Ethnic Tourism and the Modern Traveler’s Dilemma: What if Your Life Became a Tourist Attraction?
An ethical debate that has challenged the tourism industry for decades remains controversial, but is full of nuance and multiple perspectives worth considering.
“That’s the problem in making travel television. When we succeed, we inspire others to travel to the places we care about and, in a sense, help kill what we love.”
-Anthony Bourdain
Imagine for a moment your house turned into a museum and alien tourists from a distant planet began showing up to gawk at your daily life and encourage you to perform various rituals for their money—money that could significantly improve the lives of your community. They’re fascinated to know how you make your oatmeal in the morning, the intriguing ritual of brushing your teeth, and how you transport your offspring to daycare. “Look at how they subsist on these places called ‘grocery stores’ and spend their days staring at screens. What astonishing creatures these humans are!”
In a nutshell, this is what many indigenous and local peoples worldwide have had to contend with over the passing generations: Balancing their livelihoods between maintaining the privacy of an authentic culture and essentially selling aspects of their culture to the tourism industry. Although the example I give is rather hyperbolic and no one’s experience is perhaps this invasive of one’s privacy, having one’s life on daily display, living in a “cultural zoo,” isn’t something most of us have ever had to think about.
Consider Hawaii’s Polynesian Cultural Center as an example—owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1963, it boasts Oahu’s “most authentic luau.” On the one hand, such a popular place provides locals with an economic engine, and many might not see anything problematic in turning culture into a business. On the other hand, a burden is placed on a community that may feel such practices tarnish their culture and keep them locked in a state of cultural voyeurism that is coercive and debasing of their autonomy. One can’t help but wonder if there are better alternatives to such a questionable enterprise.
Is there something inherently wrong with ethnic tourism? We might further ask whether the group has sovereignty over their land and has at least some control over the tourism in their backyard. If members of a given ethnic community give full consent to participating in sharing their culture with tourists, might this be a win-win? In exchange for tourists learning something of significance about another culture, the cultural community gains both monetarily and in raising awareness of the heritage of their people. Where is the harm in this scenario?
It is fair to be curious and motivated to visit other cultures and observe how different people’s lives are from ours. That’s the core of the anthropological spirit in my mind. Fortunately, we have mostly evolved past the Victorian days of the disturbing practice of caging people in human zoos and “freak shows,” though remnants and iterations of such practices persist around the world. Some such practices have continued into the 21st century.
However, there still exists a grey area between respecting another culture and being a voyeur of another group and expecting them to serve as an “attraction,” as if we are in an amusement park or museum. This is what people mean by being a “neo-colonialist”—expecting natives to perform some tacky service or act for money, as if they are merely entertainers at the whim of a rich audience. Effectively, the argument goes, this entrenches a people and culture to remain in some state of subjugation, not all that different from that of our colonial past. When I’ve encountered such places in my travels, I can’t help but feel uncomfortable and unwilling to participate in such a seemingly inauthentic experience. Am I being too uppity or do I rightfully detect something off here?
Can such tourist environments and circumstances facilitate meaningful relationships, or are they tarnished, with one side being forced to play the role of the native host to the tourist guest? In other words, is all that can be hoped to be exchanged here the tourist’s dollar for some native spectacle, whether that be a rote dance, meal, or other ritualized performance? Are tourists truly gaining some genuine insight out of such fleeting experiences, or is this nothing more than a holdover of colonialism?
In a seminal analysis on the effects the tourism industry has had on local and Indigenous cultures, the anthology Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism gets to the heart of the dilemma and the process of how tourism can homogenize a given culture by stating,
Tourists are less likely to borrow from their hosts than their hosts are from them, thus precipitating a chain of change in the host community. The notion that people in more or less continuous, first-hand, face-to-face contact become more like each other should not be ignored just because tourists come and go. A tourist clientele tends to replicate itself. As a host community adapts to tourism, in its facilitation to tourists’ needs, attitudes, and values, the host community must become more like the tourists’ culture. That is what tourists in search of the exotic and “natural” vacation setting mean when they say that a place has been “spoiled” by tourism, i.e., those who got there before them and required the amenities of home. Anthropologists are often at the forefront of those who deplore the dilution and adulteration of traditional cultures, what Mexican intellectuals have called the Cocacolaización of the native way of life.
Such homogenization of cultures, or what the stuffy academics like to call hegemony, has been articulated in films like The Beach. When Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Richard, arrives in Bangkok in the film, he immediately observes the absurdity of American traveling and laments, “The only downer is everyone’s got the same idea. We all travel thousands of miles just to watch TV and check in somewhere with all the comforts of home. And you gotta ask yourself…what is the point of that?” It’s hard not to feel some pang of agreement with that sentiment. American culture has been widely successful at exporting itself around the globe and, as a consequence, has placed heavy demands on other places adopting its own norms, customs, and standards. Yet the issue remains difficult and morally ambiguous, the more we dig, as Hosts and Guests continue,
However, the alteration of one culture by another has always been a fact of existence. Some societies have remained in relative isolation from others for long periods of time, but in this century virtually no community is immune from outside contact, and the tourist is more ubiquitous than any other kind of representative of other cultures. Although anthropologists decry, as they should, the exploitation of any people by another, they should realize better than most that communities dedicated to tourism from an economic point of view must maximize the exploitation of the tourist clientele to the fullest. The ethical question is who or how many profit from the exploitation.
Thus, we see how complicated this dilemma has become. Has tourism merely created a situation of reciprocal exploitation in these various places around the globe? Oftentimes, this debate has been too heavily focused on the outdated nostalgia of the olden days from both the perspective of natives and tourists from many locales and cultures. They both share the idea that tourism has “spoiled” the culture, but for the natives, it is of the days before tourism took root that they often long for, whereas for the modern tourist, it was the moment of first contact with natives when things were pure and unadulterated.
Nowadays, most pragmatic minds have come to accept that what once was is not coming back, and are now considering how best to mediate the impacts of tourism on existing cultures and environments that can create more sustainable systems. Perhaps the better policy is to first listen and learn the desires of those living in a given place and not assume what people want or don’t want for their culture and society. How do they feel about globalization and large swaths of tourists coming to town? Is it something they welcome and will benefit from? There’s much more nuance to be found in these debates. In 1996, the mountaineer and author Jon Krakauer illustrated the commercialization and aesthetic degradation of the region surrounding Everest in Into Thin Air:
[T]o handle the growing traffic from Western climbers and trekkers, new lodges and teahouses are springing up across the Kumbu region…longtime visitors…are saddened by the boom in tourism and the change it has wrought on what early Western climbers regarded as an earthly paradise, a real-life Shangri-La. Entire valleys have been denuded of trees to meet the increased demand for firewood. Teens hanging out in Namche carrom parlors are more likely to be wearing jeans and Chicago Bulls T-shirts than quaint traditional robes. Families are apt to spend their evenings huddled around video players viewing the latest Schwarzenegger opus.
The issue is, therefore, not so one-sided as Krakauer further illustrates, “I didn’t hear many Sherpas bemoaning changes.” Due to the money brought in by climbers to economically uplift such things as schools and medical clinics, reduce infant mortality, and help boost critical infrastructure projects,
[I]t seems more than a little patronizing for Westerners to lament the loss of the good old days when life in the Kumbu was so much simpler and more picturesque. Most of the people who live in this rugged country seem to have no desire to be severed from the modern world or the untidy flow of human progress. The last thing Sherpas want is to be preserved as specimens in an anthropological museum.
For every argument against tourism, there appears to be one for it. There is a reason global tourism consistently ranks as the world’s number one industry. It is a behemoth of an economic engine that, once going in a given area, many find reluctant to reverse course. A further review of Hosts and Guests adds more nuance to how multidimensional the effects of tourism are and how varied people’s reactions can be toward it:
[T]he research…indicates overall that tourism is not the major element of culture change in most societies. Given the pervasive indigenous demands for modernization, for the materialism and gadgetry that make human lives physically more comfortable and easier, the labor-intensive tourist industry has progressively served as an economically viable and socially permissible vehicle to provide wage employment. Tourism is especially favored where significant segments of the population have minimal education or technical skills, inasmuch as other industries may require extensive training.
The discussion on the impacts of tourism on natural and cultural environments has been a weighty subject with many avenues to explore and reflect on. However, it seems the emerging consensus for the best policy then is to listen and learn from the local inhabitants of a given area as to what their aspirations are for their country and communities, not assume we know what is best for them from afar as temporary guests in a foreign land. And yet, there are going to always be factions within communities who strongly disagree, as it’s likely been since the dawn of time.
All this said, we have to be bold enough to make some of these treks ourselves, learn the languages and customs, and befriend others abroad to know their true hopes and desires. And while we are in these places, perhaps revisit the question of what it would be like if your life had turned into a tourist attraction. Culture is constantly changing and often in unforeseen ways. Modern travelers can heed the advice and practices of not just anthropologists, but the people who inhabit these places to gain a sense of the aspirations they have for their community. I have high hopes for the future of travel and adventure, but despite the many ethical challenges that remain, I believe travel has the power to piece the world together in a more wholesome manner. My wish is that the modern adventurer becomes a kind of anthropologist and better steward of cultures and the environment in which we all share. What is most important to glean from all this is that we all continue to cultivate and teach respect for people, places, and their heritage.
If you enjoyed this article, consider these related articles from Those Who Wander:
The Road Too Often Taken: A Return to the Ethics of Wandering
The Hope of Travel, Part II: Does Travel Have the Power to Piece the World Together?
Thanks for being a fellow traveler with me through this read. Please consider subscribing, sharing, and supporting this project—much more to follow.
Cheers!
-JSB
Great insights; reminds me of reading John Krakauer’s insights from his book as I was trekking in Nepal and talking to our guides.
I always find this conversation so interesting. I’ve talked about the commodification of Ethiopian culture with people within our community. I worry about the lengths we’re going to change our food for western consumption, or seeing more and more white tourists in Addis Ababa — and those worries are completely discarded by those who live in or grew up there, in lieu of the money that commodification brings. In fact, I’ve even been scolded for not wanting to “share” with others.
Right now, the cultural tradition is still very strong, albeit younger people would rather buy American brands than their own. I’ve often been curious about the “point of no return,” or the point in which perception on the issue changes.