Which Heritage? Nature, Culture, and Identity in French Rural Tourism

The development of rural tourism in France over the past several decades offers one vantage point from which to explore the processes by which rural heritages are constructed, displayed, and consumed in contemporary France. This article, based on an ethnographic case study of a three-canton area in the Limousin region, considers some of the ways that efforts to develop tourism reflect or affect social relationships and identities among rural-dwellers. It is argued that tourism development helps sustain the ongoing production of specific local identities by providing a forum in which diverse resident populations articulate their assessments of collective pasts, presents, and futures. But because it is generally those aspects of local life that are least significant or contentious to local residents that are ultimately most likely to be displayed, the experience of country life made available to tourists is apt to exclude many distinguishing characteristics of particular identities—comprising instead relatively generic and placid rural heritages.