Inter-cultural communications and power relations in international tourism commodity chains

Abstract

The internationalisation of tourism has resulted in the mediation of spatially-stretched commodity chains which often transcend international frontiers and which in businesses from different cultures come into contact with one other. This paper examines the social relations in bilateral business co-operations between Moroccan and German enterprises. As a central concept in the social sciences, there are multiple contested theorizations of power and in this paper we adopt a Lukesian starting point. A more precise naming and locating of power is vital to enhancing our understanding of the way in which the tourism product is commodified.