By Sirkka Miller
Traveling by airplane has become so commonplace that many of us (in the united states’ imperial core) don’t blink an eye at the concept of a 5-day excursion to x,y,z via Boeing jumbo jet. While the normalization of frequent airplane travel is just one symptom of wider systemic issues (globalized capitalism and a dominant culture of transience), I believe it is worth interrogating. Max Liboiron, a scholar of settler-colonialism and discard studies, said in an interview that “one of the characteristics of dominant systems, like colonialism, is that what it takes to be true, good, and right becomes so naturalized, so normal, that it is inherited as common sense.” I wonder: what lies beneath the ‘common sense’ of near-ubiquitous air travel?
Of course, we’ve heard that flying emits a ton of carbon, and we recognize that carbon emissions contribute to climate change, which is, literally, an existential threat to life on earth. But it isn’t just the abstracted ‘carbon’ emissions that we have to contend with – it is also the culture around air travel, which propagates a particular manner of moving through the world, that deserves further investigation.
What is this phenomenon of assumed access to the world? Who gets it? Who doesn’t? And what sorts of relationships and engagements with places are fostered?
A note, first, that it is – obviously – a privileged position to be able to consider traveling for pleasure or vacation. If you find yourself in this position, where you can feed yourself, access resources, and pass through a militarized border, remember that many do not have the mobility you do. And the existence of the tourism industry – reliant as it is upon global capitalist hegemony – is part of the reason why. An open and accessible world for the consumer-vacation is a product of colonialism, and its normalcy is an illusion. There are people where you’re going. Not to mention that the companies that make passenger aircrafts, the two largest being Boeing and Airbus, are also military contractors – in other words, the corporate beneficiaries of the tourism industry are war profiteers. Case in point: Boeing makes the F-15 war planes the Israeli government is currently using to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
But I don’t blame anyone, individually, for taking opportunities to explore the world in this way. This is a systemic issue, and traveling is compelling! But that’s part of the problem, I think. Privileged “consumers” are sold this notion of a fulfilling life necessarily including traipsing off to some far off land – but in this equation the far off land often becomes a commodity-experience to be purchased and consumed, not a place with a people who have the agency to say they don’t want you there. Further, I wonder, when we spend our (rare) time off work traveling in a superficial mode, how does our relationship to our home-place suffer?
My hope for this little essay is that it sparks a pause, a moment of thoughtfulness, as you consider how to spend your time and energy. When we refuse superfluous travel, what space is opened up in our lives to root down and contribute to local flourishing?
Let’s dig deeper into the idea that traveling, as it is commonly practiced under capitalism, can turn a ‘place’ into a commodity. This can be thought of as a process of simplification, a flattening. This happens, in part, through a divorcing of a geographic location from its relational contexts. What is a place? Anywhere you go, you will find a landscape with an ecology and people, living within webs of meaning: political, cultural, social, ecological. But traveling for tourism and vacation encourages a superficial and simple engagement with other places: there is a prioritization of ease, which thrives on simple money-for-commodity exchanges, in contrast with the effort and time that would be required to engage across cultural difference (between travelers and locals) in a deeper way.
Here’s a hypothetical example to illustrate. Chances are, if you bought a plane ticket to Guatemala, you did not have to first build relationships with local people and be invited, perhaps only after you’ve demonstrated some sort of trustworthiness and cultural competency, and proven that you will act respectfully and be accountable for your actions amongst the community in that place. No, you just buy the ticket and show up. Likely, you will pay for a taxi to Antigua (because that’s what the travel bloggers recommend) and either book a hotel or stay at the hostel with the German and Australian travelers. You buy dinner at the restaurant that appeals to you because it is air conditioned, sells IPAs, and is decorated like your favorite hipster spot at home. You chat a bit with the waitress (in English) and feel momentarily connected, forgetting that they are working right now so they have to be nice to you. You know no one well enough to be corrected if you make a generalization about Mayan culture, or if you litter, or appropriate a symbol without understanding its significance. And this doesn’t only undermine/harm local culture and sovereignty, but it also cheapens your life and experience: you will remain in your assumptions and generalizations, you will miss opportunities for authentic relationship-building and learning, and you will return home mostly unchanged.
“Hey, I just wanted a vacation – what’s the real harm,” you might ask. Well it is an issue of land rights and colonization, ultimately. Again, I turn to Max Liboiron, who says: “colonialism is about settler access to Indigenous land (which includes Indigenous ideas, cosmologies, and life) for settler goals, including benevolent ones.” Even if you mean well, assuming you have access to a place because you paid for a plane ticket is colonial thinking – your access (if you’re one of the few to have access) to the world is predicated on the imposition of capitalist-colonial cultural norms, backed up by the violent reach of the military. You might be oblivious and good-hearted, but your presence in a place you aren’t in relationship with is a facet of a world-order that undermines the agency of local people. Maybe they do want you there – then great! But, normally, the opportunity for that consent is bypassed.
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Winona LaDuke, in her book To Be A Water Protector, writes: “Privileged by the fossil fuel economy, which has put all things on steroids, we are transient, we move. Few people live in the same place as their ancestors, and many more of us have historical amnesia.” … “Transience means that we do not come to know and love a place; we move on, and as such are not accountable to that place. Always looking for greener pastures, a new frontier, I fear we lose depth, and a place loses its humans who would sing to it, gather the precious berries, make clean the paths and protect the rivers,” … “My counsel is stay, make this place your home and defend this land.”
As I hinted at earlier, the normalization of air-travel is only part of the issue. Transience, enabled by commodity-based lifeways, also impacts how we live in our home-places. What does it mean to be accountable to a place? To tune in to our localities, moving beyond superficial consumer-based lifeways?
I am in a phase of my life where I am trying to heal my connection to place. I was born in Minneapolis, to young, midwestern parents, but I have lived in the Bay Area since I was 6 months old. My three younger siblings were all born here. My life has been formed by and wrapped up in this landscape, its ecologies, and the urban infrastructure built atop/within these contexts. And yet it is so easy to be an alienated consumer on this land, to never learn to identify the beings that surround me in this ecology, to never learn the histories. What do I owe to this place? What is my relationship to it? Our historical amnesia and ecological disconnection is a symptom of settler colonialism, but I believe it is possible to (partially, incompletely) address this systemic issue in the patterns of our everyday lives.
I am starting to identify the rivers that we drink from in this watershed. Pay attention to the soils and people and ecologies that produce the food that I eat (and be cognizant when what I’m consuming has been produced by the huge, anonymous and unaccountable global supply chain). I am trying to tune in to the seasonal shifts and note the migrating birds that pass by, and remember that most of the Bay Area is in “zone 10” when I am thinking of which plants will grow best in my (mostly hypothetical at this point) garden. I decided not to fly for the year of 2024, and I have mostly kept that commitment. We are imperfect, but trying matters. Rooting down in this way – tuning in to my local place, and turning away from commodity-lifeways – will bring more space and resources with which to engage in direct struggle against things like the construction of Cop Campus in San Pablo, or participate in the creative proliferation of a world in opposition to the death-cult of globalized capitalism.
When we heal our connection to place, perhaps a new vision for visiting other places will emerge as well. I believe there exists a meaningful and nourishing way to travel, to move through the world and make connections across different geographies and cultures. I even believe this is important and necessary! Let’s envision what this could look like together.