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Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 353–368, 2003 2003 Elsevier Sc

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 353–368, 2003 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0160-7383/03/$30.00 www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures doi:10.1016/S0160-7383(02)00099-3 COMMODITIZING CULTURE Tourism and Maya Identity Laurie Kroshus Medina Michigan State University, USA Abstract: This ethnographic study examined how the commoditization of culture for tour- ism affected traditional practices in a formerly Maya village adjacent to the most-visited Mayan ruins in Belize. Though the majority of villagers had abandoned this indigenous ident- ity, they responded to the tourism demand for representations of an essentialized Mayan culture by utilizing new channels to access traditions they could no longer learn through old ways: they turned to the publications of archaeologists and epigraphers who study the ancient Maya. As villagers developed expertise in the cultural traditions of their ancestors, they remained ambivalent about whether or not their unconventional acquisition of this knowledge provided sufﬁcient basis for reclaiming Maya identities. Keywords: culture, com- moditization, identity, Maya, Belize. 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Re ´sume ´: La marchandisation de la culture:tourisme et identite ´ maya. Cette e ´tude ethnogra- phique examine comment la marchandisation de la culture pour le tourisme a affecte ´ les usages traditionnels dans un ancien village maya qui se trouve a ` co ˆte ´ des ruines mayas les plus visite ´es du Belize. Bien que la majorite ´ des villageois avaient abandonne ´ leur identite ´ indige `ne, ils ont re ´pondu a ` la demande du tourisme pour des repre ´sentations des caracte ´ris- tiques essentielles de la culture maya en utilisant de nouvelles voies d’acce `s aux traditions qu’ils ne pouvaient plus apprendre de la vieille fac ¸on; ils se sont donc servis des publications des arche ´ologues et des e ´pigraphistes qui e ´tudient les Mayas des temps anciens. Tout en de ´veloppant leur expertise dans les traditions culturelles de leurs ance ˆtres, les villageois n’e ´taient pas su ˆrs que leur acquisition de ces connaissances constitua ˆt une base sufﬁsante pour la re ´cupe ´ration de leur identite ´ maya. Mots-cle ´s: culture, marchandisation, identite ´, Maya, Belize. 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION One school of thought in tourism studies has argued that the com- moditization of culture for consumption renders the resulting prac- tices inauthentic. This position distinguishes between traditions which persist in relative isolation from market forces, and practices elabor- ated speciﬁcally for the tourism market. Against this perspective, other scholars have asserted that such transactions between tourists and “tou- rees” generate new cultural conﬁgurations which are both meaningful Laurie Kroshus Medina is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Michi- gan State University (East Lansing MI 48824-1118, USA. Email <medina@msu.edu>). Her current research explores the efforts of Maya communities in Belize to integrate themselves into tourism development initiatives; the economic impact of their integration into the indus- try; and the role it plays in Maya struggles with the Belizean state around issues of culture, collective identity, and land. 353 354 CULTURAL COMMODITIZATION and authentic to their participants. Advocates of this argument reject both the distinction drawn by the ﬁrst group of scholars between more and less authentic cultural forms and the notions of culture and auth- enticity on which that distinction rests. The second school of thought instead portrays culture as dynamic and emergent. This paper intro- duces a third alternative in this debate: the commoditization of culture for tourism may involve the utilization of new channels to access cultural traditions of great antiquity. Posing this possibility for a formerly Maya village in western Belize, this paper engages two sets of debates in the social sciences: it explores how the debate in tourism studies sketched above intersects with contemporary ones in the ﬁeld of Maya studies, where “constructivists” cast Maya culture as a (relatively recent) social construction, while “essentialists” deﬁne it in terms of continuities that have persisted across centuries from pre-colonial times into the present. Early studies suggested that touristic commoditization—the offering of cultural products and practices for money—results in the emerg- ence of a culture distinct from the traditional practice of “tourees” and less authentic by virtue of being both “staged” and a commodity. MacCannell (1976) suggests that tourists are largely motivated by a “quest for authenticity,” which is fundamentally a search for cultural difference. Tourists interpret such difference as an indicator of less contamination by contemporary capitalism and thus greater authen- ticity in relations among people and between people and nature. How- ever, MacCannell asserts that tourees—the host population confronted with the arrival of tourists in their midst—protect and insulate their culture by dividing their lives into “backstage” areas, where they con- tinue meaningful traditions away from the gaze of tourists, and “frontstage” areas, where they perform a limited range of activities for a tourist audience. This makes available portions of host culture for guest consumption, while it protects other parts from commoditiz- ation. Such an argument assumes that touristic cultural performance, which MacCannell calls “staged authenticity,” is less authentic than practices not performed for tourists or for cash. Greenwood (1977) also engages this assumption by asserting that commoditization changes the meaning of cultural products and practices to such a degree that they eventually become meaningless for their producers. The conclusion drawn is that the “staged authenticity” of commodit- ized culture is not authentic at all. Ryan (1996), focusing away from concerns with authenticity, suggests that a “tourist culture” distinct from the everyday cultures of either tourists or tourees emerges from their inter- (or trans-) actions; however, he builds on the same assump- tion that tourism leads to the emergence of a culture different from the original one of the tourees. Other social scientists reject both this assumption and the distinction MacCannell and Greenwood draw between a pristine, authentic cul- ture and an inauthentic or less authentic form performed for tourists. For example, Cohen argues that commoditization may actually pre- serve traditions by generating demand for or attributing value to them: 355 LAURIE KROSHUS MEDINA One has to bear in mind that commoditization often hits a culture not when it is ﬂourishing, but when it is actually already in decline, owing to the impingement of outside forces preceding tourism. Under such circumstances, the emergence of a tourist market frequently facilitates the preservation of a cultural tradition which would other- wise perish. It enables its bearers to maintain a meaningful local or ethnic identity which they might otherwise have lost. This is parti- cularly the case in the sphere of folk arts and crafts, many of which are in decline in Third World countries owing to the penetration of industrial goods and Western consumer tastes, but some of which have been salvaged or revived through demand by the tourist market (1988:382). But Cohen takes his argument even further: his concept of “emergent authenticity” proposes that products invented for the purpose of tour- ism may over time become incorporated into and perceived as manifes- tations of local culture (1988:380). In other words, tourees may come to perceive such commodities—artifacts or performances—as auth- entic aspects of their culture. This position clearly rejects the notion that authentic culture consists only of “pure” traditions of great time depth not performed for cash; here, culture appears dynamic and ﬂex- ible. Adams extends such an approach by deﬁning culture and authen- ticity as products jointly constructed by tourists and tourees through their interactions. However, unlike Ryan, she rejects the notion that some more authentic culture exists beyond or behind touristic encoun- ters. Instead, Adams locates both culture and authenticity not in tou- rees sui generis, “but in the relationships they have with others”: both the content of tourees’ culture and evaluations of its authenticity emerge from interactions between the host and guest groups, in which tourees attempt to mirror tourists’ desires and vice versa (1996:11). However, parenthetically, while Adams views culture as emergent and negotiated, the subjects of her study do not. Instead, they understand the culture they construct together as rooted in ancient patterns of thought and practice. A debate with overlapping dimensions characterizes the ﬁeld of con- temporary Maya studies, pitting a set of approaches sometimes lumped together as “essentialist” against those deﬁned as “constructivist.” Essentialist work deﬁnes Maya culture in terms of continuities that have persisted over centuries. Early scholars working in this vein portrayed a “folk culture” kept alive and intact in rural communities isolated from the more ﬂuid cultural ﬁelds of urban areas (Redﬁeld 1941). More recent work in this vein seeks continuities over time and space, without suggesting stasis (Carlsen 1997; Fariss 1984; Fischer 1999; Rax- che 1996). Instead, these scholars posit a cultural core to Mayaness that is cosmological in nature, consisting of normative constructs that link nature, humans, and cosmic forces in cyclical relationships of death, transformation, and regeneration (Carlsen 1997; Fischer 1999). This “cosmological paradigm” entails a sacred covenant between humans and divine forces, which is maintained through rituals of sacri- ﬁcial giving that link humans to larger cosmic processes and perpetu- 356 CULTURAL COMMODITIZATION ate “the uploads/Societe et culture/ kroshus-medina-laurie-commoditizing-culture-tourism-and-maya-identity.pdf