Cultural Dependency In Tourism

Tourism has been a widely researched and discussed field of anthropology, with interest gaining in the early 70’s. In this essay I will define tourism as “a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change” (Smith 1989, p. 2). Tourism is of great interest to anthropology as it happens across all societies and cultures. The United Nations World Tourism Organisation recorded that 1 billion tourists crossed international borders in 2012 alone, and estimate that international tourist arrivals will grow to 1.8 billion by 2030. Currently tourism globally generates 10% GDP and 1 in 11 jobs. It accounts for 7% of the worlds exports and 30% of service experts and last year generated 1.5 …show more content…
In search of an authentic experience tourists come to developing countries with pre existing ideas or fantasies about the local culture they are visiting. Tourist operators try to make these fantasies reality by changing or playing up local cultural practice to much tourists expectations, confirming their pre existing ideas to fulfil their fantasy. In this view, tourism can lead to what is referred to as a “cultural dependency” in which local people economically rely on their ability to cater to tourists. This in turn leads to the commodification of culture. The commodification of culture is the process in which a local culture is turned into a commodity to sell to tourists and therefore is valued primarily as a an tradable good. Many anthropologists argue that when local culture is commodified and sold to tourists like goods it looses its cultural meaning destroying its original purpose and importance to the local communities. However it is also argued that traditions that would usually be lost in modern society become more meaningful as they are commodified. Loss of identity occurs when locals commodify their culture for economic benefits and change it to much tourists