Cultural Geography and Chinese Ethnic Tourism

Abstract

Much has been written about the impact of modernization on the non-Western world. A classic debate has typically argued the loss of indigenous cultural traditions to the expansion of modernism. Cultural geography has long emphasized this normative evaluation, betraying an unproblematic approach to the assumptions of 19th-century naturalist social theory. This approach tends to romanticize place-based cultural traditions, condemning them as "residuals of authenticity" to be preserved, marketed, and consumed in a purposefully unmodern form. This study analyzes ethnic tourism development in China's southwest periphery. Here, cultural forces are found interacting with a changing political economy in ways which reveal the dynamic and often very political nature of cultural construction. It more importantly reveals that the cultural politics of tourism development in China necessitate a less idealized and more socially encompassing approach to culture than that generally displayed in geography.