Books: Counter-Tourism: The Handbook

How can you resist a book entitled Counter Tourism, a handbook for those who want more from heritage sites than a tea shoppe and an old thing in a glass case?

The fact that it is written by someone known as Crab Man only adds to the intrigue.

The main part of this book is given over to counter-tourism tactics, which are designed to make visitors to heritage sites think differently about exploring them and also make them think about what a heritage site actually is. According to the author, heritage is all around us, it just depends how you define it.
 
The guide is a gentle plea for us all, visitors and heritage professionals alike, not to take ourselves quite so seriously. The point is to discover the underbelly of heritage and in doing so to enjoy yourself.

All the tactics that Crab Man suggests have been tried and tested by him and his team of volunteers. And there is a serious point behind the humour: quite often it’s the things you can’t immediately see – or that you aren’t told about – that are the most interesting.

There are times when some of the suggestions tip over into performance art – I’m not sure the average visitor would unbutton themselves enough to walk across a heritage site as if walking on ice or glass. for example. But then again, this book isn’t aimed at the average visitor.

Some of the tactics are mighty surreal (visit places where great things nearly happened but didn’t), but the book also debunks myths, for example in the travellers versus tourists debate the author says we are all tourists and that all tourists are pilgrims, which is a nice egalitarian idea.

Crab Man obviously thinks heritage organisations are conservative, but this is not tub-thumping, just gentle rib-poking. He’s wants more people to visit.

He believes the heritage industry is on a mission to stop us getting over-excited but he wants us to find things we weren’t supposed to see and knows that there is exploratory pleasure in doing that.

For example, he suggests that we domesticate historic buildings and do a bit of dusting as we pass through them. This might seem strange, but the underlying message is: this is yours, don’t be intimidated, don’t be reverential, explore as you choose.

Crab Man is well aware that personal connections can bring objects alive, but he takes it one step further. Instead of visitors exclaiming “my granny had one of those” when they see a flat-iron, he urges them to point at a stuffed alligator or a silver mace and say the same thing.

The language is funny and irreverent – I even laughed out loud once or twice, not my usual reaction when reading books on museums or heritage.

The recurring themes are that we should use all our senses and make our own meaning. “Free yourself of any guilty obligation to learn, and understanding will fill its place.”

And the counter tourist is guided by two of my favourite principles: if you don’t ask you don’t get and they can only say no. The author urges using these tactics to gain access to forbidden corners and secret places.

Crab Man has worked in heritage sites so he knows his stuff and you get the impression that he has had his own clashes with bureaucracy along the way; at heart he’s an anarchist and he lets readers in on his tips for circumventing authority.

Where the guide falters is when the author tries to explain what counter-tourism is. He says he is going to get personal and theoretical but unfortunately we wander into the territory of impenetrable sentences and phrases; “the agentive tourist in a chorastic space”, for example.

The guide is resolutely not available as an app but it does come in a pocketbook edition (without the theory), and there is also a website where you can share your adventures.

Heritage sites and museums that have the ability not to take themselves too seriously would do well to take on some of Crab Man’s ideas, especially those on multiple meaning and injecting fun into visits. Even better, they could stock the pocketbook in their shops  and just let visitors get on with it.