Cultural tourism has a number of particular, sometimes contradictory, characteristics. For instance, compared to recreational tourists, cultural tourists encounter a much wider section of the native population as they visit villages and towns remote from coastal tourist zones. There natives have often not (yet) developed the skills required to cope with mass tourism.
While this may mean that initially they are more hospitable, they are also more vulnerable and easily exploited. As the local population becomes more familiar with tourism and gains expertise, it becomes more active in protecting its interests. One of the most striking characteristics of tourism is the way it promotes self-awareness, pride, self-confidence and solidarity among those being visited. This is especially pronounced if the host community is remote or in other ways peripheral, as are so many tourist destinations.
All the contributions to this volume demonstrate this. This self-awareness is brought about by the regular presence of outsiders, which automatically creates categories of ‘we’ and ‘they’, insiders and outsiders, hosts and guests. By being looked at, examined and questioned by strangers, locals become aware of how they differ from the visitors. It is a source of pride that affluent strangers choose to come to their community to admire — for why else would they come rather than go elsewhere? — the surroundings and customs that they had always taken for granted. The heightened self-confidence in part compensates for some of the negative aspects of tourism. Later they may discover — as the Kotzebue Eskimo did when they observed tourists’ horrified reactions to their fish-drying and butchering practices — that some tourists come to sneer and confirm their own superiority.
These communities have discovered themselves through the interest of tourists. This has encouraged reflection about their own traditions and culture and stimulated the preservation of moribund crafts and rituals. This in turn has fed the more general revitalisation of celebrations taking place throughout Europe (Boissevain 1992a). Moreover, the importance of tourist attention and revenue has given marginal host communities the confidence and leverage to bargain for more rights from superior authorities. Nogués Pedregal observed that Zahareños used the municipality’s failure to share the tourism-generated tax revenue to buttress their claim for greater independence. Self-awareness due to the presence of tourists can thus be actively used by local residents as a new resource (see Crystal 1989: 151; van den Berghe 1994: 145f.; Crain forthcoming).
National and regional tourist authorities usually commoditise and market local culture without consulting the inhabitants (see Greenwood 1989: 180). This can lead to tension between the tourists, who not surprisingly demand access to the sites and events they have been promised and have paid for, and the inhabitants whose culture, often unbeknownst to them, has been sold to visitors. Crain describes the resentment of inhabitants of many municipalities surrounding Almonte at the way tourist agencies, together with the local religious and commercial elite, converted both solemn rituals and local forests into tourist assets for their own benefit. Peter Odermatt’s account of the clash between the inhabitants of Abbasanta and regional authorities in Sardinia over the representation of and tourist access to their local monument illustrates this same issue.
Curiosity, stimulated by skilful marketing, can lead to yet another characteristic of cultural tourism: the loss of privacy. As tourists search for the culture they have paid to see, they cross thresholds and boundaries (sometimes, but not always, hidden) to penetrate authentic backstage areas. The sociologist MacCannell, following Goffman ( 1959), has discussed ‘back’ and ‘front’ regions in the context of tourism: ‘The front is the meeting place of hosts and guests or customers and service persons, and the back is the place where members of the home team retire between performances to relax and to prepare’ ( MacCannell 1976: 92f.).
MacCannell’s back regions are normally closed to outsiders. Their mere existence implies their possible violation. The back region is somehow more ‘intimate and real’ as against the front region’s ‘show’. It is consequently viewed as more ‘truthful’, more authentic. The back region is where the tourist can experience true authenticity and achieve a oneness with his host ( 1976: 94-99). The desire to penetrate back regions is inherent in the structure of tourism. Tourists thus have a family resemblance ( Blok 1976) to anthropologists, who also seek access to back regions to understand the hidden dimensions of the cultures they study.
Many cases have been reported of tourists looking around in domestic back regions or participating in private events to the discomfort of their unwilling ‘hosts’. Puijk describes how curious tourists wandering into private back yards annoy Lofoten islanders. In the Austrian village of Stuhlfelden, German tourists slipped uninvited into a private party where they were observed peering into closed rooms and cupboards ( Droog 1991). The indignant hosts, keenly aware of the community’s dependence on German visitors, were afraid to say anything.
Similarly, in September 1992, Maltese friends celebrating the annual festa of St Leonard in the village of Kirkop, discovered two tourists peering about inside their house. The curious couple had come to the village with a festa tour, had simply opened the glass inner door and walked into the brightly lit front room. Our friends politely showed them out. Then, to protect their privacy, they were obliged to close the wooden outer door that is always left open during the festa to display festive furnishings and decorations to passers-by. Such blatant infringements of privacy in Malta are increasing (see Boissevain 1996). I think they will continue to occur everywhere as cultural tourism is marketed to the masses.
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