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  Cultural heritage and a return to the origins : Does the notion of cultural identity need redefining, as the world grows smaller ?

Mr. Frans SCHOUTEN - Professor at the Dutch Institute of Tourism and Transport Studies, Amsterdam, Netherlands

 

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Some time ago I visited a conference on cultural tourism in Africa. There were the usual misconceptions one will hear on these occasions, such as Cultural Tourism will bring the destination more income with fewer visitors, and Cultural Tourism is the fastest growing market in tourism development. The last statement may be correct, it however depends on how you define cultural tourism, but it is nevertheless a meaningless statement. If growth occurs in a niche market at the same time as growth occurs in the main market. The difference will only increase, even if the niche market is growing faster. If cultural tourism counts for 20% of the market and it increases with 100% in 5 years and traditional forms of tourism (80%) increases with 50% in the same period. The result in the end will be that there is a bigger demand in volume for traditional forms of tourism in 5 years time then for cultural tourism. Besides, cultural tourism is difficult to define, and it is not a single market. It looks more like a continuum from incidental encounters to cultural phenomena to intentional decision making based on cultural preferences. Probable only a few tourists consider themselves Cultural Tourists, and maybe the whole concept is something that derives from the drawing board of scientists looking for labels to categorise phenomena. We did a small survey in the Dutch historic town of Haarlem, interviewing tourists and day-trippers. No one considered himself a cultural tourist. However when asked in what kind of activities they were involved, the answers were : looking at these cute old houses, shopping, drinking coffee or having lunch in a cosy old-fashioned inn. They visited the church and sat listening to someone exercising on the great organ (which was considered quite an experience), and most of them planned to visit a museum in the afternoon. They however did not consider themselves cultural tourists.

At the above-mentioned conference a researcher involved in a project in cultural tourism development in a tribal community announced proudly that they had included in the tour to the tribal village the visit of a ritual circumcision of a boy. Such an announcement raises many questions, such as might they run out of boys in the top season, or how many times can you circumcise someone ? But more seriously, are there any limits to the exposure of foreign eyes? But most important of all: who is demanding such a ‘product’ ?
The underlying assumption is that tourists are looking for an ‘authentic’ experience. Which may be true, but that concept is even more ill defined than cultural tourism itself. McCannell’s (1979) classic work on staged authenticity and his concept of front stage and back stage areas has lead for some in our profession to the idea that staging is wrong. That it is degrading the original cultures and in time will diminish the attached cultural values. The same applies to allowing strangers into someone’s most private and sacred space, as in the example of the circumcision above mentioned. But there are many different shades of gray in this area and where the line is drawn between the public and the private space is different in many cultures. And is all staging really that bad ? When working in Indonesia I asked an Indonesian colleague why there were so little of his compatriots attending the rehearsals of the court dances at the Sultan’s palace. His answer was simple and revealing: “Are you regularly going in Europe to 18th century court dances in royal palaces ?” Obviously the answer was “No”, and his response was that Indonesians are the same, and by the way, he did not considered these dances as representative of his own culture, but of upper class culture.

Why is ‘Williamsburg’ an attraction, and why is it that an arranged ‘surprise’ visit of tourists to a Moroccan wedding in Marrakech is a fake ? Are we measuring with two different standards ? Yes we are, leisure and recreation are firmly considered in the western countries to be an enterprise. But tourism, specifically for developing countries is still haunted by the myth of the host and the guest, a concept that largely ignores the economic exchange that is at the basis of the tourist’s experience, disguised as the traveller. Staging can also be seen a the way in which people at a destination guarantee the value of the tourism product, and at the same time safeguarding their private lives. They are obviously fully entitled to do so.

We have to acknowledge that tourism wherever in the world is business. Tourism is all about selling dreams. The core of the tourism industry is the commodification of escapism, the commercial answer to the longing of mankind for another reality beyond the dull and gray of the everyday experience. Tourism is about experiencing beyond the ordinary, to step out of the daily treadmill into a more wonderful, exciting and challenging world. Our profession is to ‘mystify the mundane, to amplify the exotic, minimize the misery, rationalize the disquietude and romanticize the strange’ (Mason, 1994). People going to historic places are primarily seeking for an image of the past rather than an authentic historical experience. The past is perceived as very distant, as David Lowenthal (1985) puts is in the title of his famous book: The Past is a Foreign Country. Many tourists wish therefore to experience what they are ahppy to believe to be authenticity at a site, but not necessarily reality ( Mckercher & Du Cross, 2000)

When indigenous dances, music, and ceremonies are performed in a staged setting it is suggested that they loose their original meaning and value for the cultures involved. But folklore in western countries shows that performance, enjoyment, and feeling of local pride can go hand in hand. Besides, no one knows if these performances would not change due to other developments that take place in societies. Michel Picard (1983) observed that the dances performed on Bali, are dances that were staged specifically for tourists in the early days of tourism on the island. The Balinese now see these dances themselves as their genuine heritage, but the original "sacred" and "forbidden" dances are no longer remembered. Is this the effect of staging for the tourist sake, or would the Balinese have lost their knowledge of their dances anyway, who can say for sure. Cultures obviously are strong enough to survive such a loss, and even maintain an ‘authentic’ atmosphere, as the case of Bali proofs.

Change in any society will occur, and probably tourism is only one of the factors in this process. Modern communication-systems have certainly a much bigger impact. These processes of cultural exchange are however at the same time as old as culture itself. Any culture in the world has shaped itself in an endless process of giving and taking. Culture is a phenomenon constantly in development, a living identity. Culture is a dynamic pattern and when it is forced into a static pattern it will cease to be a source of inspiration.
When conservation of culture is turning into conservatism, the treatment will be worse than the disease and will eventually kill the ‘patient’.

There is another interesting observation to be made in this respect. Not only do cultures change, but also the appreciation of cultures changes over time. The heritage is re-evaluated by each generation anew and some aspects are added to it and others may be fading away. The rise in Western Europe of visitor centres dealing with the life of ordinary people at the turn of the 19th and 20th century is an expression of the shift of attention to other forms of heritage than the more traditional aspects. This also applies to the increasing popularity of Industrial Archaeology and the growing demand for so-called rural tourism in Western Europe. It is interesting to notice that these developments are not spread out evenly in time in the different European countries. In the UK, The Netherlands and in Germany these phenomena came up much earlier than in the Mediterranean countries. There seems to be needed a time gap of some generations in order to appeal to nostalgia. In the northern part of Europe the Industrial Revolution came about earlier than in the south of Europe so the necessary distance in time to look back in nostalgia came about earlier than in the south. When in a society there is still the personal memory around of the hardship of the industrial labour, there seems yet no wish to encounter it again in the leisure time. It is interesting to notice that the phenomenon of rural tourism is very much an urban European trend, which has no equivalent in Asia, Africa or Latin America. Even for the urban elite outside Europe not enough time has elapsed to look back at the countryside with the same romantic longing, as is currently the trend in Europe. It was however also interesting to observe my own reaction on a anthropologic presentation of a folkloristic event in Macedonia. As I looked fascinated at the film I realised that if these images had been taken in Holland, I would have dismissed them as another backwater tradition. It is obvious that a distance in time and space is needed to appreciate phenomena and to trigger nostalgia as a driving force in tourism.

Before we can judge the deterioration of traditional cultures in developing cultures, we have to look at the evolution of our own traditions in the western countries. Prof. Rooijakkers the leading Dutch ethnographer mentions that in the first half of the 20th century there was the strong idea that the processes of modernization and urbanization where gradually undermining all kind of old customs, traditions, songs, stories, and rituals. Researches saw it as their task to safeguard as much of the ‘authentic’ culture of farmers and fishermen. They did so by meticulously describing the phenomena they encountered. The next generation ethnographers grew up with the idea that this kind of work was finite, at a certain stage everything traditional would have vanished. But they were in for a surprise, in the 60ties they discovered that popular traditions was eternal and ever changing. They became critical to their own research and discovered that some of the old traditions were old as believed. They started to ‘de-mystify’ their trade, but at the same time they were bound by the paradigmata of their science. They discovered that some traditions did not date back to the Middle Ages but only some fifty years. Or were the result of a romantic and nationalistic upheaval in the 19th century, as the kilts in Scotland. They made a distinction between real folklore and fake-lore, the new ersatz-folklore. But Rooijakkers is specifically interested in these new phenomena. He is not so much concerned with the past as such, but how it is mobilized for all kind of purposes. He emphasis there is an enormous need for what he calls ‘social fiction’: the mythomania around traditions, rituals, and customs, in short the cult of heritage. With that we give meaning to our time and space and shape our emotions. A perfect example is the hype around the death of Lady Diana, which is increasingly copied on many occasions to give grief a voice. The process by which people nourish and design their illusions is a reflection of the way they perceive the world around them. Rooijakkers states: ‘Folklore is never innocent’. He researches the process of ‘folklorization- and musealization’. He observes that the local elite notices that a particular custom or traditional building is about to disappear, they erect a committee to preserve it. The bright site is highlighted and the negative aspects: fighting at the annual festival, suppression of the rural poor by landlords, is forgotten. At the end of the process the custom or the object is transformed and fundamentally has changed both functionally and in signification. It has become a tourist attraction or a museum piece. (Interview Volkskrant 19 October 2002) 

It all comes down to identity. Cultural identity is the expression of one's place in the world. In tourism both the ‘host’ (provider) and the ‘guest’ (client) carry their awareness of identity with them and from of the encounter of the two emerges always something new. From one perspective it can renew the bonds with one's own roots, both for the provider as well as for the visitor. But it can also make one curious of what was lost in the process and trying to revive it. Tourism can be a major stimulus for almost disappearing skills and knowledge. It also can make one envious for what someone else seems to have, or what the other has that you never had. Obviously the tourist has often the advantage in this exchange, for in most countries he/she seems to have what the others do not possess freedom of travel, leisure time and affluence. In displaying these the tourist further contributes to the wear and tear of the very thing he/she was looking for, whether he/she is visiting staged performances or not.
Such effects easily can lead to globalization and further deterioration of local cultures, resulting in cultural uniformity described as processes of Disneyfication and McDonnaldisation. Which observation is true and untrue at the same time. It leads indeed to imitation of western behavior, but be honest, who would not prefer to go to work on a motorcycle instead of going all the way on foot or on a bicycle, or would not prefer a cool soda from a fridge over a warm one ? But cultural identity is a living force, and will eventually prove itself as a powerful counter-trend against the global cultural domination of the West and the cultural uniformity it brings with it. Cultural identity represents the wish to protect the uniqueness of one's own culture, language and identity - and their attached value-systems - from foreign influence. Our roots are becoming increasingly important, to quote Naisbitt (1990):

"The more homogeneous our lifestyles become, the more steadfastly we cling to deeper values, we all seek to preserve our identities, be they religious, cultural, national, linguistically, or racial, the more worlds grow more similar, we shall increasingly treasure the traditions that spring from within".

Out of the exchange between cultures something will get lost and something will be gained. It is a difficult challenge to give direction to the route of development to avoid the above-mentioned dilemma between to conserve and conservatism, for only in freedom choices can be made that can be executed.

The more the world turns into the global village, the bigger the need is to identify with what is at hand. The revival of regional idioms, the renewed interest in regional and local history, folklore, etc. are an expression of this development. The enormous influx of museums in Europe over the last 20 years is not particularly in prestigious national institutions, but in modest developments on the local level (ETB, 1991). Bringing together a collection and building a museum, being proud of one's own history and achievements is the expression of trying to find a solid base for one's identity in a world getting so complex, abstract, and obscure that it does not provide any longer the consolidation that is needed. 

Within many western countries there is a growing interest in the regions, the dialects and regional languages, the past, and nature. It is a move away from a political culture dominated by economics. In tourism, the regions try to build a distinct profile, based on the different atmosphere, different people, different culture, different language, different heritage, different food and different customs. Tourism takes an active part in this development of culture into unique selling points that can discriminate one destination from another. But it is more than being competitive in a tough market; it is also the rediscovery of identity. The same can be seen in developing countries; minorities are pursuing their rights, empires as the former Soviet Union and Indonesia with many ethnic groups are dissolving. And on a more modest scale there is the emphasis on vernacular architecture in the newly established hotels and resorts.

Obviously a balance is needed between the tourist, the experience of the culture visited and the host community. The tourist, the culture and the community are dependent upon each other. The tourists need for their authentic experience the living culture and the maintenance and improvement of the resources, which in their turn depend on the spiritual and economical development of the local community.

The local population should be able to gain economic benefit and renewed self-esteem from any tourism development in terms of jobs, shops and pride of oneself. A nice example is the historic town of Heidelberg, where antagonism against the influx of tourists has been turned into a large group of voluntary guides through information/education about their own local history and historical significance. The local or national authorities should gain in terms of direct and indirect taxation from the cultural resources. And they have to be aware of these benefits. Improvement of the existing infrastructure for tourism should also be beneficial to the local population. Cultural tourism can give incentives to training and education. Improvement of local skills, traditions, arts and crafts are of mutual benefit to the population, the tourists and the government.
In this respect modernization in a society is not always an improvement. Originally in the Dutch colonial time the Sonobudoyo Museum in Yogyakarta on Java had a crafts-school annex to the museum. The students used the collections as examples to learn different styles and techniques. That all has been abandoned, but I assure you our ancestors often had better ideas of cultural continuity than we have today. Museums and heritage centers could also develop into focus points of quality souvenirs and handicrafts, they have the original models and the expertise, and increasingly the sophisticated tourist is bored with the junk for sale on the streets and on the tourist markets. They want a genuine piece to take home. To succeed cultural heritage attractions must be actualized, commoditized or some how commercialized to facilitate consumption of the experience (Mckercher & Du Cross, 2000)

The aim of sustainable cultural development and cultural tourism based on this concept is the continuity of our past in the future. In doing so we need to care more for traditions, for authenticity, for identity, for people and for opportunities to meet and to exchange.
In this way the whole economic viability of the cultural and heritage attractions can be improved to the benefit of the heritage itself and those who are attracted to it and those who depend upon it. Our heritage is not only a mirror to our past; it is also a window to the future.

 

References :

1. Brunner, Edward (1995) : The Ethnographer/Tourist in Indonesia. In : M.F. Lanfant, J.B. Allcock, and E.M. Brunner, International Tourism, Identity and Change, Sage. London.

2. Dann, Graham (1994) Tourism and Nostalgia : Looking forward to going back ; Vrijetijd en Samenleving, Vol. no. 1/2.

3. Dann, Graham (1996) The Language of Tourism. A sociolinguistic perspective. CAB International, Wallingford, UK

4. English Tourist Board (1991) English Heritage Monitor, London, ETB

5. MacCannell, Dean (1979) : Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings ; American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 79 no.3.

6. Mason, G. (1994) The ‘Fakelore of Hawaii”, manufactured myths. In : The Eye, vol. 11/4.

7. Naisbitt, John and Aburdene, Patricia (1990) : Megatrends 2000, New York.

8. Lowenthal, David, (1985) : The Past is a foreign Country, CUB, Cambridge

9. McKercher, Bod & Du Cross, Hillary (2000) : The fundamental truth about cultural tourism, Paper Seminar Hong Kong

10. Picard, Michel (1983) : Community Participation in Tourist Activity on the island of Bali, Environment, ideologies and practices ; UNESCO/URESTI-CNRS, Paris

11. Picard, Michel (1995) : Cultural Heritage and Tourist Capital : Cultural Tourism in Bali. In : M.F. Lanfant, J.B. Allcock, and E.M. Brunner, International Tourism, Identity and Change, Sage, London

12. Picard, Michel (1996) : Bali, Cultural Tourism and Tourism Culture, Archipelo Press, Singapour

13. Rooijakkers, G. (2002) Quoted from an interview in De Volkskrant, 19/10/2002

 

Frans Schouten, Ass. Prof. Visitor Management NHTV Breda University of Professional Education B.P. 3917, 4800 DX Breda, Pays-Bas Tél. : 31.76.530 2203 - Fax : 31.76.530 2295. E-mail : schouten.f@nhtv.nl

 

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