SLU news
Complicating the picture around tourism and whale meat consumption
Published: 16 February 2018
How does tourism intersect with morally contested animal consumption? This is just one of the questions discussed in the recent book "Tourism experiences and animal consumption. Contested values, morality and ethics" edited by Carol Kline. One chapter, contributed by CBM postdoctoral researcher Benedict Singleton, reviews the literature on whale meat consumption and tourism around the world, applying a political ecology perspective.
The review finds that there is a tendency within the literature to essentialise both whale meat consumption and tourism in different parts of the world. For a long time the literature has been dominated by discussion of the impact that whaling and whale meat consumption have on the growth of tourism, in particular whale-watching tourism. Indeed, for many years whale-watching has been framed as a direct replacement for whaling in all whaling countries. However, whilst there is consensus that whaling is detrimental to the growth of whale watching it is however not crippling, as whale watching continues to grow in many whaling countries.
Simplistic economic arguments thus miss several subtleties in the relationship between whale meat consumption and tourism: firstly rather than essentialise all whaling as the same, tourists distinguish between forms of whaling, for example seeing ‘aboriginal subsistence whaling’ more positively than ‘scientific’ or ‘commercial’ whaling. Secondly, whaling communities are enmeshed in complex social, economic and ecological networks. This means that any alteration of food production systems will have social, economic and ecological consequences – thus simplistic arguments that tourism can simply replace whaling misses the fact that there will be both human and nonhuman winners and losers from any change. Finally, in some parts of the world, tourists remain one of the markets for whale meat – with whale meat being an exotic food that is at times aimed at both domestic and international tourists.
There are several implications of this last point, if whale meat and whaling occur for tourist consumption there is a need to explore how this affects the nature of and drivers behind whaling – for example many subsistence practices in the Arctic are characterised as flexible and opportunistic, whereas production of food for tourists requires reliability. Also, during on-going conflicts over the validity of whaling, most countries where whales are hunted and whale meat consumed have come to identify themselves as ‘whaling cultures’. The construction of ‘exotic cultures’ is part of the process of making destinations attractive to tourists, with whaling practices and whale meat. Thus, on the one hand, tourism at times is inhibited by whaling, while on the other whaling and whale meat may form part of an ‘authentic’ exotic experience desired by tourists.
What emerges from the literature review is a complicated picture, where decisions about food practices have complex consequences on a variety of different social scales. The chapter concludes by calling for nuanced, empirically situated accounts to provide better information for tourists, policy-makers and local communities in making changes. Both whaling and tourism are set to continue and there is a need for accounts that acknowledge complex reality.