ls cultural tourism on the right track?

Mike Robinson, director of the Centre for Travel and Tourism at the University of Northumbria, UK

Tourism has long been assumed to promote cultural understanding and peace, but in fact it often chips away at cultures and leads to conflict

Among the Toraja people of Sulawesi, Indonesia, not all was going well with tourism. In fact, resentment became so great over the way in which sacred funeral ceremonies were being adapted to meet tourists’ needs that in the late 1980s, a number of Toraja communities simply refused to accept tourists.
The Toraja example highlights the dilemma that faces contemporary cultural tourism. On the one hand tourists increasingly seek exotic and often unique cultural spectacles and experiences, and are willing to pay a premium to do so. But on the other hand, the very presence of tourists can chip away at local culture and essentially re-invent it to fit the exigencies of the tourism industry.
The result is that host communities find culture and traditions under threat from the purchasing power of the tourism industry. Neither are tourists better off from the cultural viewpoint. Instead of getting rich and authentic cultural insights and experiences, tourists get staged authenticity; instead of getting exotic culture, they get kitsch.
With nearly one billion international trips expected in 2000, the impact of tourism on culture has become so palpable that the question arises as to whether or not we can continue along the current path without something having to give. More than ever, we must find a way to achieve sustainable cultural tourism.
Surprisingly, and in contrast to the attention given to the natural environment in the sustainable development debate, very little energy has been devoted to this end. A major reason for this lethargy appears to lie in our basic assumptions about tourism.
The predominant notion is that tourism generates cultural harmony. This idea derives from the romantic (and elitist) traditions of travel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is today enshrined in the World Tourism Organization’s mission statement, which includes the goal of fostering international peace and understanding.
But claims that tourism is a vital force for peace are exaggerated. Indeed there is little evidence that tourism is drawing the world closer together. The truth is that a host of cultural conflicts have developed around tourism.
Little thought is given to the fact that tourism is one globalizing influence which can initiate dramatic and irreversible changes within the cultures of host communities. Unfortunately, while the idea that we should respect cultures and cultural rights may be present, the idea that we should sustain cultures is not fully developed. Nor is there any clear indication of which cultures we are speaking of
Perhaps the most obvious conflict is between tourist and host. This is in part engendered by the fundamental difference in goals: while the tourist is engaged in leisure, the host is engaged in work. While the tourist arrives with loads of expectations, many of the local stakeholders often have no idea of what to expect.
Another source of conflict is between the often persuasive and economically powerful developers and operators of the international (though mainly first world) tourism industry and the host country. Tourism can turn local cultures into commodities, that is, consumer items much like any others. Religious rituals, ethnic rites and festivals continue to be reduced and sanitized to conform with tourist expectations, resulting in what one scholar has dubbed “reconstructed ethnicity.”

An unequal relationship
Part of the conflict stems from the fact that packaging culture begins well away from the cultural site. Cultures are reduced to a two-dimensional world carried by glossy brochures presenting idyllic locations and generally reducing distinctive cultures to superficial and readily substitutable narratives.
The flow of tourism receipts is mainly to the developed world–where the majority of tourism businesses are located–creating a permanent backdrop for conflict.
Another level of conflict is found among different sectors of the host community. For example, locals working in the tourism industry might have different goals from those of agricultural workers in the same community. Access to tourism employment, which in developing countries also means often access to relatively high wages, may be skewed to certain social and ethnic groups.
The attraction of generating hard currency relatively quickly and often with minimal investment compared to, say, establishing a manufacturing industry, is a powerful argument for governments of both developed and developing nations seeking to develop tourism.
However, the various levels of tourism-related cultural conflict force us–or should force us–to question the very foundations of cultural tourism.
Active collaboration with local cultures must be at the centre of any efforts to promote sustainable cultural tourism. However, to date the extent of collaboration remains narrow and almost a token afterthought following environmental and economic considerations. One study has shown that in New Zealand Maori economic involvement in the tourism industry amounted to less than one per cent.
Though definitions might differ, I would argue that at its heart sustainable cultural tourism recognizes the value of cultural diversity, and needs to provide local cultures with a forum in which they can participate in decisions that affect the future of their culture. In other words, host cultures should be empowered to say no or yes to tourism, and in the latter case, to set guidelines for tourism if they so wish.
There are examples where the redistribution and ownership of resources are being addressed in tourism in such a way that indigenous peoples are beginning to move from being the providers of cultural experiences for tourists, to having an ownership and management role in tourism. (See pages 30-33).
Such examples are encouraging, though still few and far between, and even then, largely shaped by first world value systems. It is the allocation of cultural rights and subsequent respect for and protection of those rights which underpin sustainable development and should underpin the notion of sustainable tourism. Those cultural rights need to be accompanied by rights in other areas. Armed with land, resources and intellectual property rights, communities and cultures can not only influence the direction and pace of tourism developments, but also provide or withhold consent for them.
Except for some rare cases, I am not at all confident that at present we are on the right track at all. The tourism industry and the governments and organizations which empower it cannot, and arguably would not, engage in dramatic structural and intellectual reshuffling which would put the notion of cultural consent at the centre of a collaborative process.
Under the current self-regulatory approach, the industry can encourage local community participation in the management of tourism resources and can aim to include non-traditional decision-makers in the development process. The problem is that it does things in a way that is designed to serve both the economic goals and desires of the tourism industry, and the dominant first world value systems which it represents.
One of the implications of a sustainable tourism constructed around the idea of cultural consent is that tourism may be rejected outright. More likely is that via more equitable collaborations, the nature, extent and type of tourism development will be adopted to suit the cultural needs of the host community. Either way the challenge is to establish mechanisms which will involve local cultures and transfer to them the right to decide on the type and extent of tourism which they wish within the economic, environmental and cultural limits which they have set.

• An international conference, Tourism 2000: Time for Celebration, is being organized to address sustainable tourism issues. It will be held September
2-7, 2000 at Sheffield, UK. For information, mike.robinson@unn.ac.uk.

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