L’autre · Tourism and Convivence

Le tourisme et la rencontre de l’autre. Voyage au pays des idées reçues
(Tourism and the Encounter with the Other: Journey into the Land of Received Ideas)

In 2005, shortly after the Académie française published its definition of Convivance, a group of French geographers —Giorgia Ceriani, Philippe Duhamel, Rémy Knafou and Mathis Stock— published in the journal L’Autre (2005/1, vol. 6, pp. 71-82), edited by La Pensée Sauvage, an article entitled Tourism and the Encounter with the Other: Journey into the Land of Received Ideas.

According to the authors, dominant ideology spontaneously attributes to travel the ability to foster encounters with others, whereas organised mass tourism rarely allows this, except in the case of intelligent, responsible and solidarity-based tourism. They nevertheless argue that tourism can encourage encounters with others within the framework of Convivence and living together in peace, the very theme of the International Day observed on 16 May. Leisure and travel can foster practices of otherness and peaceful encounters with others. Yet mass tourism, holiday resorts and standardised travel packages tend to reduce alterity and trivialise human encounter. Tourist guides, often without realising it, glorify sites, landscapes or monuments that were not created for this encounter with otherness.

It is in this context that the words of the French singer Marie Laforêt take on their full meaning:

Travelling simply to visit postcards is absurd!
What matters above all is the encounter with the other.
Whatever our cultures may be, we share our common humanity.
There can be no true journey without encounter!