A Fez of the Heart: Travels around Turkey in Search of a Hat by Jeremy Seal

We read the prologue to A Fez of the Heart: Travels around Turkey in Search of a Hat by Jeremy Seal.

a. Choose one passage from the reading that you found particularly interesting.  Why was this interesting?

One passage that I found interesting was when the shopkeeper sold the fez to the tourist. The shopkeeper wanted to sell the customer a hat that encouraged scantily clad girls in Turkey. However, he was reluctant to sell the customer a fez, which is a hat that represents Turkey way more than the other hat did. This is controversial to what the Turkish culture is like. Women are, generally, fully clothed and reluctant to show their faces. But, in the tourist culture, shopkeepers are more willing to sell customers hats that contradict their culture than to sell a hat that is a big part of their past.

b. Use examples from this reading to illustrate the interaction between economics and culture.

This shows that economics does not necessarily agree with culture. The town near the beaches where women would walk around topless put up signs and stoned women that would walk around in their town with bikinis. They actively tried to shake that kind of behavior away from their culture. Despite their efforts tourists still associated Turkey with topless beaches and they were attracted to that. This caused the business side of the town to really associate itself with that culture to try to make more sales and revenue.

c. Beyond the specific example of this town in Turkey, what connections or conflicts do you see between tourism and economics or tourism and culture?

Tourism can skew the world of economics. An example would be the bazaar marketplace that we read about in McMillan's book in chapter four. Tourists have a big disadvantage in the marketplace because they do not understand the way the market works. Tourists would fall under the trap of either paying the maximum of their willingness to pay or they would spend too much time trying to gather information in order to buy the product at the cheapest price. Therefore the tourist is always one step behind the locals. The locals have the advantage of already knowing by word of mouth or by experience. They have grown accustomed to the market and have providers that they have repeated business with. This always them to have buying power in the market and lower the price of the product that they wish to purchase.