cannibal tours 1988 summary

The Movie “Cannibal Tours” Essay (Critical Writing)

Movie summary, west civilization, neocolonialism, race and gender, social organization, indigenous political systems, works cited.

The movie Cannibal Tours gives a visual ethnography of tourism in Melanesia. The tourist who plays a key role in the movie have travelled from different parts of the world to the Sepik Valley to experience the unique “ Primitive People ” whom they claim live in a state of nature and practices cannibalism (O’Rourke). The Movie presents tourists in an untested as neocolonial subjects. They offer stories about the simple people existing harmoniously with nature and who establishes viable social systems unmediated by modernism.

The movie seeks out the locals and stresses them to share about cannibalism, they do this even taking them to places where people have been sacrificed and consumed. The tourist in the movie desires for and obsessively gathers the relics and other palpable symbols of variance. With their extensive cameras, they determinedly try to seizure the locals and their strange world. The scenes combined with the reflections of the natives on tourists and their interfaces with them emphasize the importance of consumption, ethno-centrality and socio-political opportunity to cross-cultural tourist locations (O’Rourke).

Consequently, the Cannibal Tours also focuses on incorporation, consumption and appropriation. It implicitly argues that, the cannibals as asserted by the title are not the locals but the tourists. Transforming familiarities and personalities shaped out of the imageries and alteration of the Melanesians tourist develops cannibals, their dehumanizing practices mythical utilize the locals and their lives (O’Rourke).

According to Beatle, the tourists experience their myth as hysteria and signs, whereas, the New Guineans perceive it as an enduring experience of their culture (56). This can be illustrated in the book when an old man gives a story about the reactions of New Guineans to the arrival of the first ship carrying the Germans colonialists he says “ our dead descendants have come back!”, he also continues with a huge smile and says “.. when we watch the tourists…. We conclude the dead have resurrected”. The old man asserts that what they say. Although, in the real sense, they believe that they are not there dead ancestors (O’Rourke).

The Cannibal Tours focuses on two different cultures. The culture consists of a group of wealthy tourists who are able to meet affluent and elegant trip along River Sepik of New Guinea aboard a deluxe cruise ship, known as The Melanesian Explorer. This situation illustrates the power and social delineation present between the tourist, super culture and the natives or the primitive, who cannot afford the luxurious holidays because of economic condition. The movie critic the political nature of tourism, it brings out the ineffable and the conceptual aspects of tourism.

Political aspects of tourism are characterized with when the tourist returns, they carry along their experiences anchored on the photographs and artifacts they carry along. Consequently, on their mind, they have a sense of anomie i.e. no one can be linked in the sense that, people who survived in a pantheistic civilization are. Besides, we have seen the failure of Christianity, the holocaust. This can be argued that modernity and western civilization have had little effect in peoples mind. This is because they don’t understand what it means. The culture recognizes the ordinary people who don’t even think about it for living. This is illustrated by the River Sepik villages where the tourists visit. The movie depict the ecstatic moment when Iatmul village men paints tourists with designs conventionally used to sanctify the dead ancestors, moreover, tourist are seen dancing to slow music of Mozart while aboard a cruise ship (O’Rourke).

Culture has been closely linked with race and gender. Primitivism makes the community escape the state of sexual oppression in their own culture; this is the essence of primitivism. Consequently, the connection between the western fascinations with the primitive is how sex employed as a tool in handling fears arising from others i.e. the dread of conflict constituting psychosis. Hence, the society responds by either getting attracted by strategies in containing its misuse.

As illustrated in the Movie, child pornography is mildly explored. Sex connection establishes a test of how it can be confronted and subsumes the gap existing within the society, ourselves, sexuality and our connection with the next generation. Child pornography, which is a beast of all, makes the dark side of the society and “who we are”. The Cannibal Tour exposes compassionate exploration of child pornography.

Culture has endured to establish what Lewellen calls “basic Social organization” and “the evolution of political society (10). These descriptions stress on the physiognomies of distinct stages of sociocultural integration instead of the dynamics that trigger evolution from one level to the next. This form of assertions is drawn largely from archeology theories, rather than the cultural anthropology (Lewellen, 11). According to great archeologists, many efforts are involved in understanding the evolution occurring in state societies. Thus, the archeological and cultural aspects are linked to create “the origins of the State and Civilization” (Lewellen, 11).

Various archeologists such as Max Gluckman investigated the analysis of “situations”. These involved individuals rather than the traditional ethnographic concentration of given set norms and social norms. Consequently, Victor Turner in his book, Schism and Continuity in African Society traced a single individual through a chronology of social dramas in which individual and community influences of norms and morals were uncovered. Basing on their emphasis on the trend and conflict, a new form of political element was added; thus, individual decision making is evident in crisis situations (Lewellen, 11).

According to Beatle, indigenous people globally shares a particular political context, whatever their cultural specific (63). They endeavor to compete against the legacy of disenfranchisement of their; ancestral lands, culture and society by colonizing European societies. Thus, Beatle denotes that, this point to the struggle against colonialism i.e. the acquisition, management and exploitation of a country’s resources by European powers. This is one of the experiences shared by the indigenous people (Beatle, 63).

Beatle, Keith. Documentary Screens; Non-Fiction Film and Television , New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Lewellen, Tedd. Political Anthropology , Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2003.

O’Rourke, Dennis. Cannibal Tours . 1988. Web. .

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1. IvyPanda . "The Movie "Cannibal Tours"." June 6, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-movie-cannibal-tours/.

Bibliography

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Cannibal Tours

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Culture Documentary hosted by Dennis O'Rourke and published by Direct Cinema Limited in 1988 - English narration

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Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O'Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity. The film documents a cruise ship tour down the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea as wealthy European and American tourists go in search of “primitive” cultures. The film captures cross-cultural miscommunication as tourists and hosts misunderstand one another, usually comically, often disturbingly.

The film follows a number of European and American ecotourists as they travel from village to village throughout the Sepik River area in Papua New Guinea, driving hard bargains for local handcrafted items, paying to view formerly sacred ceremonies and taking photographs of every aspect of "primitive" life. With some prodding, the tourists unwittingly reveal an unattractive and pervasive ethnocentrism to O'Rourke's cameras. The tourists thus become somewhat dehumanized by the camera, even as the tourists themselves are busy exoticizing even the most mundane aspects of Sepik River life.

"Dennis O'Rourke's Cannibal Tours is simply (to be more precise, complexly) stunning. While the cameras snap, the tourists bargain, and Sonny and Cher sing 'I Got You Babe' over Radio Moscow, the Papua New Guineans try to hold onto their world. 'We sit here confused,' one laments, 'while they take pictures of everything' - while O'Rourke's camera shoots the whole of a social relation that is taking over the world, the relation between the seeing and the seen. This double anthropology subtly shows how connoisseurship and condescension are linked, and how little the Western tribe of tourists understand their own culture. Cannibal Tours succeeds in being both devastating and charming - an amazing combination." - Todd Gitlin, author of The Whole World is Watching, The Sixties, Inside Prime Time and The Twilight of Common Dreams

"A dryly funny, perceptive, and terribly disturbing documentary masterwork." - John Hinde, ABC Radio (Sydney)

"Cannibal Tours is two journeys. The first is that depicted - rich and bourgeois tourists on a luxury-cruise up the mysterious Sepik River, in the jungles of Papua New Guinea ... the packaged version of a 'heart of darkness'. The second journey (the real text of the film) is a metaphysical one. It is an attempt to discover the place of 'the Other' in the popular imagination. It affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or misunderstood) reasons why 'civilised' people wish to encounter the 'primitive'. The situation is that shifting terminus of civilisation, where modern mass-culture grates and pushes against those original, essential aspects of humanity; and where much of what passes for values in western culture is exposed in stark relief as banal and fake." - Dennis O'Rourke, director of Cannibal Tours.

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Source: VHS Rip
Duration: 1h 6mn
Framerate: 29.970 fps
Dimensions: 656x400 (1.640)
Codec: XviD @ 1356 Kbps (BVOP)
Audio: MP3 @ 80 Kbps (VBR)
Language: Various spoken, English hardsubbed

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[ edit ] Related Documentaries

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Cannibal Tours

Dennis O'Rourke

When tourists journey to the furthermost reaches of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, is it the indigenous tribespeople or the white visitors who are the cultural oddity? This film explores the difference (and the surprising similarities) that emerge when "civilized" and "primitive" people meet. With dry humor and acute observation CANNIBAL TOURS explodes cultural assumptions as it provides a pointed look at a fabulous phenomenon.

Recommendations

Cannibal Tours

Film details, brief synopsis, cast & crew, dennis o'rourke, laurence j henderson, tim litchfield, wolfgang amadeus mozart, technical specs.

A group of tourists traveling along the Sepik river in New Guinea explore both the land and exotic people.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States 1988

Released in United States June 26, 1988

Released in United States March 1988

Released in United States Summer August 23, 1989

Shown at Margaret Meade Film Festival June 26, 1988.

Shown at Munich Film Festival June 25-July 3, 1988.

Shown at San Francisco International Film Festival March 19 & 20, 1988.

Released in United States 1988 (Shown at Munich Film Festival June 25-July 3, 1988.)

Released in United States March 1988 (Shown at San Francisco International Film Festival March 19 & 20, 1988.)

Released in United States June 26, 1988 (Shown at Margaret Meade Film Festival June 26, 1988.)

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Dennis O’Rourke – Cannibal Tours (1988)

Quote:Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O’Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity. The film follows a number of European and American ecotourists as they travel from village to village throughout the Sepik River area in Papua New Guinea, driving hard bargains for local handcrafted items, paying to view formerly sacred ceremonies and taking photographs of every aspect of “primitive” life. With some prodding, the tourists unwittingly reveal an unattractive and pervasive ethnocentrism to O’Rourke’s cameras. The tourists thus become somewhat dehumanized by the camera, even as the tourists themselves are busy exoticizing even the most mundane aspects of Sepik River life. The title of the film can be read in at least a couple of ways. At one point early in the film, a German tourist, clearly titillated, describes the bygone practice of raiding and cannibalism. Cannibalism, the viewer also learns, was highly symbolic and often involved taking and wearing the skins of the victims.

1.34GB | 1 h 7 min | 742×464 | mkv

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Language(s):English+commentary Subtitles:English (hardcoded for non-English parts)

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Frank wisbar - durchbruch lok 234 (1963).

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Cannibal tours

It affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or misunderstood) reasons why 'civilised' people wish to encounter the 'primitive'.

"Cannibal Tours" is two journeys. The first is that depicted - rich and bourgeois tourists on a luxury-cruise up the mysterious Sepik River, in the jungles of Papua New Guinea ... the packaged version of a 'heart of darkness'. The second journey (the real text of the film) is a metaphysical one. It is an attempt to discover the place of 'the Other' in the popular imagination. It affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or misunderstood) reasons why 'civilised' people wish to encounter the 'primitive'. The situation is that shifting terminus of civilisation, where modern mass-culture grates and pushes against those original, essential aspects of humanity; and where much of what passes for values in western culture is exposed in stark relief as banal and fake.

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Cannibal Tours

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Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O’Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity

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I wanted to see a mouthy tourist get eaten.

Reminds me of this http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/keep-the-river/

The director went on a tourist cruise in Papua New Guinea, pretending to make a documentary about the natives but actually filming the tourists. It is about tourists being condescending and horrible. I watched it after seeing the bizarre “cultural voyeurism” reality show, Meet the Natives. I thought it was a good counterpoint.

what the hell is this about?

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Review/Film; For Tourists and Papuans The Exploitation Is Mutual

By Caryn James

Aug. 23, 1989

Among the many absurd images in ''Cannibal Tours,'' the most ridiculous is that of a European face elaborately painted in the ritual makeup of a Papua New Guinea tribe. The stark white face filled with swirling brown lines emerges from behind a Nikon camera, photographing similarly decorated Europeans and Americans dancing on a luxury cruise ship. They are touring an island where cannibalism has been replaced by commerce. As the director, Dennis O'Rourke, has described his documentary, these ''bourgeois tourists'' have bought ''the packaged version of 'Heart of Darkness.' ''

That description only hints at Mr. O'Rourke's gentle, witty and ultimately disturbing vision. In ''Cannibal Tours,'' which opens today for a weeklong run at Film Forum 1, he guides his audience not toward Conrad's horror, but toward a more mournful recognition. He discovers the odd congruities, as well as the predictable incongruities, between the villagers and the tourists, who treat the Papua New Guineans as if their daily lives were a Disneyland exhibition.

An Australian film maker who has spent years documenting the changing lives of Pacific islanders, Mr. O'Rourke lets his camera uncover meanings without narrative intrusions (except for the occasional off-camera interviewer's voice). Yet like all documentaries, his assumes a point of view.

Over a calm blue sea, with beautiful green hills in the background, we hear Mozart. Before long, the music is interrupted by a crackling radio news report detailing Henry A. Kissinger's views on arms control. The best and the worst of Western civilization intrudes on this glorious landscape.

The tourists' gawky voyeurism is embodied in a variety of ugly Americans, Germans and Italians. The typical German is a corpulent man in a silly-looking safari suit and hat. The Italians wear stylish jeans and talk about educating the natives. The Americans are uniformly coarse, tittering over their souvenir phallic objects. Mr. O'Rourke does not condescend to these condescending types, whose unsavory presence is predictable.

The film's surprising twist is its undercurrent of mutual exploitation. Like any good capitalists, the villagers sell things the tourists want to buy - wood carvings or the opportunity to photograph their ''spirit house,'' a place that once contained sacred objects long since removed by missionaries.

Though the foreigners undoubtedly introduced crass commercialism along with their religion, today's modern villagers accept the necessity of selling out. They simply want to do better at it. In an open-air market, villagers put price stickers on carved masks; a European woman holds up a straw object and wonders, ''Is this a skirt or a bag?''; and one Papua New Guinean woman complains vehemently that the tourists look but don't buy. How is she supposed to send her children to school? A middle-aged village man says, ''If they paid me more I could go on that ship with the tourists.''

But while he understands the commercial trade-off perfectly, other European customs baffle him. ''We don't understand why these foreigners take photographs,'' he says, when postcards of the spirit house are sold in the nearby town. His own son, in an act of ultimate absurdity, sent his father such a postcard.

Like his fellow tribesmen, this man sits bare-chested outside a hut and looks totally unaffected by Western influences. But his dialect is loaded with English words. ''Money,'' and the markdown terms ''No. 2 price'' and ''No. 3 price'' leap out from his speech.

An older man recalls that when the first German colonists arrived, his tribe said, ''Our dead ancestors have returned.'' They still say ''The dead have returned'' when they see the ghostly-white foreigners, he explains, but now they don't believe it. Today, the Papua New Guineans seem both wiser and more vulnerable than the tourists; they have been corrupted, yet are no longer innocent victims.

Beneath its always entertaining surface, ''Cannibal Tours'' raises provocative cultural questions in only 70 minutes and demonstrates what supurb documentary making is about. THE CONRAD PACKAGE TOUR - CANNIBAL TOURS, produced, directed and photographed by Dennis O'Rourke; in numerous languages with English subtitles; released by Direct Cinema Ltd. At Film Forum 1, 57 Watts Street. Running time: 70 minutes. This film has no rating.

Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.

CANNIBAL TOURS

When tourists journey to the furthermost reaches of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, is it the indigenous tribespeople or the white visitors who are the cultural oddity?

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Cannibal tours.

1988 Directed by Dennis O'Rourke

There is nothing so strange in a strange land, as the stranger who comes to visit it.

Director Director

Dennis O'Rourke

Editor Editor

Tim Litchfield

Channel 4 Television Institute of Papua New Guinea Studios

Australia Papua New Guinea

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

German Hiri Motu English

Alternative Title

Documentary

Releases by Date

14 jun 1988, releases by country.

72 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by George

White People: The Movie

Review by BrandonHabes ★★★★★ 3

Within tourism, the primitive "other" occupies a magical position for neocolonial sightseers. The more exotic and detached the landscape is, the greater those wondering resources will be for the inexperienced globetrotter. It will be as two alien worlds colliding respectively on both ends, each with their own ethnocentric assumptions about the other. Some will seek to demystify the touristic attraction by making authentic contact, others will unknowingly exploit the experience by treating it as a Disneyland exhibition.

The opening epigraph of Dennis O’Rourke’s Cannibal Tours (1988) underscores the cross-cultural relations between European tourists and Papua New Guinean natives in a way that provides biting commentary on consumption, colonialism, modernization, ethnocentric stereotypes, and globalization of culture.

It reads: “There is nothing…

Review by Graham ★★★½

March Around the World 2024 #31 🇵🇬

There is nothing so strange in a strange land as the stranger who comes to visit it.

Award-winning Aussie Larrakin director Dennis O'Rourke spent time living in Papua New Guinea, and his film captures this ancient place as groups of ecotourists come to see the sights, the arts and local primitive locations. They just chew it up.

Watching these wealthy whities barter with the locals, most of whom are living day to day over a few Kina (the local currency), is really very sad. Ignoring inflation for a sec, the saving enjoyed by one woman was equivalent to $2 USD for a locally made piece of art that they'll likely flaunt to their…

Review by Grégoire Canvel ★★★★½

Horrifically uncomfortable, gorgeously observed. The kind of doc you dream of making but can't imagine shooting. So believable, no less jaw-dropping to watch. People are disgusting :/

Review by Evan B ★★★★

“ We sit here confused while they take pictures of everything.. we don’t understand why these foreigners take photographs.”

a cringe-inducing study of white tourism in Papau New Guinea that captures the casually racist, paternalistic, dehumanizing attitudes among rich westerners who parade into a place that doesn’t belong to them and proceed to act as if it does. as they snap pictures of everything with fascination and pose with the native residents like exotic props, it’s impossible to ignore the profound disrespect and sense of arrogant superiority.

“We have the good fortune of being born into a more evolved society...We must help them try to advance in the world.”

one thing that struck me in particular was the sheer AUDACITY of…

Review by Kyle Khang ★★★★

Loses 1/2 a star for being a bit too long and another 1/2 star for some really weird booty shots of the tourist women

Review by Eli Staub ★★★½

Wow! This is on Letterboxd! Yeah, the double meaning of the title is so fascinating. White tourists come to the tribes in hopes of seeing cannibals in a selfish voyeuristic way, while they are the real cannibals, eating away at the culture and life of the tribes.

Review by vi ★★★★ 1

the scene where the 2 boys were singing a song about Jesus was inexplicably heartbreaking

Review by Reto Hochstrasser ★★★★

"If we play the drums, they give us a little money."

Impressive biting stuff, quite unmasking for both sides, although of course the racist and eurocentric tourists turn out to be much nastier and uglier. The locals simply fight for everyday survival and therefore do a lot with the travelers - but they are aware of their unfortunate situation on all levels and can also name it impressively. Also loved the ironic use of Mozart's music.

Review by Joshua Bushman ★★★½

Everyone should see this at least once in their lifetime. I love how painfully aware the natives are of everything going on. Like that one carpenter saying the white tourists are only rich because their daddy’s were rich

The ending is just an actual fucking horror movie and could radicalize just about anyone

Review by Doug Dillaman ★★★★

This G-rated film has no cannibalism in it, or any other gore, but this documentation of Americans and Europeans blissfully bumbling their way through Papau New Guinea in its own way as deeply savage as similarly-named counterparts. On one side you have tourists who want an "authentic experience", seemingly blissfully unaware of how their observed subject has already been changed not just by observation but by colonialism. On the other side, you have indigenous peoples who are fully entrenched in the mechanisms of capitalism, demanding the respect a participant in the economy deserves, while faintly mystified at what reason their offerings are even valued. A bit stately by present standards but by no means dated in a tourism world where the authentic is privileged but can never be attained. Viewable in full on YouTube .

Review by Ryan Roberts

“Cannibal tours, they came on all fours Waterborne, eyes like Jaws Bones litter the beach, gnawed Cracked meat out the beast's claws”

billy woods - “Wharves”

An incredibly important documentary that everyone should be forced to see. What a disgusting world we live in rooted in colonialism, imperialism, global capitalism, death and destruction. What a starkly clear vision of our satirical reality. The cigarettes part was probably the most uniquely horrible.

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Andrew Causey. Hard Bargaining in Sumatra: Western Travelers and Toba Bataks in the Marketplace of Souvenirs. Southeast Asia: University of Hawaii Press , 2003. x + 292 pp. $25.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8248-2747-2; $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8248-2626-0.

Reviewed by Leah Potter (Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Published on H-Travel (November, 2004)

Cannibal Tours

In the documentary Cannibal Tours (1988), Aussie filmmaker Dennis O'Rourke shadows a group of Western tourists as they journey up the Sepik River into the interior of Papua New Guinea. European and American passengers seek contact with native tribes whose ancestors, the tour guide assures them, indulged in anthropophagy not too long ago. The locals, meanwhile, gather along the riverbank to await their visitors, prepared to go along with almost any routine that brings currency into the cash-starved village. O'Rourke brilliantly captures the ensuing encounter between so-called primitive and civilized peoples, juxtaposing the condescension of tourists with the humanity of the natives. It does not take long to figure out who the real cannibals are. One of the most revealing scenes features a local artisan who feels frustrated by having to bargain so much with tourists. He wants to know why rich Westerners demand lower "second" and "third" prices when he is expected to pay regular price for the blue jeans he purchases in town. Asked why he wants money, the man's reply is sure to surprise many viewers: "I want to go on the boat. I want to travel to other places."

Reading Andrew Causey's compelling and personal study of the souvenir trade in North Sumatra, I was often reminded of Cannibal Tours . Both Causey and O'Rourke record the cultural impact of tourism on host communities by focusing on marketplace interactions. Both deal with populations perceived as cannibalistic. Both also tend to sympathize more readily with indigenous groups, who they consistently portray with respect and candor, than with tourists whose prejudices seem somehow less excusable. O'Rourke, in particular, manipulates the footage to ensure that Westerners come off almost buffoon-like in their rudeness, ignorance, and vulgar souvenir fetishes (while also ensuring that his own intrusion into a foreign "other" remains outside the scope of the camera). In a refreshing contrast, Causey openly acknowledges his role as a temporary actor in the complex cultural drama he documents so sensitively.

Causey first traveled to Indonesia as a tourist in 1989, not speaking the language and dependent on guidebooks for information. He spent a week on Samosir, a small island located in northeastern Sumatra that is surrounded by Lake Toba. Remoteness and natural beauty make it a "must-see" destination for travelers to Southeast Asia. The Toba Bataks who live there provide a variety of goods and services to visitors, but are best known for their intricate wooden carvings that some believe hold magical powers. Causey's search for a genuine Toba Batak artifact led him away from the tourist market to a private home where a woman sold him a "real antique." It was only after he boarded the ferry back to the mainland that he realized he had bought a fake. Rather than sour him on the place, the experience inspired him to learn Indonesian and pursue research in Sumatra. In 1994, Causey returned to Samosir to spend fifteen months of fieldwork exploring the effect of Western tourism on Toba Batak carving practices.

Hard Bargaining in Sumatra is divided into seven chapters, with a separate introduction and conclusion. There are also photographs, most taken by Causey himself; comprehensive footnotes and references; and a glossary of Indonesian and Toba Batak terms, though Causey's practice of inserting parenthetical translations throughout his text makes this feature largely unnecessary. Chapter 1 outlines a "theoretical road map" of the study's primary issues (p. 21). Causey aligns himself with theorists like Dean McCannell, who are more concerned with elucidating abstract notions of identity and place than with quantifying tourism's effect on particular societies.[1] Fastening upon Louis Marin's concept of "utopic space," Causey describes tourist venues as liminal zones where Toba Bataks and Westerners behave differently then they do at home. He also coins a new term, "tourate," to identify locals who occupy utopic spaces and directly interact with tourists.

Chapters 2 and 3 elaborate on the themes of place and identity, respectively, as they relate to Samosir and its inhabitants. Whereas Westerners view Sumatra as an exotic vacation spot, Toba Bataks view it as a homeland that provides both physical and spiritual nourishment. Each group's perception of the other is also at odds. Tourists often mistake Toba Bataks' gregariousness for aggressive sales tactics, and constantly fear being cheated. Toba Bataks, on the other hand, assume that all Westerners are wealthy. They act polite to tourists, but are easily offended by those who dress too casually or mingle too freely with the opposite sex. Despite underlying cultural differences, Toba Bataks appear willing to gratify Western urges for "exotic" holidays and "authentic" souvenirs provided they are able to subsist off the profits.

Causey historicizes the encounter in the mid-nineteenth century after the Dutch imposed control over Sumatra. Missionaries, colonial officials, and travelers brought back stories of the island's "lettered cannibals" who appeared to blend animist practices with advanced systems of writing and rice cultivation (p. 81). During the colonial rule, the Dutch converted much of the native population to Protestant Christianity. Ironically, Western interest in "primitive" art emerged during the same period, roughly the 1890s to 1930s, when Westerners were trying to eradicate the "primitive" religions for which such art was intended. Today, the majority of Toba Bataks are Christian. Many express amusement that a cannibalistic image of them persists, but are more sensitive to the imprimatur of primitive, which is taken as a disavowal of their faith.

Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 each address an aspect of Toba Batak carving. Taken together, they provide a composite portrait of a carver-family's life and labor. Causey demonstrates the extent to which contemporary carving in Sumatra has become intrinsically connected with tourism. When Toba Batak carving was on the verge of dying out--largely because locals who converted to Christianity no longer desired objects associated with old ways--tourism revitalized the craft. Beginning in the 1970s, Lake Toba became a favorite stopping place on the Southeast Asian "hippie-tourist trail," and demand for the carvings grew (p. 113). Many families sold off heirlooms for cash, and, when this stock ran out, enterprising individuals such as Partaho, Causey's friend and carving instructor, decided to set up shop.

Partaho and other carvers face several challenges in trying to satisfy tourists' quests for authenticity. Some simply pass off new objects for old ones, as Causey discovered during his first trip to Samosir. Toba Bataks do not necessarily consider this as duplicitous as Westerners do, but ultimately understand that selling fakes is not a viable business strategy. Carvers also must communicate with customers who do not speak their language, a barrier that intensifies cultural misunderstandings. After several months with Partaho, for example, Causey realizes that whereas Westerners use the word "antique/antik" to refer to old things, Toba Bataks usually use it for "things in the old style" (p. 152). Creating "neotraditional" objects is complicated by the facts that few historic artifacts remain in Samosir. Toba Bataks must rely on photocopies from Western museum catalogs for examples of traditional Batak material culture. Most difficult of all, they must try to fulfill all of Westerners' desires without appearing to do so. Causey overheard one tourist in the marketplace complain to his friend, "ugh, it's the same old stuff in every single shop! I don't think its real--it's all made for tourists" (p. 192). If travelers believe that Toba Bataks produce carvings only for outsiders, any sense of an object's cultural integrity evaporates.

Causey's agility as a storyteller is the main strength of this work. Most chapters begin with a story that illuminates one of the themes from above that is then developed using ethnographic analysis, historical context, or, as is often the case, more stories. Causey, consciously mimics the structure and rhythm of Toba Batak narratives hoping "to evoke for the reader what life is like in a small North Sumatran village that is the focus of tourist attention" (p. 14). His vivid, deceptively simple, stories usually succeed in this goal. An account of the steady rains that literally wash away the sounds and smells of the land, for example, transport you to Samosir during the wet season. It is easy to picture Causey sitting in the living room of Partaho and wife Ito, smoking a kretek (clove cigarette), and discussing what type of objects might sell well in the marketplace, as a TV playing reruns of American soaps hums in the background.

There are, however, some downsides to Causey's reliance on storytelling. Hard Bargaining in Sumatra could be better organized and less repetitive. Stories are used more effectively to raise questions, than to resolve them. Readers would benefit from clearer and more concise statements about what to take away from some of the encounters Causey finds so intriguing. Indeed, the complexity of the interaction between tourists and the tourate at times threatens to overwhelm Causey, who frequently voices his amazement at people's thoughts and actions. While there is something endearing about such an unabashedly bemused narrator, Causey's uncertainty can result in some fairly hollow conclusions, such as at the end of chapter 3 when Causey sincerely wonders "if any of us know who we are" (p. 101). He writes more persuasively when commenting about specific incidents or people than when issuing broad claims about culture.

Causey is particularly adept at painting realistic and unvarnished portraits of Toba Batak carvers and their families. Without sentimentalizing the Batak "tourate," he captures the different aspirations and frustrations felt by those who make their living marketing to tourists. You finish the book with an appreciation of how Partoho's motivations differ from those of his sons and neighbors, and also with an awareness that his attitudes will change over time. This nuance, however, makes Causey's stereotypical and static view of tourists--who are presented either as rude and selfish, or well-meaning but misguided--a bit surprising. Causey admits that his "personal rapport with Western tourists was inadequate," an understatement that glosses over what is arguably the study's main deficiency (p. 19). His solution of distributing a tourist questionnaire just exacerbates the problem; the indirect, generic approach of the written form contrasts tellingly with the intimate conversations he shares with Toba Bataks. I am guessing that he is also dissatisfied with the outcome since he incorporates the results from the questionnaire so sporadically. In Causey's defense, it is hard to establish bonds with people who by definition are transitory and whose curiosity is directed outward rather than inward. Yet if Paul Fussell is right--that "we are all tourists now," and tourism has become the default mode for foreign travel--then Causey and others who record encounters between tourists and the tourate must penetrate both mindsets with equal measures of persistence and acumen.[2]

[1]. See Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken Books, 1976).

[2]. Paul Fussel, Abroad: British Literary Traveling between the Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 49.

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Citation: Leah Potter. Review of Causey, Andrew, Hard Bargaining in Sumatra: Western Travelers and Toba Bataks in the Marketplace of Souvenirs . H-Travel, H-Net Reviews. November, 2004. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10011

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