Quote:
Originally posted by Meat@Feb 22 2005, 08:55 AM
negrils income comes from Tourism, any country in the world that needs tourism to prosper "understands" the need to be nice to tourists, its when you get out of the tourist area that you get a true reflection of where you are and what the people are like.
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Meat,
You keep talking about tourist areas and Negril. I've said three times now we didn't just stay in Negril and visit tourist areas. We travelled maybe 80 miles from Negril into the mountains and met many locals in small towns along the way. They were even friendlier than in Negril. Not just shop-owners but everyday people out and about in small towns with nothing to directly gain from being friendly.
Here in the US we've had a change in the past century. This has also happened elsewhere in the world, no doubt. We've become a less neighborly society. People don't know their neighbors in the way that they used to. It's a well-documented cultural phenomenon. Some good books that include analysis of the subject are "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam and "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs. Also some of Francis Fukuyama's work is very good. These authors all tackle the subject from different viewpoints. Jacobs discusses urbanization and its negative effects on community. Fukuyama discusses large-scale effects in society such as social capital. Putnam discusses the fall of community involvement as a result of more full-time employees, the rise of television and mass media and its effects. His book is a great read on the subject. I think to reduce all of this to "tourism" is absurd.
I used to live in orlando. There's a LOT of tourist areas and the people that live in those areas are NOWHERE NEAR as friendly and talkative as Jamaicans. There's a cultural difference. I don't think the answer in Jamaica is to compare tourist areas with non-tourist areas. That was not my experience at all. I'd say it is to compare a large urban overcrowded area with rural and small-town living combined with cultural differences as mentioned above. I would guess that some of the same changes that the above authors discuss at length are no doubt taking place in the urban sprawl of Kingston too.