Modernity on the beach: A postcolonial reading from southern shores

Abstract

The global spread of mass tourism is often understood in terms of the diffusion of practices first developed by English tourists and driven by the seemingly universal processes of urbanization and industrialization. This article offers a postcolonial critique of this approach, arguing it fails to appreciate the political and cultural dynamics of local adoption and remains blind to the role of alternative, indigenous practices. Moreover, as mass tourism practices are often viewed as expressions of modernity, societies are understood as modern only to the degree that they adopt northern European styles of leisure. Using Spain and Tunisia as examples, the article shows how the spread of beach tourism to the Mediterranean was shaped by geopolitical factors and imposed cultural and architectural expressions of modernity ill-suited to local contexts. Suggesting the value of alternative approaches, the article discusses forms of domestic coastal tourism in Morocco that express a modern hybrid Moroccan identity, in which a popular Islamic traditional ritual is performed and reinvented within the space of leisure beach tourism.