Cultural Displays and Tourism in Africa and the Americas

In reflecting on the articles that comprise this special issue, I am struck by how this ensemble is indicative of a significant shift in anthropology. As recently as the mid-1980s, it would have been hard to imagine a special issue of Ethnohistory grouping together articles ranging from an examination of identity displays at a Mashantucket gaming resort to a discussion of Maya migrants' milpa-ization of Cancún, an exploration of two Kwakwaka'wakw museums, a historical tracing of 1950s Lac du Flambeau Indian Bowl performances, and an analysis of cyber and touristic representations of tribal villages and the Lost City resort in South Africa. Fifteen years ago, analyses of touristic venues and cultural identity displays were largely consigned to the margins of anthropological discourse, to the realms of applied anthropology and museum anthropology. Although some prescient, well-established anthropologists had made pioneering explorations of these topics (cf. Benedict 1983; Buck 1982; Graburn 1976; Smith 1978), for the most part, such studies did not regularly take center stage in established, mainstream anthropological journals. What is interesting about this assemblage of articles is that they represent the convergence and maturation of several channels of anthropological thought, all sharing the theme of identity negotiation in cultural border zones. ¹

Whereas many early studies of tourism were predominantly concerned with evaluating the impact of foreign guests on indigenous hosts or with examining tourism as a possible passport to development, the studies presented here avoid what Robert Wood (1980) has characterized as simplistic "billiard ball" models of tourism, where tourism is conceptualized as an external force, striking and jostling stationary indigenous cultures. Instead, many of the articles in this issue appear to share a more sophisticated view of these tourist-scrutinized cultures, a view akin to what Michel Picard (1996) has dubbed "touristic cultures." According to Picard, cultures in locales such as Bali, which have undergone "touristification," become transformed from within, as the boundaries between what belongs to "culture" and what belongs to "tourism" become blurred. As Picard suggests, rather than asking whether a given culture has become polluted or enhanced by tourism, a more salient question to ask is how tourism has contributed to the shaping of a given culture (Picard 1997: 183). Aptly, this is the orienting question for a number of the articles in this volume.

For instance, in her examination of tourism and Maya migration to Cancún, Alicia Re Cruz resists a unidimensional analysis of how the tourist Mecca of Cancún has impacted Maya politics and economic orientations and, instead, shows us the importance of understanding Chan Kom's social fragmentation in terms of the interconnections between the social realms of Cancún and Chan Kom. As she illustrates, "tradition" and "culture" are politically contested symbols in Chan Kom, with local peasants conceptualizing "tradition" in terms of milpa work and migrants drawing on more commodified, touristified conceptions of tradition and Maya identity. In the eyes of many Chan Kom peasants, the migrants have abandoned the milpa and their Maya identity, whereas for the migrants, the touristic realm of Cancún is their milpa. In this sense, tourism and culture become entwined, just as Michel Picard suggests is typical of touristic cultures. Tourism images and orientations have become embedded in migrants' conceptions of Maya identity, conceptions that are contested and reasserted in the homeland. In reading this article, one is struck by the ethnographically rich portrait of Chan Kom peasant orientations and the relatively thin portrait of Maya migrants' lives in Cancún. Given that this research is contemporary and ethnographic (rather than rooted in archival manuscripts), one would urge the writer to expand on her discussion of Maya experiences in the Cancún touristic milieu. Can she tell us more of the cultural performance venues in which these migrants work? What do they have to say about their encounters with foreign tourists? Of their encounters with Mexicans? Recent work by Pierre van den Berghe...