Cultural Exchanges and tourism


How is it possible for a tourist to be part of a genuine cultural exchange? As a tourist what do you bring and what do you take away? Normally tourists bring money and take away commodities and commodified experiences.

There is a certain culture of tourism, or rather there are a number of cultures of tourism. They range from a package tour to a resort focusing on an attraction created for the tourist industry such as a theme park to eco-tourism to literary tours to serendipitous backpacking the goal of which is to experience whatever comes along without too much advance planning. Some tourism takes the form of volunteer service in which an actual exchange can be calculated around some type of technology transfer. The type of tourism I want to reflect on is educational tourism such as student exchange programs. Indeed the purpose of this trip to China is an attempt to organize an exchange program for students and faculty at technological universities.

I have usually thought that educational exchange programs like all cultural exchange fostered international understanding, amity among peoples, appreciation for difference and at least a greater degree of toleration for the ways of others. In other words a general social good is fostered by these programs.

Student exchange programs within liberal arts programs are perhaps different. Those programs generally focus on language study and cultural and literary history. Exchange programs for students from technological universities might do that but if the students are studying within their disciplines the opportunity of language study or the study of cultural and literary history is quite insignificant. Either the student knows the language before studying abroad, or the program is conducted in the student's own language. Actually the language of instruction for most programs is English which has become the standard international language in our day. So when an electrical engineering student from China comes to the United States for one or two years to study electrical engineering, what is it beyond the technical study that the student receives and takes home at the end?

I have been told that the motivation for such students does not fall entirely within the category of cultural learning; rather the student is motivated by a perceived career value or future financial benefit on the assumption that a degree earned partly (or completely) abroad will have a recognized added value, perhaps because the instruction was more advanced or the lab facilities were more modern.

These are certainly understandable and if true good reasons for choosing to take part in an educational exchange program But I wonder if such reasons are the only reasons whether a general social good will have been furthered or not. These questions need to be refined.

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Posted: Tue - November 25, 2003 at 12:08 AM      

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