Good points. But hold on a minute. We use the word "exploit" these days to
have a negative meaning. But all factors of production in all societies are
exploited. They are used, and environmentalists might argue not always in
their own interests, but in the interests of the people who use them.

All cultures exploit their own cultural elements themselves. Thye also
exploit them by trading them to others. This applies not only to material
things including land which enter into exchange, but immaterial ones which
also enter into exchange - religious symbols, power and adoption, alliances,
much more.

There is a growth in the quantity of assertions of rights akin to copyright
in many cultures, assertions which go way beyond what is normal in Roman
law. The reasons for this are that such rights are valuable, believe me not
only in sentimental terms, but in commercial ones.

I am often emotionally disgusted when I see the ways in which some cultures
trade their dances, songs, village lives, artefacts in commerce,
particularly in the tourist context. That is an aesthetic matter, since
usually such items are bowdlerized and distorted to fit the distorted images
that tourists have or exotic romance - to wit tourists doing the Hawaiian
hula which thoroughly disgusts Fijian politicans, though much the ame is
occurring in Fiji, and gives strength to their dermination not to go the
Hawaiian route.

Having said that, who am I, when it all boils down, to tell the people what
bits of their culture they should keep to themselves, which to share with
scholars, and which to commercialize?

And the use of culture in Western contexts is not all bad by any means. The
flowering of wonderful indigenous art in the Solomons to serve Church
purposes is a story yet to be told. And I was impressed by the way
Intercontinental Hotels in Senegal created a market, almost a museum, for
creative contemporary Senegalese painters and sculptors. And in Bangkok
students at the University of Fine Arts sell their rough exercizes at a
pittance through peddlars - I have some frames, and they are good indeed.
Not much, but something - students in Vancouver don't do it.

Ciao

Cyril Belshaw



-----Original Message-----
From: Kenneth Miller [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 1:05 AM
To: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask];
[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: RE: cultural tourism


Apologies if you received an incomplete mail from me (technophobic!), but
what I was intending to write was:

Cyril Belshaw's message included "what is the view of the people themselves
about this
enterprise?????  What do they get out of it????  Is it really serving up the
people on a platter, or is there more to it than that? "

and

"This is not a matter of, pardon me, black and white. But it is a matter of
what the people's goals in life are. If from our perspective they may be
confused, ill informed, or low in value, who are we to impose our own value
judgements on their decisions?  At best, if we are in contact with them, is
to to help them inform themselves...."

I understand that you anthropologists (I am more of a tourism person than an
anthropologist) are largely dealing with the "other' culture rather than our
own, but I believe that the ideas being expressed in the discussion, so far,
tend to ignore the fact that the appropriation of culture for commercial
purposes is still an on-going process for us. We are equally exploited and
channelled to see our culture as a thing of commercial value. Clearly not
everyone is convinced in the merits of this, but what is to be done? It has
got to the point that very few people are capable of distinguishing
authentic culture from manufactured culture - and certainly any kind of
continuity of traditional culture in the future will only ever be considered
relative to the principles of economics. I for one find the idea somewhat
frustrating and a bit sad.

However, to continue the discussion on a level whereby we are only
considering the extent to which our capitalist persuasion has contaminated
other cultures is myopic and slightly imperialistically-constrained. The
process is not merely one concerning the domination of one culture (or
approach to culture) by another, but is about the global subversion of
culture where we are as much the victim as anyone else.







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