Cultural Tourism in the Pacific

As intensifying global communication and transportation systems undermine the autonomy and particularity of world cultures, ‘‘culture’’ itself has paradoxically emerged as a dominant way of representing the distinctive identities of individuals and groups. At the same instant that the world system fragments the localism on which cultures once grew, it hardens and hyper -values whatever cultural differences remain. Increased concern about identity, and how this is to be delineated, animates growing interest in ‘‘cultural tourism’’ (also called indigenous or ethnic tourism). Many Pacific states hope to profit from larger numbers of tourists, but cultural tourism affords both opportunities and dangers. The wider touristic marketplace sets the exchange value of local cultures. In the Pacific, these are most frequently packaged as either savage or noble primitivism. Moreover, tourism may reinforce or challenge local power structures, and lead to disputes within host communities. Cultural tourism promotes a doubled identity as people’s gaze turns back on themselves as a tourist spectacle. Doubled identity, however, is a pervasive aspect of late modernity and cultural tourism is its symptom and not its cause