Mary Gardner (Geography major) “The Commodification of Place: Tourism in Montego Bay, Jamaica”
Sponsor: Professor Richard Walker, Geography
Project Description
Tourism, as Jamaica’s largest and fastest growing industry, is vital to the country’s growth and development. Montego Bay, the second largest city in Jamaica, is the tourist capital of the island. The juxtaposition of a large local and tourist population in Montego Bay has created a unique form of physical and material segregation. Mary’s research project will explore how this space and, along with it, the tourist experience, is produced through the forces of marketing by the tourist industry, the physical segregation from the rest of the city and the ways in which Jamaica and its culture are reproduced in this area. Specifically, through interviews and observation, Mary will explore the ways in which the tourist experience, featuring the promise of freedom, is paradoxically created through the tightly engineered and controlled manipulation of the physical and cultural landscape.
Scholar's Photo
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Mary on the cliffs in Negril, Jamaica.
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Scholar's Journal
Today, I spent the afternoon interviewing the owner of one of twenty-some souvenir shops along the ‘Hip Strip’, a one-and-a-half mile stretch of businesses. They are almost exclusively owned by recent immigrants from India, who have come to Jamaica to open businesses. The owners and women who work in the shops usually stand in front of them beckoning you to come inside and “take a look” in their store. “It doesn’t cost to look,” they yell. The store whose owner I talked to had one of the larger shops in the area. It is right next to the famous Doctor’s Cave Beach, which means that it is usually full of tourists. I was so happy that he had finally agreed to meet with me. My interview went really well. I was able to learn that most of the items sold in the shops are purchased from a single wholesale distributor, which is why most of the stores carry almost identical souvenirs. He also shared that tourists often question him about the authenticity of the products in the store. Aside from interviewing the owner, I also had the opportunity to photograph and look closely at all of the items in his shop.
I have been to Jamaica many times, but I rarely buy souvenirs and, therefore, have never really paid them much attention. So when I did, and I realized the ways in which Jamaicans and Jamaican culture were being represented, I was disappointed. There were basically two themes represented in all of the figurines. There was either a Rastafarian man smoking, carrying or picking marijuana, or a depiction of a man and a woman having sex or just a man with a huge penis. As if it weren't enough that Jamaican are either represented as marijuana-obsessed or sex-crazy, the caricatures had bugged out eyes and huge lips. It reminded me of the ways in which African Americans were depicted in the post-Reconstruction era. To top it all off these figurines weren’t even made in Jamaica; most were imported from Indonesia or China. I couldn’t believe it. Is this the way that tourists wish to remember Jamaicans?
Later, as I waited for a taxi to take me into the downtown section of Montego Bay, I thought more about the way Jamaican culture was being represented to tourists. Part of me felt angry towards tourists. Why would they even want such things? I wondered. But I began to realize that most people come to Jamaica with no real understanding of the culture. Thus, the responsibility for the way in which Jamaican culture is represented resides with the tourist industry. I realized that the tourist experience is truly engineered by the industry.
