The management of heritage resources was always seen as a complex process which had to meet a number of preservation and professional demands. The introduction of tourism concerns within heritage resource management has made the process ever more demanding with a new set of, at times, conflicting forces. While historic sites and communities seek and welcome tourists, they also have to deal with many of the negative impacts of tourism activity. This issue of Momentum provides a view into the practice and issues of cultural tourism in Canada. These issues mirror, in some cases, what is occurring in other parts of the world? Canadian heritage resource managers and communities still have a great deal to learn about tourism and how the largest industry in the world can benefit the management process.
In the 1980s studies of tourist interests in the United States clearly identified that tourists were interested in Canadian heritage and communities and their way of life, values, and traditions. It was felt that this interest would translate into economic development using the heritage and community resources, often cultural in nature, as the way to develop a tourism product. Cultural tourism is often seen as a means to maintain the past, as well as to improve a community's quality of life, provide economic development, and create jobs.
The challenge for communities and heritage sites is to provide a unique, special, and participatory tourist experience that will bring with it jobs and economic development in terms of investment in a range of initiatives. The challenge is further complicated by the need to preserve the character of the community and its cultural resources, offer an authentic experience, respect the social and cultural way of life of the host community all the while ensuring the sustainability and authenticity of the tourist product.
Sustainability & cultural tourism
It is difficult to define cultural tourism given the many dimensions that it may adopt. Cultural tourism can be seen to have a number of the following dimensions: handicrafts, language, gastronomy, art and music, architecture, sense of place, historic sites, festivals and events, heritage resources, the nature of the work environment and technology, religion, education, and dress.
On the other hand the ‘Sustainable Tourism refers to a level of tourism activity that can be maintained over the long term because it results in a net benefit for the social, economic, natural and cultural environments of the area in which it takes place’.
- ICOMOS
The United Nations World Tourism Organisation defines sustainable tourism as tourism that meets the needs of present tourists and host regions while protecting and enhancing opportunity for the future. Rather than being a type of product, it is an ethos that underpins all tourism activities. As such, it is integral to all aspects of tourism development and management rather than being an add-on component
The objective of sustainable tourism is to retain the economic and social advantages of tourism development while reducing or mitigating any undesirable impacts on the natural, historic, cultural or social environment. This is achieved by balancing the needs of tourists with those of the destination.
The need of sustainability arises because of negative impacts of tourism. The UNEP identifies following impacts of tourism on culture, which requires a sustainable handling of tourism development.
Negative socio-cultural impacts
Change or loss of indigenous identity and values
· Commodification
· Standardization
· Loss of authenticity and staged authenticity
· Adaptation to tourist demand
Cultural clashes
· Over exploitation of socio-cultural carrying capacity
· Economic inequalities
· Irritation due to tourist behaviour
· Job level friction
Physical influences causing social stresses
· Recourse use conflicts
· Cultural deterioration
· Conflicts with traditional land uses
Ethical issues
· Crime generation
· Prostitution and sex tourism
Despite being the fact that tourism has contributed significantly to the socio-cultural growth at the destination but in view of the magnitude of negative impacts, the positive contribution or the development stands hollow. The term development is defined and interprets in terms of tourism only and thus forms the primary concern. The social and cultural growth receives the secondary consideration. Tourism development is the outcome of the conscious efforts but socio-cultural development is more a matter of chance that may or may not receive opportunity for growth. The basic flow lies in the approach towards culture tourism relationship where the complimentary role between two is negated and the singular objective of tourism development is given preference. Unfortunately, this very singularized and popularized economic dimension of tourism and its pronounced supply and demand axioms have conditioned the whole notion about tourism in itself and in respect to other conceptual and operational realms. For example, when culture is viewed from the demand supply angles, it is suddenly reduced to a tourism commodity- an attraction which influences a choice of a destination, where tourist consumes its packaged experience, where cultural product is shaped by the wishes of the market, where visited population is cast and animated in the image, and where the supply side (host) and the demand side (guest) interact. But even this supply/demand construct suggests that tourism is more than an economic activity. Tourism, as recent studies reveal about its complex inward/outward functions and structures, is most and foremost a social culturally embedded phenomenon with diverse dimension and untold influences, of which the economics is but one.
Sustainability is largely defined in context to the loss to the natural environment and resource and thus, has qualified for strong research support. Sustainability in culture on the other hand, has rather failed to evoke the similar concern primarily because the impact on culture has been a theme of subjective and relative opinions. For example, the change in the traditional symbols, styles and values, as a result of tourism impact is a cause of concern. But if the same change leads to modernization of host society it may be termed as a progressive one. The voice in favour of sustainable prostitution in Thailand acknowledges the greater acceptance of otherwise a society blot. Moreover, there are standard and common parameters for environment conservation throughout the world but similar standard parameters cannot be drowning for the culture of the whole world. Interestingly, the cultural changes are very slow and thus cannot be measured accurately and deeply as the impacts on the environment. The limitations referred here restrict the development of a proper and adequate approach towards cultural sustainability.
Tourism impact on different type of society ‘culture-tourism interaction’
The impact of tourism is not uniform on all type of societies. The impacts depend on the nature of the societies, which the host and tourist represent.
Type of society/culture | Nature of society/culture | Characteristics of society/culture | Degree of impact |
Industrial | Comparatively open | Less prohibited to change, rather more responsive to change, convenience rather than honouring tradition, more social freedom | Industrial to industrial interaction- less impacts, Industrial to agrarian interaction- more impact Industrial to tribal interaction- high impact |
Agrarian | Comparatively moderate | Initially resistive to change, traditional | Domestic interaction- less impact Between local and foreigner interaction- more impact |
tribal | Comparatively closed | Avoid interaction, lives in isolation | If interaction takes place- risk of high impact Prefers to avoid any kind of interaction, thus attracts no impact |
The destinations world over fall into either of the three types of societies that are industrial, agrarian, or tribal ones. Each type of society and culture processes specific set of values, traditions, norms and usages that shapes the attitudes, beliefs and perception of its members. These contents of the social order prepare the responses of the members that develop an outlook about the world around them. When an interaction under tourism takes place between an two cultural groups, there comes into action a set of responses that determine the basis of relationship between the host and the guest
The main question arises that when these interaction leads to imbalance in the culture tourism relationship? A close look into the character and persona of the interacting parties would reveal the presence of the situation where the tourist exercise a commanding and dominating position and the community and the host are put at the receiving end. The position thus acquired is based on the premise that tourism and tourists bring economic benefits to the local people. The culture of the host faces subordination to the culture of the tourists.
Since the industrial society forms the major part of tourism market and the destinations, the degree of cultural impacts will be less in comparisons to the agrarian societies as the tourists and host share so much in common in the industrial social set up. The agrarian society, primarily in the developing countries, receives greater degree of impacts when the tourists belong to the industrial society and the host represents the agrarian society. The more the cultural gap between the host and the guest, the more is the degree of impact. The host, in such situation, becomes the subservient to the wants and demands of the tourists. The impact percolates from the above to and below that is from the dominating party to the receiving party. Similar situation can be noticed in case of other societies.
Sustainability in culture and tourism relationship: conserving the core
The sustainability in culture should be interpreted to conserve the core without compromising the ability of the culture and her people to derive economic benefits from tourism.
The cultural growth signifies the state where there exists a movement from the periphery towards the core elements of culture. The states of culture crises are opposite to the state of the culture growth where there exists the movement from the periphery to the core. The periphery is the place of interaction between the tourist and the host and if the tourism impact causes deviation from the core the relationship between the culture and tourism become unsustainable. The core possesses the core values or the ideals of the culture, which remains, more or less, same throughout the period of its existence. The traditions of the culture nurture these ideals. These traditions bestow a distinct identity to the culture. The periphery reflects the real face of the culture that interacts with the external agencies. Here, the people are indulged in their day to day activities and interact frequently with the outsiders to drive the means and mode of livelihood. The periphery established contact with the core of the culture and the outsider agency at the periphery.
Tourism and cultural growth
Tourism is described as an engine of growth not only economic but socio-culture as well. The benefits of tourism are summarized as follows by UNEP.
The socio-cultural impacts of tourism described here are the effects on host communities of direct and indirect relations with tourists, and of interaction with tourism industry. For a variety of reasons, host communities often are the weaker party in interactions with their guests and service providers, leveraging and influence them might have. These influences are not always apparent, as they are difficult to measure, depend on value judgements and are often indirect or hard to identify (UNEP, 1996). Here two main issues come into picture.
1. Does tourism lead to material changes that improve the quality and socio-economic standard of the host community?
2. Does tourism lead to the culture growth?
The question of sustainability is to be addressed in these two contexts. Tourism is known to have contributed to the economy of the destination. But the distribution of benefits of economy development had not been found to be uniform in number of cases. The economic development has taken place but the majority of the benefits have been shared by the entrepreneurs and the government. Even the employments and opportunities give a little relief to the employment problem of the community. Majority of employment is of menial nature that to at the level of grocery supplies, security men, gardener, plumbers, electricians, waiters, peons, workers in restaurants and hotels etc. Employment at the subsistence level may not be described as a great economic contribution of tourism for the community at the destination. Moreover, the resources used to attract the tourists- cultural and natural, and the entrepreneurs to reap greater benefits use over which the community has greater right and custodianship. The sustainability, thus, requires settling the issue of custodianship of the resources and their management with the community at the core of the affairs.
The second issue ‘Does tourism leads to cultural growth?’ needs to be handled in the context of proper explanation of the concept of ‘cultural growth’. The cultural growth revolves around the movement between two cardinal points in culture.
1. That forms the periphery and
2. That consist of the core
The cultural growth here signifies the movements of the real towards the ideal and more the narrower gap between the real and the ideal the more it moves towards growth. Likewise, the wider the gap between the ‘real’ and the ‘ideal’, the more crisis the culture experience. The sustainability in the culture tourism relationship lies in the restoration of the interaction between the core and the periphery and any departure on distance from the core and that too towards other culture causes a negative impact on the host culture. The thesis here is not to snap every interaction between the host and the tourists but to draw a line of sustainability. There is no harm in using culture for tourism so long as the host culture remains unspoiled or unexploited at the hands of tourism, but since tourists are the dominating group, the hosts are put at the receiving end.
Sustainability: issues for consideration
The negative social impacts of tourism on the culture arise because of the community’s inability to protect itself from the dominating part of the tourist’s culture. The host fell subservient to the demands and expectations of the tourists, and as a result the culture starts moulding itself to the tastes and likings of the tourists. There is no end to these changes and ultimately a situation of imbalance in the culture – tourism relationship emerges to the extent of culture being relegated to the status of the commodity. The main issues can be identified such as:
1. The culture or the community at the destination should have greater participation and involvement in the decision-making process.
2. The exploitation of resources should not be allowed to the extent of depletion of those resources for future.
3. The culture at the destination should have adequate means and mechanisms to identify its cultural priorities and that too in the context of the tourists.
4. The distribution of economic benefits from tourism should be seriously looked into and the community should get her due share. The share of the community should be determined in relation to the loss and exhaustion of natural and other resources used for tourism development.
5. Address the problems of inequality and indifference at the level of the local culture and community.
The sustainability, in this context, should be interpreted in this conserve the core without compromising on the ability on the ability of the culture and her people to the culture and her people to drive economic benefits from tourism.
Conclusion
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