­clos­ure: I’m in agree­ment with his per­spect­ives on these and oth­er things too, and was espe­cially glad we were able to get this interview.

Freedom to, freedom from, freedom conflated

As a child of Franco’s dic­tat­or­ship in Spain, the freedoms — mater­i­al and polit­ic­al — avail­able over the bor­der in France, were attract­ive to young Julio. 

Equally attract­ive was the pro­spect of sexu­al free­dom. He recalls the lure of a free press, in the form of a French magazine fea­tur­ing Bri­gitte Bardot ‘au naturel’. Soon tour­ism was to bring “myth­ic­ally blonde Swedish girls” to the Span­ish resorts, to the delight of Julio and his friends

It is strik­ing to me that free­dom is too rarely affirmed as a pos­it­ive thing in the dis­cus­sions of tour­ism we have in the uni­ver­sit­ies. People’s free­dom to travel for leis­ure often seems to be in a zero sum tussle against the free­dom from tour­ism for oth­ers burdened by so-called ‘over­tour­ism’. 

As Prof Ara­m­berri alludes to in com­ments crit­ic­al of the aca­dem­ic influ­ence of the late French thinker Michel Fou­cault, tour­ists are stud­ied as links in a chain of inter­per­son­al and inter­cul­tur­al power rela­tions. Or as car­ri­ers of ‘impacts’ in a close-to-zero sum con­test with the envir­on­ment. Free­dom is read­ily con­flated with con­sumer­ism and mass tourism’s growth, both presen­ted as spectres haunt­ing the planet. 

Prof Ara­m­berri is crit­ic­al of what he sees as post­mod­ern, lib­er­al academia’s tend­ency to focus on free­dom from tour­ism, and is san­guine about the free­dom to holiday. 

How far aca­demia itself can claim to be lib­er­al in a true sense is up for debate. Ara­m­berri cites the rise of cor­por­ate DEI (diversity, equity, and inclu­sion) com­mit­tees in the mod­ern uni­ver­sity, sug­gest­ing that the para­met­ers of accept­able think­ing are sub­ject to a degree of mor­al poli­cing and cen­sure along iden­tit­ari­an lines. 

Again free­dom — this time a cul­ture of aca­dem­ic free­dom — is a con­cern of Aramberri’s. He is abso­lutely right to be concerned. 

Don’t miss oth­er “GT” posts tagged ‘Edu­ca­tion and train­ing

Progress = creative destruction

Julio Ara­m­berri opposed Franco’s regime, and at dif­fer­ent times took the New Left and Trot­sky­ist pos­i­tions; very dif­fer­ent, but shar­ing an attempt to forge a mass people’s polit­ics opposed to both the cap­it­al­ists in the West and the Sta­lin­ists in the East. 

The sub­sequent tra­ject­ory of his polit­ics runs counter to that of many former (New) Left adher­ents, some of whom have morph­ed into mem­bers of the “pro­fes­sion­al-mana­geri­al class”, who, hav­ing giv­en up on cham­pi­on­ing work­ers, seek to reform their beha­viour and consumption. 

Oth­ers turned to an envir­on­ment­al­ism com­mit­ted to degrowth

Instead, Prof Ara­m­berri came to see eco­nom­ic advance­ment and the secur­ing of bour­geois and mater­i­al freedoms as import­ant goals for Span­ish soci­ety. His own role in work­ing to pro­mote tour­ism for the post-Franco demo­cracy may have fur­ther con­vinced him that ‘con­crete jungles’ on the Span­ish Cos­t­as with decent pro­spects are bet­ter than rur­al poverty, and bet­ter able to sus­tain hard-won demo­crat­ic rights.

Detract­ors char­ac­ter­ise, and cari­ca­ture, Spain’s tour­ism revolu­tion as destruct­ive of the envir­on­ment and the ‘real’ Spain. But for Ara­m­berri it was a time of sub­stan­tial, though not unqual­i­fied, progress. 

The Romantics’ notion of sleepy fish­ing vil­lages dis­figured by poorly planned mon­stros­it­ies in a developers’ free-for-all is less than half the story. All devel­op­ment, and all pro­gress, involves destruc­tion and cre­ation sim­ul­tan­eously. The one-eyed crit­ic whose vis­ion focuses only on the former is no more pro­gress­ive than the sharp-eyed cor­por­ate who meas­ures pro­gress by the lat­ter alone.

Don’t miss oth­er “GT” posts tagged ‘Infra­struc­ture & devel­op­ment

When academic traditions talk past each other

Else­where, Julio Ara­m­berri has writ­ten about a ‘scis­sors crisis’ in aca­demia, both as it per­tains to tour­ism and gen­er­ally. On the one side we have a mana­geri­al­ist tra­di­tion of research focused on ‘how to’ improve per­form­ance and prof­it­ab­il­ity. On the oth­er we have a social sci­ence based ‘why’ tra­di­tion, focused on cul­tur­al critique. 

For Ara­m­berri, “While the former veer towards point­less prag­mat­ism, the lat­ter glide into shrill reproof of the present world”. 

In some ways this is a plea to look to an older tra­di­tion of enquiry, ‘polit­ic­al eco­nomy’, that Ara­m­berri knows well. This ori­gin­al Marx­ist tra­di­tion sought out a dia­lect­ic­al rela­tion­ship between eco­nom­ics and polit­ics; the mater­i­al and the ideological. 

More pro­sa­ic­ally, what Prof Ara­m­berri has iden­ti­fied in the academy is surely import­ant for tour­ism: When aca­dem­ic tra­di­tions talk past each oth­er this can res­ult in mor­al­ist­ic dis­dain for the ‘neo­lib­er­al’ industry and its con­sumers on one side, and Grad­grin­di­an busi­ness tech­niques sold as pro­found ‘the­ory’ on the oth­er side.

Some of us involved with Tourism’s Hori­zon: Travel for the Mil­lions think that Ara­m­berri is right. Oth­ers dis­agree. But there is one point I took from his inter­view that I think we all agree on. It’s the single premise of the pro­ject: Prof Ara­m­berri opposes the impli­cit objec­ti­fic­a­tion of the masses as dupes of con­sumer­ism and their reduc­tion to walk­ing ‘impacts’ on the environment. 

Per­haps this is a product of his scep­ti­cism of the author­it­ari­an polit­ics of Left and Right that treat people as means rather than ends … plus a healthy dose of human­ism. Regard­less, if you are look­ing for a defend­er of mass tour­ism as some­thing good, some­thing human — let’s call it pro­gress — Ara­m­berri is your man.

Don’t miss all the oth­er great “Good Tour­ism” Insight Interviews

Con­tents ^

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About the author

Jim Butcher is a lec­turer and writer who has writ­ten a num­ber of books on the soci­ology and polit­ics of tour­ism. Dr Butcher blogs at Polit­ics of Tour­ism, tweets at @jimbutcher2, and is the founder of Tourism’s Hori­zon: Travel for the Mil­lions.

About the Tourism’s Horizon Interviews

Tourism’s Horizon: Travel for the Millions logo 125

“Good Tour­ism” Insight Part­ner Tourism’s Hori­zon: Travel for the Mil­lions, in col­lab­or­a­tion with “GT”, has sought the can­did views of well-known and respec­ted experts on tourism’s past, present, and future. 

The Tourism’s Hori­zon Inter­views involves Jim ButcherVil­helmi­ina Vain­ikkaPeter SmithSaverio Francesco Ber­to­lu­cciDav­id Jar­ratt, and Sudip­ta Sarkar as inter­view­ersThe “Good Tour­ism” Blog will pub­lish their high­lights and com­ment­ary as “GT” Insights. 

Read the full tran­scripts of each inter­view on Tourism’s Horizon’s substack.

Featured image (top of post)

Julio Ara­m­berri. Pic­ture © by Ant­o­nio Here­dia for an ‘El Mundo’ art­icle, May 22, 2020. “GT” cropped the pic­ture, removed the back­ground, and added the words.

Con­tents ^

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