ABSTRACT
Are island resorts really ‘paradise on earth’ as they are so often portrayed in promotional messages, particularly those depicting the South Pacific? Or are they the very antithesis of their promotion? The British writer David Lodge in his novel Paradise News (1991:143) refers to one Pacific destination, Hawaii, as ‘Paradise lost…Paradise stolen, Paradise raped, Paradise infected, Paradise owned, packaged, Paradise sold’. Chapter 6 included a discussion of the evolution of images of tropical islands over a period of two centuries. This chapter evaluates the type of social relations which occur— a paradise does after all necessitate the presence of sentient beings. Can island resorts be the settings for meaningful social interactions? Since most resort islands were uninhabited prior to tourism and the tenure of resort guests is short, can an island resort be a ‘community’? Urry (1990) justifies his depiction of tourism as a key example of postmodernism by citing examples such as the prevalence of pastiche, a preoccupation with surfaces and image, the use of landscape as theme and an apparent hostility to tradition. If it is found that such features are common to island resorts, then we may regard them as ‘postmodern communities’. Are island resorts a type of ‘tourism society’ or ‘short-term society’ where people gather in a ‘group culture’ displaying ‘appropriate behaviour’ living at close quarters and interacting on a fairly intimate, if superficial basis (Foster 1986)? Wagner (1977) has proposed that we are best able to understand the interactions between visitors and local residents by conceptualising resorts as special types of community (she uses the term communitas in preference to community). Treating interactions purely from the perspective of cultural difference is inadequate in her view and needs to be supplemented by a thorough appraisal of resorts as communities.
