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    Authenticating Ethnic Tourism
    Authenticating Ethnic Tourism
    Authenticating Ethnic Tourism
    Ebook495 pages6 hours

    Authenticating Ethnic Tourism

    By Cadwallader Colden

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    This book represents a shifting of emphasis away from the discourse of authenticity to the process of authenticating ethnic tourism. It focuses upon what authentication is, how it works, who is involved, and what the problems are in the process. By using the study of folk villages on Hainan Island, China, the book suggests that authenticity evolves from a static into a more dynamic concept, which can be formulated according to the different stages of development relating to all the stakeholders involved. Authentication is an interactive process in which a balance of forces defines a state of equilibrium. The book uncovers some interesting findings that will significantly contribute to the literature on ethnic tourism in developing areas.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChannel View Publications
    Release dateNov 10, 2010
    ISBN9781845412050
    Authenticating Ethnic Tourism
    Author

    Cadwallader Colden

    Philip Feifan Xie is Professor of the Tourism, Leisure and Event Planning program at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA. He holds a PhD in planning from the University of Waterloo, Canada. His areas of specialization include cultural and heritage tourism, tourism morphology and event management. 

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      Authenticating Ethnic Tourism - Cadwallader Colden

      Preface

      My interest in the issue of authentication in ethnic tourism goes back to my time as a doctoral student in planning at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. After teaching at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA, from 2001 to the present, the question of authentication remains some of the most stimulating research in my mind. The book is the culmination of this endeavor to trace the changes of tourist folk villages, people and tourism landscapes on Hainan Island, the largest tropical island located off the southern coast of China, from 1999 to 2009.

      This book is a product of its context, both authentication and ethnic tourism. The previous research engenders a kaleidoscope of findings, ranging from tourists’ search for genuineness to ethnic minorities’ resistance to be commodified. In this book, I propose that ethnic tourism closely resembles an ‘ethnic panopticon’ in which ethnicity is often viewed as a distant object in a structured power relationship played by various stakeholders when tourism occurs spatiotemporally. Tourists look for something ‘real’, ‘truthful’ and ‘authentic’ as a predominant trend driving ethnic tourism. Potter (2010) calls this kind of pursuit a ‘perpetual coolhunt’ since authenticity is ‘a positional good, which is valuable precisely because not everyone can have it’. What tourists can get is ‘a dopey nostalgia for a non-existent past’ as ethnicity becomes an imagined entity owing to the malaise of modernity.

      The discourse of authenticity attracts endless debates by pointing to what it is not. It is fraught with contradictions that stem from the lack of a set of criteria with which to measure, compare and deconstruct. MacCannell (2008) wittingly raised a question to deride the authenticity debates in tourism studies – ‘Why it never really was about authenticity?’ This book is a shifting of emphasis away from authenticity of ethnic culture, an issue widely discussed by tourism researchers, to the processes of authenticating ethnic culture. It focuses on what authentication is, how it works, who is involved and what are the problems in the process. It aims to examine who authenticates ethnic tourism rather than to assess adherence to some absolute and arbitrary standard of authenticity of tourism products and experiences. In order to do so, I put forward a conceptual framework on the issue of authentication by identifying key stakeholders involved in ethnic tourism. I suggest that the identified stakeholders, in their evaluation and attribution of authenticity, may be assessed according to their positions on a range of five continuums. It is critical to clarify the perspectives of authenticity as seen by different stakeholders as well as the permutations of authenticity that have taken place in the ongoing discourse. In that way, authenticity’s nature evolves from a static into a more dynamic concept, which can be formulated according to the different stages of development relating to all the parties involved. Authentication should be viewed as an interactive process in which a balance of forces defines a state of equilibrium.

      Hainan Island was chosen to compare these identified stakeholders when authenticating ethnic cultures in different, if not, contrasting ways. Ethnic tourism, when put into practice, can create a series of paradoxes between conservation of tradition and change in the process of development. The aboriginal Li, having resided on the island for hundreds of years, recently used the purpose-built folk villages to commodify their culture. The Indonesian-Chinese population fled Indonesia and resettled on the island during the anti-Communist insurrection in 1960s, and has preserved its distinctive diasporic culture. An Indonesian village was born out of a desire to portray its culture to passerby tourists. All these folk villages scattered along the highways to increase their visibility and to provide convenient access to mass tourists. The view of authentication presented here explores the multiple layers of reality, experienced by stakeholders using different yardsticks. Village managers, dance performers, governments and tourists are among the key players in authenticating ethnic cultures and serving as a process of translating ‘originary’ for tourist consumption. It is like the game of ‘rumor’, where a communication line of several people is formed to verbally pass a sentence from one person to the next, each whispering into the other’s ear. The original sentence is often dramatically changed, both in terms of its form and content. The result of authentication can never bring back the ‘originary’, but it does convey a message through different people, albeit the point of departure and last iteration will never be the same.

      This book will fill a gap in tourism studies by answering questions pertaining to the authentication of ethnic tourism in an island setting. By using the study of folk villages, a form of ethnic visitor attractions, I hope to draw attention to authentication as an alternative way of avoiding personal value-laden judgments of authenticity. The key outcome is to develop possible strategies for mitigating the tourism-ethnicity paradoxes and tensions through more sensitive and informed planning. The conceptual framework presented in this book could be applied to other situations. Academic interest in such studies may include learning whether or not this conceptual framework and its methodology is useful in understanding authentication of other destination areas. In addition, this type of research could reveal similar or dissimilar constraints to the application of the framework to socio-cultural, political and economic environments in other parts of the world.

      Introduction: Lo auténtico aún existe

      In 2005, the Ministry of Tourism in Bolivia launched a new tourism campaign with the slogan ‘Lo auténtico aún existe’ (authenticity still exists), featuring ethnic Quechuas and Aymara, the descendents of the Incas and the Tiwanaku culture. The slogan implies a strong desire for ‘real’ experiences in tourism to interact with ancient cultures. Ethnic identity, albeit somewhat fluid, has determined the social hierarchy in Bolivia. The publicity campaign typifies these ethnic groups in Bolivia, which have maintained their cultures, languages and folk traditions. The tourism video showed that the popular festivals and rituals have been rediscovered and revived after being forgotten for centuries. Colorful ethnic images have been used to embellish the attractiveness of Bolivia as a tourism destination. It claimed that Bolivia is indeed a ‘lost world’ with untouched ethnic cultures and unspoiled natural scenery. Traveling in Bolivia is an opportunity to re-live history where tradition is maintained and inspired by ancient Incas and Aymaras. Potential tourists can view scenes of pre-Columbian and colonial architecture in places such as Potosi, Sucre and Cochabamba. Ethnicity was a driving force in the social relations of individuals and communities, but now it plays an important theme to attract tourists by showing the ancient ruins of the Incan civilization and their descendants, by playing music and dancing in traditional dress. The pursuit of authenticity, therefore, can be a powerful marketing tool for tourism as tourists seek real and meaningful experiences in their travels.

      As evidenced in Bolivia, ethnic tourism has become a worldwide phenomenon that not only showcases ethnic distinctiveness, but also attracts visitors for cross-cultural experiences and provides pleasurable environments for their gaze (Urry, 2002). Ethnicity has been increasingly promoted as a tourist attraction and as a strategy to generate income and foreign exchange for ethnic communities. Historically, tourism involves the movement of people outside their normal places of work and residence. As such, it provides participants with novel experiences, often bringing them in contact with unknown places and people. For many tourists, this is a search for the Other, which is judged in relation to the Self and one’s usual behaviors and settings. Ethnicity is arguably the most fundamental basis of perceived distinction between human groups, which can be generally defined as ‘the existence of culturally distinctive groups within a society, each asserting a unique identity on the basis of a shared tradition and distinguishing social markers such as a common language, religion, or economic specialization’ (Winthrop, 1991: 94). A variety of terms, such as ‘indigenous’, ‘tribal’, ‘aboriginal’ and ‘native’, are extensively used in the tourism literature to describe the original inhabitants of a country. Although usage of the terms is elastic and often vague, scholars normally choose a specific term to describe a particular group, which reflects its ethnic identity and the potential responses of the readers with respect to the research studies (Hinch & Butler, 2007). In this book, I have chosen to use the word ‘ethnic’ to refer to the groups of people who share the same heritage, including ‘their material artifacts, belief systems, religions, forms of government, customs, language, recreation, housing, commercial activity, forms and places of work, education, and science and technology’ (Smith, 1990: 87).

      The advent of ethnic tourism started as the pursuit of the exotic ‘other’, the differentness and the authentic experience. It is commonly regarded as part of cultural tourism, which is a form of recreation combining cultural and natural resources that is marketed to the public in terms of ‘quaint’ customs of indigenous and often exotic peoples. Cole (2006) distinguished ethnic and cultural tourism as the former is used for the ‘primitive other’ and the latter for the high arts in the developed nations. Ethnic tourism also refers to tourism activities in which ethnic people are directly or indirectly involved either through control and/or by having their culture served as the center of the attraction. The modern explosion of interest in ethnic tourism is multifaceted in cause, ranging from supply factors (such as heritage planning, economic need and cultural revival), to demand factors (such as the desire for creative, cultural pride, authentic experiences and entertainment by and for visitors). It is assumed that, as majority peoples, who are usually the tourists, observe and experience minority cultures, their understanding and appreciation of ethnic positions on major issues may improve. Those issues may be cultural; they may also be more general. Increased understanding can result in changed attitudes and behaviors that lead, in turn, to a more just and equitable relationship between minority and majority peoples (Cohen, 2002).

      The popularity of ethnic tourism has also created a series of tensions and conflicts when ethnic culture is commoditized as a tourism source. The anthropologist, Van den Berghe (1994: 8), described ethnic tourism as activities in which ‘the tourist actively searches for ethnic exoticism’, primarily when so-called First World peoples seek contact with Third World peoples. Ethnic tourism has traditionally been viewed as ‘utopia of difference’, a by-product of imperialism or the new product of neocolonialism. Historically, meetings with ethnic group members became the stuff of romanticized visions and the basis of conscious or unconscious oppression by colonizers or members of the majority society. The process of ethnic tourism could create acculturation and value changes undermining the core of ethnic traditions. The mentality of ‘I’ll give you something, but you haven’t got anything that I would want’ (Morgan, 1994: 185) expressed toward ethnic minorities is evidently documented in the history of the West and colonial expansion. Examples such as the cultural assimilation of aboriginal people in Australia until the early 1970s, and the authentic ‘noble savage’ of African countries under British rule, where ‘spectatorial lust’ (Erlmann, 1999: 109) motivated the tours of African landscapes, are typical in the early stage of ethnic tourism. Numerous studies have implied that ethnic tourism may not serve as a catalyst for the changing relationships between minority and majority; rather, it tends to undermine the indigenous places and identities intentionally and unintentionally. Hall and Tucker (2004: 12) write that:

      The role that [ethnic] tourism can play in transforming collective and individual values is inherent in ideas of commoditization, which implies that what were once personal ‘‘cultural displays’’ of living traditions or a ‘‘cultural text’’ of lived authenticity become ‘‘cultural products’’ that meet the needs of commercial tourism, as well as the construction of heritage. Such a situation may lead to the invention of tradition and heritage for external consumption that meet visitor conceptions of the other.

      Ethnic culture, or ‘tradition’, is transformed into a set of things that are at once symbolic of the Western pursuit of the exotic ‘other’, and the commodities of modernization. The emphasis of ethnic tourism, such as visits to native homes and folk villages to observe and/or participate in native customs, rituals, ceremonies and other traditional activities has a profound impact on the host culture and environment. Edward Bruner (2005), in his book, Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel, delineated his involvement as a tour guide for a deluxe tour of Indonesia in order to study ethnic tourism from the inside. ‘I was an anthropologist’, he wrote, ‘but also, in effect, one of the tourists’. But Bruner’s director, who accompanied the group, was not pleased by his photographing of tourists as they photographed Indonesians, nor his attempt to explain that a folk ballet at a princess’s home was a performance constructed purposely for tourists. Instead of making his fellow tourists more self-aware of the authenticity of the performance, as he anticipated, he got himself fired. The episode underlined a striking contrast between a ‘master tourist tale’ that sees ethnic tourism as representations of an authentic culture and what Bruner (2005: 17) coined the ‘touristic borderzone’ – a point of conjuncture where tourists encounter locals in performance. Ethnic tourism, for Burner (2005; 18) is, ‘improvisational theatre... where both tourists and locals engage in a coproduction: they each take account of the other in an ever-shifting, contested, evolving borderzone of engagement’. The tourist gaze in ethnic tourism is a ‘questioning gaze’ within limits. It is a cultural imagery, a fantasy and a constructed theatrical setting.

      The socio-cultural models that saw ethnic tourism as another aspect of neo-colonialism are steadily ceding to more nuanced approaches since the nature of ethnicity is more complex than it may appear at first sight. In the field of anthropology, for instance, ethnicity does not constitute a new domain of research, but tourism is a new form to challenge the adequacy of conventional cultural theories. Two fundamental perspectives regarding the relationship between ethnicity and culture were put forward: primordial and situational (Hitchcock, 1999). The former views ethnic cultures as static and leads to the assumption that any change imposed by contact with a politically dominant state must result in irreversible acculturation. The primordial perspective involves understanding the processes by which ethnic identities and boundaries are created, modified and maintained. Geographic and historic isolation, and cultural differences are all seen as important in creating and sustaining ethnic identities. This perspective stresses the endurance of ethnic identities and distinctive traditions as cultural enclaves even within multicultural states. Ethnic culture is viewed as tribal with identity support and maintenance as central. The development of tourism encroaches on traditional cultures and bears an analogy to the ‘billiard ball model’ (Wood, 1980: 565), where a static sphere (ethnic cultures) is relentlessly hit by a mobile one (tourism). The very existence of the ethnic boundary creates the visitor attraction.

      By contrast, a situational perspective (also called constructivism) regards ethnic cultures as ‘a set of processes and social relations, which may be invoked according to circumstances’ (Hitchcock, 1999: 21). A situational approach provides positive views of identity and presents ethnic communities as being far from passive victims of the visitors’ gaze. Tourism turns culture into a commodity and ethnic communities are encouraged or sometimes even forced to modify traditional cultures to accommodate the needs of both visitors and the local people. The concept of ethnicity is seen more as a set of cultural differences that are continuously communicated. Clifford (1986: 9–10), therefore, described cultural identity as ‘an ongoing process, politically contested and historically unfinished’, and as ‘always mixed, relational and inventive’. The existence of an ethnic boundary does not necessarily create tourist attractions, rather, the concept of pluralism is of importance. In this perspective, ethnic tourism should be recognized as being shaped by contemporary global processes, rather than by traces of the past (Wood, 1997). The salient feature of the situational perspective is that ethnic identity is assumed to be ambiguous and subjective: culture has not been conceived as a concrete entity acted on by forces from outside, but rather as sets of symbols, or as webs of significance and meaning. These symbols are variable, relative and conditional. In his seminal work, The Location of Culture, Bhabha (2004) argued that cultural presentations are hybridized, ambiguous and interstitial. Many destinations, peoples and cultural experiences are located in what Bhabha calls the ‘third space’, which is an existence that is under-recognized, displaced and in-between forms of assumed differences. As Ryan and Aicken (2005) noted, ‘if a characteristic of post-modernism is the de-differentiation of fantasy and fact, history and myth, and the affective and cognitive, then, too, the boundaries between theory and practice also become blurred to create some hybrid product which often, in tourism, emphasizes the experiential’. Hollinshead (1998) reviewed Bhabha’s theory by suggesting that culture and ethnicity are the results of dynamic processes that produce, reproduce and transform. Instead of learning about ethnicity and its representation, this construct is experienced and lived. Culture and its interpretation are ever-changing and imaginative phenomena in all stages of development – creation, renewal and fabricated rather than static entities. Ethnic identity turns out to be a feeling ‘subject to ebb and flow’ (Poole, 1997: 133).

      Tourism research related to ethnicity has concentrated on describing and understanding the impacts of tourism on host societies (Moscardo & Pearce, 1999). The existing work on ethnic tourism mainly focuses on the normative issue of whether tourism was beneficial or detrimental for its hosts (Wood, 1998). Perspectives of ethnic tourism inter alia have varied from the host–guest nexus of tourism impacts (Hinch & Butler, 1996), to the conflicts and tensions between ethnic culture and tourism encroachment (Robinson & Boniface, 1999; Ryan & Aicken, 2005), to the debates on authenticity and commodification of ethnic cultural performance (Cohen, 1988, 2002; MacCannell, 1973). Areas of ethnic tourism, among many, include extensive ethnographic research on the Balinese in Indonesia (Picard, 1996); the challenges and opportunities of tourism development in Northern Territory in Australia (Ryan & Huyton, 2000); the situational adaptation of ethnic performance to re-signify aesthetic forms of traditional meaning in Canada (Mason, 2004); and the contested interpretation of Maori identity in New Zealand (Taylor, 2001). The research on ethnic tourism has traditionally been regarded as a mild oxymoron by tourism researchers and practitioners. The prevailing assumption is that any attempt to use cultural elements to accommodate tourists will cheapen or trivialize the presentation and interpretation of ethnic culture and heritage. The marketing of ethnic tourism often emphasizes the ‘primitive’, ‘exotic’, ‘adventure’ or the ‘savage’, such as talking about headhunting and cannibalism, practices that ceased long ago. The result is an inaccurate and harmful portrait of a complex and ever-changing people. Ethnic tourism practice may destroy the host’s culture or calcify a culture into a ‘frozen’ picture of the past. Cultures are named and stereotyped. The visitors seek to see representations of the culture and the host society provides access to the expected symbols. The terms ‘touristic culture’ and ‘touristification’ were proposed by Picard (1990) in reference to situations where tourism is so pervasive that it has become an integral part of everyday life. In such situations, the interaction with tourists may be a central component in the definition of ethnic identity. Picard showed that the Balinese have come to objectify their culture in terms of the arts and to evaluate tourism impact in terms of whether the arts are flourishing or not. The convergence of tourism and culture in the late 20th century was presented by Richards (1996: 12) as a realistic fait accompli, and he suggested that ‘in spite of reservations about the potential negative impacts of tourism on culture, it seems that tourism and culture are inseparable’.

      On the other hand, research on ethnic tourism also unveils positive impacts: tourism can promote the restoration of arts, revitalize skills, foster creativity and provide a platform for communities to present themselves confidently. Using the same research setting in Bali, Indonesia, McKean (1989) concluded that tourism was strengthening the local arts by providing opportunities for more dancers, musicians, wood carvers and other crafts-persons. Furthermore, he suggested that the Balinese were quite successful in maintaining the boundary between what belonged to their culture and what could be presented to tourists. ‘Cultural involution’ was proposed as a term to indicate that ethnic culture is mutable and that tourism infuses new meanings, adding value both economically and psychologically to cultural expressions previously largely taken for granted. McKean further suggests that local communities as objects of exploitation were unfounded. There are multiple and competing meanings in individual sites, contrasting meanings in different sites in the same country, and changes in the meaning of sites over time.

      The purpose of this book is not to argue for or against ethnic tourism, as previous research has done. There is a glaring deficiency in ethnic tourism research, namely, the needs of stakeholders are often under-emphasized. When this occurs, decisions may be made without adequate consideration of key impacts when tourism strategies are being developed. Furthermore, little research has been undertaken to review the roles of stakeholders who authenticate ethnic resources, because the tourism–ethnicity relationship has long been associated with cultural tensions and the use and misuse of ethnic resources. It has become increasingly important to understand who authenticates culture and how this occurs in the negotiation of cultural authenticity. By borrowing Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s (1994: 459) provocative question, ‘who has the power to determine what will count as authentic?’ in the critique of cultural anthropology, this book focuses on what authentication is, how it works, who is involved and what are the problems in the process. It aims to examine who authenticates ethnic tourism rather than to assess adherence to some absolute and arbitrary standard of authenticity of tourism products and experiences. To do so, I propose a strong conceptual framework to analyze and evaluate the authentication by different stakeholders of ethnic tourism in a specific setting – the ethnic Li minority on Hainan Island, which is the largest tropical island located off the southern coast of China. Ethnic tourism, when put into practice, can cause a series of paradoxes between conservation of tradition and change in the process of development. These paradoxes can also serve as yardsticks to evaluate tourism–ethnicity relationships in a Chinese context. The key outcome is to develop possible strategies for mitigating these paradoxes and tensions through more sensitive and informed planning of ethnic tourism development. By using the study of folk villages, a form of ethnic visitor attractions, on Hainan, China, the book shows that the concept of authentication not only provides a way of avoiding personal value-laden judgments of authenticity, but also a practical way of addressing issues of authenticity. It is critical to clarify the perspectives of authenticity as seen by different stakeholders as well as the permutations of authenticity that have taken place in the ongoing discourse. In that way, authenticity’s nature evolves from a static into a more dynamic concept, which can be formulated according to the different stages of development relating to all the parties involved. The book is based on research and fieldwork on Hainan Island, China, from 1999 to 2009. It contributes valuable information to the research on ethnic tourism in developing areas and, at the same time, tests the utility of the conceptual framework for authentication.

      The Practice of Ethnic Tourism

      According to Hinch and Butler (1996), the more focused study of ethnic tourism, in various forms, has been characterized by four general phases: (1) legitimization as a scholarly study; (2) critical advocacy for ethnic people; (3) analysis from a policy and economic development strategy perspective; and (4) pragmatic cross-cultural education. The concept of ethnic tourism may simply refer to ethnic people’s involvement in the tourism industry as owners of tourism businesses, such as hotels and casinos, but is more commonly understood as referring to a tourism product whose focus is native culture (Notzke, 2004). The practice of ethnic tourism centers on the issue of control in terms of ownership and management interests in ethnic attractions. There are three major forms of ethnic tourism: (1) ethnic-controlled businesses that do not feature ethnic culture, e.g. casinos, golf courses; or (2) tourist activities that feature ethnic culture with little or no control by ethnic people, e.g. Walt Disney World, theme parks; or (3) ethnic-controlled businesses featuring ethnic presentations, e.g. ethnic folk villages. The latter generally refers to cultural ethnic tourism, a tourism product that focuses on native culture that has a direct impact on ethnic communities. Zeppel (1998) termed ‘community-based ethnic tourism’, in order to distinguish ethnic tourism that is controlled by ethnic people from tourism using ethnicity as a marketing tool. Smith (1989) proposed that, in general, ethnic tourism involves four interrelated elements: the geographic setting (habitat), the ethnographic traditions (heritage), the effects of acculturation (history) and the marketable handicrafts. As the four S acronym (sun, sea, sand and sex) encapsulates beach resort tourism, the four Hs – habitat, heritage, history and handicrafts – similarly describe the ethnic tourism phenomenon.

      The corollary phenomenon of modernity is the weakening of political borders that has let people and goods pass in and out of the homogenized societies. In the context of globalization, the ‘death of distance’ (Cairncross, 1997: 2) is becoming the norm, while tradition and ‘fixed modernity’ are transformed into a kind of ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman, 2000: 1). The growing economic prosperity provides ‘cultural exchanges’ or ‘interactional experiences’ (Taylor, 2001) by people from different regions and countries. The ‘global modernity’ and ‘tourism mobility’ has modified culture and heritage so that it becomes imaginative discourse constructed out of available intelligence about the past (Sheller & Urry, 2004). Simultaneously, ethnic culture is constantly evolving in the face of change within the environment in which it exists. Cultural change is not governed only by tourism impacts: a whole series of other change engines are at work, even in remote ethnic communities, fuelled by economic and technical transitions, the spread of the mass media and broadcasting, and the globalization of knowledge and ideas. McKercher and du Cros (2002: 97) wrote in a similar vein, arguing ‘culture is not a static concept. Over time, every culture changes, sometimes radically, sometimes imperceptibly. At stake is the rate of change, the purpose of change, the instigator of change, and its relationship to the context of the core values of the culture’. These changes, reflected in commodification of ethnic tourism, can be widely seen in local festivals, theme parks, visitor folk villages and other cultural events. A classic example described by Greenwood (1977) revealed that a traditional Alarde festival in the Basque town of Fuenterrabia, Spain, representing ethnic identity was severely compromised when the local municipal authority attempted to make the celebration more accessible to tourists by holding two performances on the same day. This widely cited example illustrated the adverse impacts of tourism on the ethnic culture in that ‘a vital and exciting ritual became an obligation to be avoided’ (Greenwood, 1977: 135). However, the follow-up research indicated that tourism per se had little to do with the apparent decline of the Alarde. The problem was that the Spaniards who controlled the municipality under the Franco dictatorship had little interest in Basque culture. Once the officials had been replaced by Basques, the locals were willing to perform twice a day. The traditional festival, far from being an obligation to be avoided, remained a vibrant and exciting ritual. Nowadays, the festival performance can even be exported as a tour, sometimes forming part of a regional or national marketing effort. Ethnic cultures are not unchanging traditions that have been handed down, but have always been subject to fashion and market forces beyond the boundaries of the local community. These forces do not grow organically from environment and communities, instead, they may be developed in marketing agencies and media reports.

      Most importantly, ethnic tourism is facing an endless debate on the issue of authenticity and commodification. The concept of authenticity has featured prominently in tourism studies, which can be simply defined as ‘a desired experience or benefit associated with visits to certain types of tourism destinations. It is presumed to be the result of an encounter with true, uncommercialized, everyday life in a culture different than that of the visitor’ (Smith, 1990: 31). The concept implies that tradition is authentic if it is passed down without change through the generations. The term ‘commodification’ is used to refer to situations in which a price is placed on artifacts or experiences that were previously not for sale so that cultural expressions become marketable tourism products. Early critical theorists (Cohen, 1988; Graburn, 1984; Pitchford, 1995) juxtaposed two versions of ethnic and traditional cultures: one pure and authentic and another an artificial and inauthentic representation created for and sold to an increasingly homogenous consumer society. The Frankfurt School’s critical theories (Friedman, 1981) posited that the rising influence of modernization, industrialization and bureaucratization on social and cultural life has led to the mass production and consumption of products guided by bland and standardized formulas, which refers to commodification. Cultures have lost their historical specificity and become increasingly ‘theme-parked’ (Sorkin, 1992). As argued by Swedish ethnologist, Orvar Löfgren (1999), a tour package for ethnic tourism almost invariably involves the same devices: the welcoming reception, the ‘local’ cocktail, the ‘exotic’ tour with time for souvenir shopping, the ‘folk dance,’ the beach barbeque with roast pig and the final party where tourists are invited to try on ethnic headwear and dance with the entertainers.

      Despite standardization and globalization, one of the first issues to be considered is: what is the ‘authentic’ form of ethnic tourism? Or does commodification degrade the ethnic cultures, or is it a form of cultural revival? (Daniel, 1996) since touristic performances have been staged, prepared and packaged to frame ethnic cultures. This conventional dualism between authenticity and commodification has been identified as a central orienting principle in tourism studies. Concern with authenticity and commodification is prevalent in many areas of endeavors, and is seen by some as an attribute of postmodernity and the growing pursuit of heritage of all kinds (Conran, 2006; Kim & Jamal, 2007). The approaches vary, for example, Boorstin (1961) saw tourists as being duped and seduced to visit contrived attractions; MacCannell (1973, 1984, 1992a) viewed tourists as modern pilgrims in search of the authentic. Belhassen et al. (2008) recognized three different facets of authenticity. (1) Objectivist approach, which assumes that authenticity emanates from the originality of the object. It presupposes that the existence of authenticity as an entity can be measured and evaluated. (2) Existential approach, raised by Wang (1999, 2000), that authenticity dwells on the feelings of tourists rather than the toured objects. (3) Constructivist approach, focusing on the process of the discourses, where authenticity is viewed as symbolic embodied with imagery, expectations and powers. Authenticity is, therefore, a slippery and contested term. Jack and Phipps (2005) pointed out that it has become ‘a perennial cul-de-sac’ in tourism research since ‘intercultural communication’ is constantly changing. Nonetheless, authenticity discourses have proliferated, since they inherently embody a myriad of concepts, such as tradition, culture, heritage, legacies, commodification, performance and many others.

      There is a growing consensus (Cohen, 2002; Taylor, 2001) that authenticity is a negotiable concept depending on state regulations, the visitors, tourism businesses and the host communities and their knowledge of, and belief in, their ‘own’ past. Each stakeholder can create their own subjective framework of what constitutes the authentic aspects of ethnic tourism. The pursuit of authenticity is what Michel Foucault (1980: 109) refers to as ‘regimes of truth’, made by authorized stakeholders and accepted by society as a whole and which are then distinguished from false statements by a range of different practices. The pursuit inherently involves tensions between authority and autonomy, localization and globalization, evolution and museumification, etc. However, given the verisimilitude nature of authenticity, it is necessary to shift the discussion to a more traceable dimension, rather than asking what is or is not to be considered authentic in tourism, or what represents an authentic reconstruction of culture and heritage, it would be better to ask questions such as: who benefits from authenticity? (Barthel-Bouchier, 2001). Shepherd (2002: 196) argued that the current research on authenticity should have ‘less focus on identifying what has been commodified and hence no longer counts as ‘‘authentic’’ and more attention on the question of how authenticity is constructed and gets decided’. Jackson (1999: 101) proposed to ‘abandon the search for ‘‘authenticity’’ and to examine more tractable question of ‘‘authentification’’ (identifying those who make claims for authenticity and the interests that such claims serve)’. Reisinger and Steiner (2006) echoed that the focus on object authenticity, a term used for the genuineness of cultural presentations, should be discontinued, since there is no common ground as to its the

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