An analysis of some aspects of social change and adaptation to tourism on Ibiza

1. Research aims: The thesis attempts to answer - within certain stated limits - the following empirical question: "Within the context of Ibiza's historical development since the thirteenth century, how has tourism affected the social structure and organisation of the island?"
2. Rationale: There has been little serious work - especially by sociologists - published on international tourism; which is, nevertheless, a world phenomenon of considerable economic and social importance. And most studies to date have tended to concentrate either on the origins and organization of tourism itself, or on its macro-economic effects. This thesis, in contrast, examines the sociological impact of tourism on a small area and community, in the depth that this limitation makes possible - but not neglecting relationships between the local, national and international levels. The choice of Ibiza as the locale for the study was determined by a number of factors which included the island's size, its relative lack of manufacturing industry (which permitted the partial analytical separation of different factors of change), and its recent and massive international touristic development.
It is thus hoped to make a contribution towards a "sociology of tourism": in particular, to provide a clearer understanding of tourism as an agent of modernization in predominantly rural countries or regions. It is also hoped to make some contribution to the field of "Mediterranean sociology": firstly, since despite the importance of tourism in most Mediterranean countries its effects have rarely been mentioned by Mediterranean sociologists; and, secondly, since to the author's knowledge this is one of the first studies of its type of a community in the Catalan culture area, although there have been various community studies in other parts of Spain.
3. Methods: The methods included participant observation during some eighteen months of fieldwork on Ibiza in 1970 and 1971, an extensive use of local Castilian and Catalan published sources, and some use also of local unpublished data.
Ibizan society is analysed by means of the general techniques and institutional divisions of the "community-study method", but, since the thesis is specifically a case-study of social change, a greater depth of historical analysis is included than is usual in community studies. In fact, the material is presented as a series of complementary diachronic portraits of Ibizan society since the Catalan conquest of the island from the Moors in the thirteenth century: an approach which, it is suggested, might be labelled "historical functionalism".
For this purpose, the island's history is divided into three major periods: (i) "the traditional period", from the thirteenth to the late eighteenth century, approximately; (ii) "the intermediate period", from the late eighteenth century to the 1950s; and (iii) "the touristic period", from the 1950s to the present. The three periods are distinguished partly for convenience of analysis; but they are also bounded by definite empirical "turning-points" in Ibizan history, even though there is a certain amount of temporal and conceptual overlap.
For reasons of time and space alone, some aspects of Ibizan society (e.g., family and kinship; socialisation and education; religion and world-view; leisure patterns) are given only incidental coverages but those aspects which are discussed in detail include settlement patterns and population movements; economic organisation and institutions; administration and political institutions; and stratification.
4. Findings: As in any community study, much of the interest lies in the complex sociographic details which constitute the body of the thesis, and which cannot usefully be condensed into a very brief summary:
"On first reading . . . any good community study, the ordinary reader is likely to be overwhelmed by the mass of detailed facts included. Observations pile upon observations so that the guiding themes are not introduced until the final chapters, if they are made explicit at all . . . the reader has to allow his impressions of the social structure to grow gradually - quite as does the field worker in the original situation. Details have to be mulled over as their meaning changes with shifts in context, and general comparisons must be treated by renewed inspection of the reported data."
(Stein, Maurice R. The Eclipse of Community: An Interpretation of American Studies. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1960, p. 8.)
However, this property of community studies is not used as an excuse for inconsequential or random description; and the thesis gradually builds up a systematic general picture of the development of Ibizan society, bringing out the contributions of both endogenous and exogenous factors to the processes of change on the island. For example, it emerges that there were powerful forces for urban-industrial development on Ibiza during the "intermediate period": a growing rural labour- surplus; an expansion of external trade and of communications in general; a spread of the cash nexus and of market-farming; and aspirations towards the capitalistic exploitation of the surplus labour in manufacturing by local entrepreneurs, under the influence of developments elsewhere. But it is also seen that various of the island's circumstances ran counter to these forces, thus limiting its economic and social development prior to tourism: in particular the small size; the mountainous terrain and scattered rural settlement pattern; the continuing influence of the established pattern of subsistence farming and of the quasi-feudal social order on the island; and the economic disadvantages (especially the state's alienation of the vital Ibizan salt industry from the commonalty of islanders) which arose from the island's subjugation (together with the rest of Catalonia) to centralized Castilian rule in the eighteenth century.
At each stage, the contribution of tourism to the recent development of the island's society is examined in relation to these preceding circumstances and processes. It is seen that the very ecological, geographical and social circumstances which formerly limited the processes of modernisation on the island were particularly propitious for the development of mass tourism, given the development elsewhere of cheap air transport. Moreover, it appears that in many ways tourism has acted as a "facilitating factor" in recent social changes: e.g. It has "facilitated" the drift away from the land by providing alternative employment without the need for emigration; it has combined with endogenous factors - such as the traditions of individualism and familism, and local entrepreneurial tendencies - to produce a new capitalist order on the island; and, in general, the associated influx of wealth and business opportunities nave enabled many of the islanders to realise long-established, but formerly impracticable, aspirations.
Various controversial issues about the effects of tourism are also dispassionately examined with reference to the Ibizan case, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative material. For example, the distribution of the new wealth and incomes among native Ibizans, other Spanish people and foreigners is carefully analysed: it emerges that - as yet, at least - the major economic benefits accrue to the native islanders, and that they are quite widely distributed among them (partly because of features of the tourist boom itself, and partly because of the pre-existent relatively-narrow range of wealth among the Ibizans); but that extensive direct participation by outsiders in the island's economy is also an important (new) feature.
Thus, it appears that many of the current changes are not attributable to tourism alone, and that a simple "before and after", dichotomous presentation would be seriously in error. Several common models of the effects of tourism are critically examined in the light of the Ibizan case, including those which postulate "acculturation" or societal "convergence". It is found that there are certain elements or accuracy in these models, particularly with regard to the rapidity and comprehensiveness of the current changes on Ibiza: but, in general, it is necessary to stress that the effects of tourism, at least on Ibiza, are those of "selective contact change" rather than those of "directed contact change"; and that any convergence is modified by the continuing importance of the island's particular circumstances and socio-cultural background. In short, it is suggested that - far from being the product of the "invasion", "colonization", or "rape" of the traditional local society (in the words of various commentators on the effects of tourism in Spain) - the new Ibizan society is a selective "synthesis' of traditional and of modern, of local and of exotic, elements.
However, a number of distinctive features of tourism as an agent of modernization are also detected:
(i) There are various features associated with the direct, cross-cultural, personal contact which characterizes tourism: firstly, it makes the social impact particularly rapid and comprehensive; secondly, the massive presence of outsiders creates unusual demands on the local administration, which - combined with the other corollaries of international involvement and fast communications - produces very strong pressures for administrative changes in places like Ibiza; and, thirdly, there may be noted the creation of a plural society, the growth of cultural relativism, and the distinctive effects of tourism on local patterns of exchange, interaction and hospitality, (ii) There is the economic dominance of the tertiary sector in largely non-industrial areas like Ibiza, where mass tourism has typically developed. In such cases, service industries replace manufacturing industry as the "leading sector" in economic development; thus producing a distinctive form of economic organisation, in which the following features may be noted: the loosely-hierarchical structure of employment in hotels; the seasonality of employment; the emphasis on leisure and entertainment; the absence of large, homogeneous labour-forces; "windfall gains' and temporary wealth-inversions (because of the inversion of the values of coastal scrub-land and inland farm-land); and the wide range of opportunities for self-employment or for small-scale (as well as for large-scale) entrepreneurial activities. (iii) In general, tourism has a different effect on settlement patterns and on the environment than has manufacturing industry. Thus, it tends to produce smaller nucleated settlements (in the absence, at least, of derived industrial growth). And any suggestion of pollution (e.g., by sewage) or of "environmental damage" (e.g., by "ugly", large hotels) is more likely to prompt self-limiting reactions either from the local authorities and businessmen, or from the tourists themselves. (iv) Tourism has a distinctive impact on rural-urban differences. Whereas large-scale manufacturing industry has tended to be primarily located in towns or associated with their growth; mass tourism has characteristically represented a movement away from urban-industrial environments, and it has a direct impact on rural areas which is generally greater than its impact on existing large towns. This leads to various apparently-contradictory features of the effects of tourism: on the one hand, for example, the presence of urban tourists tends to introduce Gesellschaft features into rural life; while, on the other hand, many of the tourists positively evaluate the Gemeinschaft features of the areas which they visit and thus contribute to their revaluation by the local people. When the local economic boom is also brought into consideration, it may be seen that while, on the one hand, tourism tends to produce "urbanity" (though not necessarily "urbanization") in rural areas; on the other hand, it provides powerful forces both for the continued differentiation of such areas and for regional demands for greater autonomy from metropolitan authorities.
Finally, it is suggested that the divergent viewpoints on tourism which are often found may be related to the social positions and environments of the people concerned. Thus, in general, the effects of tourism on Ibiza have been disliked by some local and non-local people belonging to the non-commercial branches of the middle- and upper-classes - particularly by those local people whose relative wealth and status have tended to decline as a result of tourism, and by those outsiders or local people who distastefully associate the current changes with urban-industrial development elsewhere and with the rise of "vulgarity". In complete contrast, the overwhelming majority of Ibizans (including - interestingly - the older generations of country-people) associate the past with economic "misery" and with socio-cultural "backwardness"; and they are actively (though not uncritically) assisting in the transformation of their own society which has been made possible by mass tourism.