the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

itself: Are we witnessing a shift from modernist to postmodernist forms of spatial
development? (Meethan, 2001).
3.3 Postmodernism
According to Lyon (1999), postmodernism is at the best of times a rather confusing,
if not contradictory, term. It can be regarded as an idea, a cultural experience, a
social condition or even a combination of all these elements. The term itself
presupposes a break with the past, based on the notion that whereas modernity was
characterised by differentiation, standardisation and hierarchical notions of taste and
judgement, within postmodernism these characteristics are challenged or even
inverted. Norms, standards and hierarchies are no longer correct or incorrect, but
altered and diverse. Space is no longer governed by a hierarchy of uses and
functions in which the sphere of leisure is separated from the sphere of work. This
hierarchy has been replaced with a more fragmented and less uniform pattern of
spatial differentiation, which in turn has been matched by resultant changes in
patterns of consumer preferences, within which diversity, difference and eclecticism
appear to be the key elements. Space is now recognised as having the capacity to
embody sets of values from which people derive significance and meaning, and
changes to the urban form across the industrialised economies are transformations
which are as much about the symbolic as they are material and economic
processes. Hence, there is an interrelationship between the material and the
symbolic, between the urban form and the meanings that are derived from it. This in
turn involves the creation of coherent spatial representations or narratives which
create or manipulate new patterns of tourism consumption (Meethan, 2001).
It may be tempting to view such changes as conclusive evidence that modernity has
run its course and that we have indeed entered a new era of postmodernity. Yet as
Meethan (2001) notes, such claims must be treated with caution. Even though one
can point to the new patterns of more fragmented leisure consumption linked to new
uses of space and the significance of the symbolic realm in creating distinct places,
the claims that we have entered a period of postmodernity appear to be somewhat
'over-inflated'. The pattern of tourist consumption established in modernity has far
from disappeared. Rather, it has merely shifted its location. As with many forms of
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