ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all, thanks to Allah S.W.T. for His mercy and guidance in giving us the full strength to complete this philosophy of tourism project. Even when we are facing difficulties in completing the project, we still managed to complete it.
Next, we express our deep sense of gratitude to our Philosophy of Tourism lecturer, Sir Mohd Hasrul Yushairi bin Johari for his valuable help, guidance, and support. We are thankful to him for the encouragement he had given to us along the process of completing the project. We have highly benefited by this project and have gained a lot of knowledge about the change of visitor behaviour from postmodernity towards transmodernity.
Lastly, we would like to show our gratitude towards our parents and friends for helping and supporting us mentally and physically. Without all this, we might not be able complete this project properly.
INTRODUCTION
A Spanish philosopher, Magda (1989) uses Hegelian logic whereby modernity, postmodernity and transmodernity form the dialectic triad that completes a process of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. As expressed in her own words: ‘the third tends to preserve the defining impetus of the first yet is devoted of its underlying base: by integrating its negation the third moment reaches a type of secular closure’. In other words, transmodernism is critical of modernism and postmodernism while at the same time drawing elements from each.
In speaking about the emerging paradigm shift of transmodernity, Ghisi (1999, 2006, 2008) primarily refers to the changing underlying values in which humans make their judgments and decisions in all areas of their activities – economy, politics and everyday life. For him, transmodern way of thinking is now emerging, as our hope for a desperately needed and newly reconstructed vision, after the endless postmodern deconstruction of modernity in which intellectuals engaged for last few decades.
Rifkin (2005) very clearly describes postmodern ruins in which we find ourselves: “If post-modernist razed the ideological walls of modernity and freed the prisoners, they left them with no particular place to go. We became existential nomads, wandering through a boundaryless world full of inchoate longings in desperate search for something to be attached to and believe in. While a human spirit was freed up from old categories of thought, we are each forced to find our own paths in chaotic and fragmented world that is even more dangerous than all-encompassing one we left behind”.
According to Ghisi (2006), the very concept of transmodernity implies that the best of modernity is kept while at the same time we go beyond it. Transmodernity opposes the endless economic progress and obsession with the material wealth and instead promotes the concept of duality of life as a measure of progress.
When it comes to improving the quality of modern tourism, transmodern paradigm is emerging as one of the features that has high humanistic aspirations. The term transmodernity, according to Ateljevic (2009) was introduced in tourism for the first time in 2006 during the Annual Nordic Tourism Studies Conference in Finland. In its call the conference organizers stated “The title of this year conference ‘Visions of Transmodern Tourism’ directs the focus of the venue at the future tourism. At this point of the postmodern era, a debate on transmodernism, the return of values and critical analysis after a period of technology/driven developments. Information society has not delivered the quality of life many expected to see. The advancing climate change paints a rather bleak picture of the future. In the center of the ‘silent revolution’ are the human experience; consumption and growth through learning and self-discovery rather than meritocratic performance, long term solutions instead of insecurity of quartal life.” (www.tourismuninet.org)
GENERIC TIMELINE FROM PRE-MODERN, MODERN, POSTMODERN, AND TRANSMODERN
Pre-Modern
Premodern which is the perspective before modernism, held that natural and supernatural existed one next to the other. In different words, premodern people tend to surmise that natural occasions are caused by powerful causes. God, angels, devils, and so forth are a reality to these people, were as a pioneer would deny them on the grounds that they could not be demonstrated by science, rationale, and reason.
“Premodern” here alludes to the period from the late Middle Ages through the Reformation to the beginning of the Enlightenment (c. a.d. 1200-1600). For most Europeans, amid that time a record of human information would go something like this such as God exists and knows everything. People are made in His image, know just a minute piece of what God knows. Actually, on the off chance that we are to know anything, at that point we should come to know some piece of what God already perfectly knows-and so revelation is required.
Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin concur that human knowing is a little subset of God’s knowing and comes to us by disclosure. Where they contrast is on how much disclosure is given through every mean. Aquinas was persuaded that enough was uncovered through nature and experience that somebody could, by giving careful consideration to these wellsprings of “natural revelation,” increase some critical learning about God. By differentiating, Calvin was persuaded that “special” disclosure coming through Scripture, the Spirit, and the congregation was vital for us to know anything about God in the way that we should.
The Reformation fundamentally debilitated a portion of these convictions. However, it is significant that even this epistemology which was considerably right in perceiving that all human learning is a subset of God’s knowing and subsequently a component of disclosure could all things considered be undermined by sinful individuals and along these lines combined with weak superstition.
Modern
Modern is the essential perspective of the vast majority in the West today. It is a view that spotlights on logic, rationale, and science. Moreover, modernism says that individuals can utilize rationale and science to end up nonpartisan eyewitnesses on the planet, enables humankind to locate the one “genuine” response to each inquiry. Modernism likewise ignores the otherworldly as it cannot be demonstrated by science.
Modernism has been described as a movement from myths to logos, and this replacement of myth by logic has been going on for at least 2,500 years. Almost simultaneously in India, China, and Greece there are the strict separation of fact and value, science and religion was proposed by the Indian materialists, the Greek atomists, and the Chinese Mohists. These philosophies remained minority positions, but it is nevertheless essential to note that the seeds for modernist philosophy are very old.
Postmodern
Postmodernism is a response to innovation. This social perspective says that there are no unbiased onlookers on the planet. Everybody takes a gander at everything through their own ‘glasses’ which implying that everybody has a perspective through which they see the world. Rationale and science are valuable devices, yet they are not the end all nor do they make a nonpartisan perspective. Postmodernist additionally has a tendency to be more open to the unexplained. On an spiritual plane, postmodernist will probably grasp all-encompassing prescription, profound practices, and new age interconnectedness convictions.
Postmodernism is in Western philosophy occurs at a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism. It is also a general suspicion of reason and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting, maintaining political and economic power.
TransmodernThe term transmodernity, according to Ateljevic (2009) was introduced in tourism for the first time in 2006 during the Annual Nordic Tourism Studies Conference in Finland.
The concept of transmodernity is a very complex which Ghisi (1999,2006, 2008) primarily explains as a new paradigm of the world which communicates certain underlying values that humans rely on to make their judgments and decisions in all areas of their activities such as economy, politics and everyday life.
Transmodernity can for the most part be portrayed by positive thinking to give hope to human race. Ghisi (1999, 2001, 2006, 2007, 2008) portrays transmodernity as a planetary vision in which people are starting to understand that we are all, include plants and animal associated into one system, which makes every one of us related, helpless and in charge of the Earth as an unbreakable living community. In that sense, this worldview is effectively tolerant and truly law based by definition, as the familiarity with common interdependency develops and the chains of importance between various societies disassemble.
POSTMODERNITY
Postmodernity refers to the view that the institutions and methods for living characteristic of modernity have been replaced to such a significant degree, to the point that our general public is on a very basic level diverse to the ‘modern’ society. In contrast, post-modernism is a term that alludes to better approaches for pondering idea. Post-modernists trust that information itself ought to be fathomed contrary to innovators sociologists, for instance, Functionalists and Marxists. It follows that not all theorists of post-modernity are post-modernists. There are five key features of the post-modern society which are globalization, the media, a world in fragments, consumer society and cultural diversity and hybridity.
Globalization is the increasing connected between societies across the globe. Globalization shows there are more flows of information and ideas, money, and people moving across national boundaries.
Next key feature is the expanding significance of the media. The post-modern era has seen a major development in media technology. The expansion of advanced media, particularly the web, has prompt an enormous number of individuals utilizing the media, the expansion in the assorted variety of media items, increment in the number of individuals making their own music, recordings, profile destinations and transferring them for open utilization, more prominent intelligence, greater adaptability. There are a few sociologists argue that the media creates something called ‘hyper-reality’ which means what in the media is different from reality. Baudrillard argues that the media coverage of war for example is different to reality, yet is the only reality most of us know.
A world in fragments is also one of the key features of the post-modern. In post-modern society, the pace of change is much more rapid than in modern society. Post-modern society is thus more dynamic because it does not sit still and as a result, it lacks any coherent and stable social structure. This can be evidenced in the areas such as work, fashion and music and the breakdown of local communities.
Moreover, the consumer society is the key feature. According to post-modernists, one of significant difference between the post-modern society and modern society is the society is consumer oriented rather than work oriented. This shows that consuming things and leisure activities are more important than work.
Lastly is the cultural diversity and hybridity as the increasing pace of globalization, the increase in cultural diversity and ‘hybridity’, which is the mixing of different cultural traditions. It can be seen by comparing the society today to 50 years ago, it shows a bewildering increase in the diversity of social and cultural forms. Some of the more obvious examples are goods and services, fashion and music and sphere of life is more diverse.
Post-modernity as idea, critique, cultural experience, and social condition has engendered a sometimes angry, sometimes anxious debate across many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.
According to Graham Johnston, Post-modernity returns value to faith and affirms the nurturing of our spiritual being as vital to humankind. Unfortunately, with the loss of truth, people will now seek faith without boundaries, categories, or definition. The old parameters of belief do not exist. As a result, people will be increasingly open to knowing God, but on their own terms.
Based on Merriam-Webster dictionary, postmodern is relating to or being an era after a modern one. In other understanding, postmodern is a word used to explain big differences of understanding ways people think especially the way people view truth and reality.
In a postmodern world, truth and reality are thought to be independently molded by individual history, social class, sexual orientation, culture, and religion. These elements should be joined to shape the stories and meanings of lives.
Meanwhile the term “Post-Modernism” has begun in engineering to indicate a reactionary development against the apparent tastelessness and antagonistic vibe of the Modernist development, and furthermore against the claims of high Modernism with its pursuit of an ideal perfection.
The expression “postmodernism” first entered the philosophical dictionary in 1979, with the publication of The Postmodern Condition by Jean-François Lyotard.
In Philosophy particularly, Post-Modernism was intensely impacted by Continental Philosophy developments like Phenomenology, Structuralism, and Existentialism, and it is for the most part incredulous of a large number of the qualities and bases of Analytic Philosophy. It is for the most part seen as receptiveness to importance and expert from startling spots so a definitive wellspring of specialist is simply the genuine “play” of the talk. It can be viewed as a “pick-and-mix” approach in which fundamental issues are congenial from an extensive variety of theoretical perspectives, harmony of form and function, and dismissal of frivolous ornamentation.
Among the best-known Post-Modernist scholars are Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard (1924 – 1998), Richard Rorty (1931 – 2007), Jean Baudrillard (1929 – 2007) and Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980).
Lyotard is maybe a standout amongst the most identifiable Post-Modernists, and he has portrayed Post-Modernism as a state of the current situation with culture, social structure, and self. He is generally concerned about the part of narrative in human culture, and especially how that part has changed as we have left innovation and entered a post-mechanical or post-modern condition. Baudrillard has contended that we live in a “hyperreal”, post-modern, post-industrial, post-everything kind of a world and worldwide reality has turned out to be commanded by an internationalized pop culture to such a degree, to the point that individuals have extraordinary trouble choosing what is genuine.
Post-modern is occurs in all places and industry in the world. Post-modern also involved in the tourism industry. Postmodern Tourism defines a growing trend in travel where adventurers visit offbeat or unpopular locations for purposes pertaining to both “personal interest and ironic detachment”.
In others word, postmodern tourism means the new forms of tourism have been emerging, which have the potential to replace or at least change the already existing forms and fundamental tourism structures.
Mowforth and Munt (1998) portrayed happened changes in the field of tourism in a few distinct levels. Firstly, the Fordist production model has been transformed into the post-Fordist model. Secondly, modern has changed to postmodern. Thirdly, the change has happened from promptly pressed tourism towards individual and adaptable tourism.
Lash and Urry (1994) and Shaw and Williams (2004) contended that a critical change includes occurred inside contemporary social orders, including a move from sorted out to disarranged private enterprise or from Fordism to post-Fordism, which is a move from mass utilization to more individuated examples of utilization. These progressions have been described by Poon (1993) as including the move from old tourism, which included bundling and institutionalization, to new tourism, which is fragmented, adaptable, and customized.
Postmodernism is a response to modernism. It revises issues from the past, yet additionally finished responds to those issues, prompting a distortion. Thus, the central qualities of postmodernism are in what it revises, and its main shortcomings are in what it over-remedies.
For example, under innovation, the common hypothesis of truth was known as the correspondence hypothesis of truth. That is, something was felt to be valid to such an extent as it compares to target reality found on the planet. The correspondence hypothesis of truth made individuals trust that logical truth rises to total truth.
Postmodernism amends this by denying the equivalency between logical truth and total truth. Every single logical conclusion are currently comprehended to be conditional essentially in light of the fact that nobody has ever constructed the boundless number of perceptions required to learn if there are any exemptions.
Along these lines, postmodernism adjusts modernism by helping us to comprehend the breaking points of our thinking capacity and learning. Be that as it may, postmodernism at that point squeezes things too far.
It clings to an intelligence hypothesis of truth. That is, something is valid for us just into such an extent as it adheres with our different recognition about the world. Be that as it may, this new hypothesis of truth makes science to be only a gathering of autonomous research conventions, each having its own particular viewpoints and dialect recreations. Taken to the extraordinary, this can prompt the preposterous.
Postmodernism was right in investigating modernism and presuming that the correspondence hypothesis of truth is constrained. We now realize that the logical technique cannot find outright truth.
Yet, postmodernists who demand the soundness hypothesis of truth are unmistakably finished responding. The logical strategy is as yet ready to think of a sensible comprehension of how the world functions. What’s more, in spite of the presence of research customs, legitimate logical trials are reproducible, unmistakable and prescient which making them saw equitably by all researchers. We scarcely need to live in a world in which all dialect, data, and accomplishment is undermined.
There are unique contributions of postmodernism to society which are postmodernism seeks to correct the unbalances of modernism by reminding about an unlimited potential and to understand and change the world for our own purposes.
Postmodernists do not endeavor to refine their thoughts about what is correct or wrong, genuine or false, great or malevolence. They trust that there is not such a mind-bending concept as supreme truth. A postmodernist perspectives the world outside of themselves as being in blunder, that is, other individuals’ fact winds up indistinct from mistake. Thus, nobody has the expert to characterize truth or force upon others his concept of good and bad.
Their self-justification of the universe and world around them pits themselves against divine disclosure versus moral relativism. Numerous trusts in naturalism and advancement as opposed to God and creationism.TRANSMODERNITY
According to Ateljevic (2016), natural and social sciences, economists, political activists, writers, spiritual readers and many successful social entrepreneurs argue that humanity needs a major global mind change and a paradigm shift in the 21st century. To describe this emerging socio-cultural, economic, political and philosophical shift of consciousness, values, worldviews, and paradigms, different authors from different disciplines use a variety of terms, such as transmodernity paradigm, transmodern philosophy of political liberation, integral culture, circularity paradigm, reflective/living-systems paradigm, partnership model of caring economics, relational global consciousness and biosphere politics, to name a few. Nevertheless, all authors point in the same direction which is the planetary vision in which humans are beginning to realize that we are all including plants and animals connected into one system which makes us all interdependent, vulnerable and responsible for the Earth as an indivisible living community.
In speaking about the transmodern emerging paradigm shift, Ghisi (2006, 2008) primarily refers to the changing underlying values in which humans make their judgments and decisions in all areas of their activities like economy, politics and everyday life. He begins his thesis with an overview of five levels of change that he describes through the ‘iceberg metaphor’ of the human global (un)consciousness and its (un)awareness and (in)visibility, whereby the first two levels are the least visible in terms of the awareness of their ‘slow death’. The first level is at the darkest and coldest bottom, where our global civilization finds itself today at the edge of unsustainability and what he describes as the collective suicide of humanity. The second level relates to the death of ‘command, control and conquest’ patriarchal values, which have turned the world into a competitive and territorial battleground. Level three refers to the death of modernity as a dominant paradigm through which we see the world as an objective reality rooted in impartial truth. Level four refers to the death of the industrial type of businesses and decline of the material economy, while level five concerns the overall crisis of overtly bureaucratic and pyramidal institutions.
According to Ghisi, the very concept of transmodern implies that the best of modernity is maintained. As such, it is not a linear projection that takes us from pre- modernity via postmodernity to transmodernity, but rather transcends modernity in that it takes us trans, for instance, through, modernity into another state of being, from the edge of chaos into a new order of society (Sardar, 2004)
The shift is associated around phenomenon of the so-called ‘silent revolution’ led by the growing number of so-called ‘Cultural Creatives’ (Ray and Anderson, 2000; Ghisi, 2008). Arnold Toynbee is the one who analysed the rise and fall of 23 civilisations in world history and who claims that when a cultural shift occurs, usually 5% of ‘creative marginals’ are preparing the shift in silence. Also, the concept of the silent revolution of cultural creatives come from the historian Arnold Toynbee. This concept has been borrowed by sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson who have applied it to their market cluster research of politics in America.
Besides that, Rosa Maria Rodriguez Magda who has Ph.D. in Philosophy (University of Valencia) is a writer and Spanish feminist philosopher, born and raised in Valencia City, Valencia. She had used transmodernity as a philosophical concept in her 1989 essay La sonrisa de Saturno: Hacia una teoría transmoderna. Then, further developed by Marc Luynckx Ghisi (1999) as the new political and socio-economic platform of the European Union. Her approach as based on Hegelian logic was views modernity, postmodernity, and transmodernity as a dialectic triad in which transmodernity is critical of both modernism and postmodernism, but merge elements of both. The third tends to preserve the defining impetus of the first yet is devoid of its underlying base by integrating its negation the third moment reaches a type of specular closure (Rodriguez, 2007). Transmodernity is an easy term describing a development of thought that seeks a synthesis of the best of pre-modern, modern, and postmodern reality. Transmodernity is moves beyond the alternatives of critical modernity and postmodernity, promising to overcome the shortcomings of each, constructing a more adequate and super-ordinate orientation invigorated by the critical perspective of the oppressed other.
Transmodernism, as first identified in the philosophical work of Rodriguez (2004), is an umbrella term that signify the emerging socio-cultural, economic, political and philosophical shift way beyond postmodernity (Ateljevic, 2013) which is much more wide, deep and radical than what dominant economists and politicians call globalization (Ghisi, 2010). Transmodernism is a development in thought following the periodization of postmodernity. It sees postmodernity, or hypermodernity as the conclusion or culmination of modernism, and critiques modernism and postmodernism on material, social, and spiritual viewpoints. Other interpretations on this term have been developed together with the cultural movement of transmodernism founded by Argentinian-Mexican philosopher Enrique Dussel. The concept of transmodernity has also been used to re-work the notion of postmodernity, highlighting its structural relation to globalization and informatisation.
Enrique Domingo Dussel Ambrosini or known as Enrique Dussel was a founder of transmodernism which is means a philosophical and cultural movement. He was born on December 24, 1943 and is an Argentine and Mexican academic, philosopher, historian and theologian. From 2013 to 2014, he served as the interim rector of the Universidad Autonoma de la Ciudad de Mexico. He has made contributions to several fields, including the philosophy of liberation, ethics, political economy, theology and history. Enrique Dussel has two books which are Postmodernidad and Transmodernidad (1999), frames it in the context of the philosophy of liberation and reflection on Latin-American identity, taking as transmodern theories those that, coming from the Third World, claim a proper place facing Western modernity, incorporating the look of the Postcolonial subaltern other.
He refers to himself as a transmodernist or a critic of postmodernism and wrote an array of essays criticising the postmodern theory and advocating a transmodern way of thinking. Transmodernism is a development in thought following the periodisation of postmodernism such as a movement, it also develops from modernism, and, in turn, critiques modernity and postmodernity, viewing them as the end of modernism.
A great deal of philosophical movements had influenced transmodernism. Its highlight on spirituality can be said to have been influenced by the many esoteric movements during the Renaissance. From mid-19th century United States, most notably Ralph Waldo Emerson, transcendentalism and idealises different figures had also highly influenced transmodernism. Transmodernism also seems to be related to different aspects of Marxist philosophy, having much common ground with dissident Roman Catholic liberation theology. Transmodernism often continues today in the rise of new religions and spiritualism. Its tendencies are also felt in humanity and transpersonal psychology. It is thought to be leading edge and often subject to change.
Transmodernism’s philosophical perspective consist elements of both modernism and postmodernism which it has been heralded as new modernism and admires avant-garde styles. It bases much of its core beliefs on the Integral Theory, those of creating a synthesis of pre-modern, modern and postmodern realities.
In transmodernism, there is a place for both tradition and modernity, and it seeks as a movement to revitalise and modernise tradition rather than destroy or replace it. Unlike modernism or postmodernism, the honouring and reverence of antiquity and traditional lifestyles is very important in transmodernism. Transmodernism criticises pessimism, nihilism, relativism and the counter-Enlightenment, yet embracing, all to a limited extent, optimism, absolutism, foundationalism and universalism. It has an analogical way of thinking, see things from the outside rather than the inside.
Transmodernism puts a secure emphasis on spirituality, alternative religions and transpersonal psychology as a movement. It disagrees with the secularisation of society, putting an emphasis on religion, and it criticises the rejection of worldviews as false or of no importance, unlike its postmodern counterpart. Transmodernism put a secure emphasis on xenophily and globalism, promoting the importance of different cultures and cultural appreciation. It seeks for a worldview on cultural affairs and is anti-Eurocentric and anti-imperialist.
The important aspects of the transmodern theory are environmentalism, sustainability and ecology. Besides stressing the importance of neighbourhood life, building communities as well as order and cleanliness, transmodernism also embracing environmental protection. It only accepts technological change when its aim is that of improving life or human conditions. Other prominent aspects of transmodernism are those of democracy and listening to the poor and suffering.
In addition, transmodernism takes stable stances on feminism, health care, family life and relationships, promoting the emancipation of women and female rights, other than that it also promoting several traditional moral and ethical family values. For example, the importance of the family is particularly stressed.
Today, whilst transmodernism still remains a minor philosophical movement in comparison to postmodernism, and is nearly new to the Northern Hemisphere, it has a large set of leading figures and philosophers. The founder is Enrique Dussel and is indeed an important philosophical figure. Ken Wilber who is the inventor of Integral Theory argues from a transpersonal point of view. Meanwhile, Paul Gilroy who is a cultural theorist has also enthusiastically endorsed transmodern thinking, and Ziauddin Sardar who is an Islamic scholar, is a critic of postmodernism and in many cases adopts a transmodernist way of thinking.
Throughout the years, several essays and works arguing from a transmodernist point of view have been published.
According to Rodriguez, for Western modernity they excluded certain cultures, peoples, ethnic and religious groups, modernization itself draws the map where they emerge, also generating a sort of paradoxical synthesis between premodernity and postmodernity. For instance, the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism develops its assets of spectacularism and operational strategy to a large extent thanks to the media and cybernetic society. As Rodriguez states that without belittling the tragedy of the victims, the 9/11 attacks would not have had such a strong impact without the live broadcasting of the destruction of the Twin Towers, and the Al-Qaeda reports would not have inoculated the indomitable danger outside the propagation of encrypted messages that the network’s agility provides. The challenge to Western society is not exercised from pre and anti-modern positions, such as Radical Evil, the alien and inassimilable. Other, while holding the domain of the real by its despise of death, circulates transmodernly through the veins of our transmodern society which it is physically and secularly structured in the same reticular form, and that is what causes us a diffuse anguish, an unavoidable terror.
TABLE OF COMPARISON BETWEEN THE CHARACTERISTIC OF POSTMODERN AND TRANSMODERN TOURISTS
Postmodern Tourist Transmodern Tourist
Rejection of certain forms of mass tourism (holiday camp and cheaper packaged holidays) and increased diversity of preferences Firms producing goods, services and experiences for the ‘silent revolution’ to come to fruition
Fewer repeat visits and the proliferation of alternative sights and attractions Avoid any kind of superficial products or services, fake services, or disposable products
The multiplication of types of holiday and visitor attractions based on lifestyle research Seek meaningful experiences that help them to develop personally and collectively
Much more information provided about alternative holidays and attractions through the media Personal growth and spiritual interest
The rapid turnover of tourist sites and experiences because of fashion changes Ecological values are important, feel nature as a “holy” place, respect the authenticity
The growth of green tourism and of forms of refreshment and accommodation which are individually tailored to the consumer (such as country house hotels) Tourist travel to volunteer and make a difference. Humanity, caring and willing to serve.
The de-differentiation of tourism from leisure, culture, retailing, education, sport, and hobbies Investigating various types of
tourism such as educational, volunteer, survival, community-based, eco, farm, extreme, religious, spiritual, wellness, and mission tourism
DISCUSSION
The transition since postmodern to transmodern thinking could affect those visitors who are searching for well-being and good fit by their preferences, experiences, consumption of products, and movement. We have provided an example which is the Finnish wellness tourism and tourist in terms of postmodern and tranmodern.
Finnish postmodern wellness tourism and tourist
By postmodern tourism, hospitality, and experience (THE) industry, which mean dynamic, nonlinear and partly hypercyclic business environment, the global and national hotel and restaurant chains, shopping centres, congress centres, event centres and experience centres and multi-sensory experience services (Aaltonen 2001; 2007, Heikkinen 2003). As far back as the 1980’s, or, for a few researchers, the 1950’s, the analysis of the consumption habits of consumers in the THE-industry has turned out to be more complicated as a result of growing and globalized service supply and demand.
Postmodernism shows in the fragmentation and insecurity of the mass market and in the emphasis on the consumers’ multiple needs and desires to consume (Cf. Bauman 1993; 2000; Heikkinen 2003; Heikkinen ; Kortelampi 2002; Honkanen 2004; Williams 2002, 173-213.) The logic of hospitality service, experience service and wellness service consumption have loosened and regulations have been discarded which can described as fusing or hybrid consuming (Heikkinen 2015; Inkinen 2002; Karvonen 1999).
According to Heikkinen (2003); Jameson (1986); Uriely (1996); and Urry (1990), in the Finnish THE-business environment, specially winter and sport resorts are representing typical after modern playfields of hyper-real, anti-hierarchial and context-dependant tourism. They are supporting the consumers’ searching of experiences, wellness, individuality and other people. The wellness companies including spas, stadiums, sports halls, fitness centres, beauty salons, plastic surgeries are living and polyphonic miniature of the whole phenomena of postmodernism.
The postmodern Finnish wellness tourists’ behaviour were divided and has an ever-changing mindset. An individual reveals his or her flexibility as a health-oriented consumer when one grounds for choosing wellness products and services may be obscure, flimsy and whimsical. The wellness motifs, lifestyle and expectations towards services and products are contextual changing according time and place. These tourists represent fast-experience and mass consuming with plenty of rational and irrational wellness service and product choices (Sheldon ; Bushell 2009; Saari 2015; Smith ; Puczkó 2009; Suontausta ; Tyni 2005; Tuohino ; Kangas 2009). There may be polarised elements in the health behaviour that manifest himself/herself in a “both-and” attitude, nonchalance, straight or an unconditional attitude (Bauman 1993; 2000). A situation-bound wellness tourist can exemplify conviction and carelessness, presence and otherness. He or she is simultaneously egotistical, liberated, and looking for a sense of security.
Besides that, the customer and consumption behaviour depends on the life situation, values, cultural taste, buying power and different. The wellness traveller moves freely in THE-industry from top quality beauty shops, fitness centres, luxury hotels and fine dining restaurants to experience spa and fast food restaurants during his or her journey, as the situation requires or resources allow (Inkinen 2002; Heikkinen 2003). Especially, the entertainment spas are offering more wellness designed services and products for sale for example bigger rooms, healthy food and beverages, entertainment, clothing, music, medicine (Garciá- Altés 2005).
According to Heikkinen and Kortelampi (2002), they are also concentrating on more and more global brands and trademarks and thus limit the choice available to the consumer´s. At spas, the traditional and classical treatments have been replaced with services designed by combining several technologic and wellness experience services. The wellness tourist is also following sport, food and fashion trends and superstars sportive and lavish ways of life. The social media is affecting the decisions of foreign and international super-branded destinations, hotels and spa chains increasingly.
In these hybrid-markets, the concepts of health, wellness and quality have suffered an inflation of sorts in this market. Small companies and consumers have been made into objects of the mass culture, accepting the situation, being even pleased with it. The growing business problem of Finnish wellness industry is after all that the heavy users of wellness services claim that they have “experience it all” and nothing that is on display has an impact on them. Still they are restless as they want to see and experience something completely new. The wellness travellers are searching new destinations and experiences and service and product innovations at the same time they should diminish the travelling and wasting because of the climate change (Simpson ; al. 2008).
Finnish transmodern wellbeing tourism and selfness tourist
Some glocal THE-companies have begun to consider the climate change, green economy and groups of the critical ecologic consciousness consumers. For instance, some young university students, the academic lower middle class, families with children, and the elderly. Some Finnish enterprises have comprehended that the carbon and zero-waste strategies, eco-efficient service production and well-being of all consumers are essential for their business.
Also, some futures researchers, Jensen (1999) and Aaltonen and Jensen (2012) among others, wish to remove dystopia and negativity from the air and to work against the effects of the risk society described by Beck (1999) by introducing old strategic tools in a new form. Another similar socio-constructing trend in the times is transmodernism, which represents a new rise of human values, meaningful reality and life (Dussel 1978; Vittalo).
The key aspects of the transmodern wellbeing tourism theory are environmentalism, sustainability, and ecology. Not only does transmodernism embrace environmental protection, yet it also stresses the importance of sharing economy, for example, the Airbnb business concept, and building communities and togetherness. Only when its aim is that of improving life or human conditions will it accepts the technological change. Generally transmodernism, or the thoroughly open modern society, seeks to improve people’s harmony between nature and human activities.
Other prominent aspects of transmodernism are those of democracy and listening to the local people. Transmodernism on addition takes strong stances on common welfare, promoting the emancipation of women and female rights, yet also promoting several traditional moral and socio-cultural values and micro-enterprises values, and the importance of the family business is particularly stressed.
The transmodern ideal approach is belief on fundamental changes in the glocal THE-economy. It forces Finnish THE-industry to switch from mass production to a new business strategy known as flexible specializations which are the post-Fordism, ethical, sustainable, technologic and humanistic business culture. In destination´s business strategies and master plan strategies it means (g)local hotel and restaurant concepts, micro-resorts and small events, which are offering simple service and product portfolio.
Other than that, the responsible firms find it more valuable to produce diverse service process targeted at ethical consumers instead of producing generic multi-services and goods, appealing to their premeditated sense of taste and well-being lifestyle. The Finnish transmodern well-being traveller appreciates multi-sensitive services, cultural roots and basic values. He or she does not want the role of the king as a fast moving and wasting world traveller. Real well-being traveller behaviour manifests itself as deep-ecological choices and local cultural tastes.
Even though the concept of transmodern taste leads us to challenging eco-sociological and semiotic questions about ethical and sustainable choices and multi-cultural differences. The consumers are not unconditional in his or her requirements but expect transparency, quality and safety from the service and food chain. He or she understands the human factor and mistakes that are present in all services and do not expect perfectly flawless service, but follow the fluctuations of price and quality closely.
In wellbeing sector, the transmodernity is western ecologic-technologic-humanistic me-oriented lifestyle. At its most ideal, transmodernity should show the satisfaction and physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of individuals. Rationality is apparent in high awareness of own health and nutrition issues. The Finnish mass wellness tourist change selfness traveller. The traveller has a strong sociocultural and life scientific basis in his or her customer behaviour. The transmodern selfness consumer is responsible of his or her own health. Instead of postmodern mass wellness tourist the thoroughly modern selfness traveller becomes a modern aesthetic (hyper) local nomad, whose most important goals are sustainable living and human growth.
Besides that, the quality and ecologic awareness of the Finnish consumer can be seen in the choice of the certified green destinations and hotel and local eateries. Transmodern customer combines traditional and modern features, but the majority of the motives for choosing services are in line with sustainable development and aesthetic values. The transmodern consumer needs to have up-to-date and sufficient information about the destination before making the choice. The manipulated comments of social media, old repertoires of guide books or general eco-labels and brochures of the destination or hotel do not interest them.
In the spas, he or she does not seek entertainment and water extremities which is called postmodern, but instead appreciates for example the slow fitness services, beauty services, relaxing atmosphere of nature, winter and green gardens and saunas (transmodern flow). The environment-oriented selfness tourist aim at a modest, ordinary consumption and life, also in destination. Some abhore the amount of things and events in the market and give themselves to total minimalism.
In Finnish well-being industry, thoroughly modern thinking manifests itself in green strategies. The transmodern company has to base on a researched and measured sustainability, eco-concepts, eco-efficient and eco-service designed processes and skilled staff (Heikkinen 2015; Sheldon & Park 2099; Simpson & al. 2008). The company aims at improving customer satisfaction and pleasure and a total value-based model. The sustainability of a small business in the hotel and restaurant industry is based on, for instance, a credible local brand, a convincing green management and the overall environment quality of the operations. (Heikkinen 2002.).CONCLUSION
In conclusion, it becomes evident that changes brought by the paradigm shift from postmodern to transmodern world order are so profound and deep rooted that they transformed a nature of tourist experience from one pole of a paradigm representing hyper reality, to transmodern pole which denotes a demand for authenticity. Therefore, tourism scholars should take cognisance of the subsequent influences that transmodernism, authentic economy and Cultural Creatives have on the changing nature of tourism demand. Influences of transmodernism in the nature of tourism demand are evident in the breakdown of the environmental bubble as a protective layer between tourists and communities. Tourism scholars should also take cognisance of the fact that transmodernism does not only signify a major paradigm shift from current anti-humanist postmodern obsession with accumulation of material wealth, towards a new world view, the new value system, planetary consciousness, environmental concerns and spirituality. Instead, underpinned by a philosophy of speculative realism, epistemology of knowledge creation (which in turn creates the new knowledge in the perpetual manner) and flat ontology of equality of objective (knowledge which edifies the material) and subjective (experiences), transmodernism is an emerging meta-theory which will very soon dethrone postmodernism as the reigning meta-theory, in social sciences in Page 109 particular. Tourism scholars should not fall behind many other fields which are already integrating transmodernism as a meta-theory into their respective scientific fields and theoretical discourse.
