TOURISM PHENOMENOLOGY : CONSUMPTION AND IDENTITY - CASE STUDY SINGAPORE

Abstract

As globalisation makes the world appear smaller, travel options grow as we take off to lands far and wide to explore and experience new and unfamiliar territory. Tourism becomes an omnipresent arm that silently guides the growth of a place and the identity it portrays. Of this façade that is presented to the unassuming visitor, the ʻspectacleʼ of the place, its culture of people and place is played out, to be consumed and taken in, forming an impression and a memory in which the visitor takes with him. In the place and time where the changes of the making of this ʻspectacleʼ happens, what displacements with regards to the historical, cultural and the present identity of the people and place are subject to goes hand in hand with its planned growth. When the ʻspectacleʼ is over-zealously presented, it overtakes or ultimately becomes the inherent nature of the place and time, and the balance in which once propelled the creation of the ʻspectacleʼ hangs by a loose thread of being lost in its own translation. Focusing on the growth of Singapore as an island city-state with no natural resources to rely on, tourism plays a large part in keeping the country economically viable and stable. As such, the reading of Rem Koolhaasʼs Singapore Songlines: 30 Years of Tabula Rasa, traces the morphosis of Singapore and how as the author dictates that Singapore is but a by-product of the governmentʼs utopian vision of keeping with the contemporary, playing up the ʻspectacleʼ so much so that it becomes the way of life and the norm for its citizens but a tropical metropolis for its visitors. Singapore represents the apotheosis of a place and space in which the making of a ʻspectacleʼ has been prevalent and has to an extent seen extreme morphology through its ever-growing consumption patterns and identity. The dissertation aims to capture the phenomenology of the impact of tourism and how it can unwittingly manipulate the culture and identity of a place. Through the study of the urban development of Singapore since its independence, and how it has managed to keep itself as a country ahead of the fast changing environment of the fickle whims and fancies of tourists, capturing the imagination of many travelers with its distinct ʻspectacleʼ of place. The dissertation aims to trace the process of morphology in which the typology of its present state is achieved, weighing its benefits and disadvantages and perhaps hints of what the future plans might be.