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Chatting with a guy who works at 7-11 in Bangkok is authentic. He works there, you struck up a random, but welcome dialogue with him – it wasn’t contrived or part of a package tour.

Visiting a Khmer temple with hundreds of other tourists and snapping photos is educating yourself on a cultural/historical piece of Cambodia, which can explain subtle, but present behaviours or norms. It’s only a component, not reflective of a country as a whole.

The fall of economic borders is a reality, spilling across all forms of expression (food consumption, music, art, etc.). It’s unavoidable. Perhaps travelers need to redefine what is romantic?

And Sarah was spot on about the imperialist slant. Female genital mutilation (FGM) in some African nations comes to mind. Feminists groups rallied passionately to stop this barbaric practice. I’m not implying it’s a solid practice by any means, but Westerners overlook the cultural significance the practice holds. It can be a rite of passage for village women and prepares them for marriage – tying into standards of beauty. Again, not saying it should be preserved, as some young women suffer from complications, what irks me is the arrogance leveled at the issue. Us enforcing our beliefs on others who don’t live like we do, or value the same things that we do.

And to clarify, I call myself a feminist, so there.

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As the world continues to shrink through globalization and cheap airfares, it will be very interesting, and probably sad, to see what will become of reality.

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I see your point about ancient history belonging to us collectively as a human race, but I think that we’re wandering into dangerous territory when outsiders start claiming what has the right to be (and what must be) preserved. What pops to mind here in particular are battles for wilderness areas in Africa, in which foreigners (mostly Europeans and Americans) campaign for the preservation of these wide swaths of jungle, which I agree is an important thing, but without taking into account that there are people who actually live in or near these areas and who also want the opportunity for development and growth. Nowhere is this more evident than in the battle against poachers — yes, poachers kill animals that we consider to be part of our history as human beings, and yes, this is something that should be stopped, but they do this because they have been forced into poverty by a whole range of circumstances that anti-poaching campaigns do not take into account. Effectively, they are forced off their land and left with no livelihood. This is not to say, well, screw it, they should be able to build a mall in the middle of the jungle, but rather that so often foreigners’ arguments about their right to preserve other people’s land or culture end up marginalizing local people or forcing them into a static poverty and/or stereotype, and effectively neglecting the actual and sometimes dire circumstances of their lives.

Also, you talk about looking for a piece of the local past as if it were part of the “travel process.” That’s great if for you it forms part of a wider picture of a place. My point is that for a vast number of tourists, the local past isn’t a part of the process — it’s the whole narrative. I remember talking to backpackers in Borneo who took longboat cruises upriver for two weeks to find “the real Borneo.” Well, if you have to take a cruise two weeks into the jungle to the last outpost of one tribe still living in the traditional longhouse, then maybe that is no longer the only version of the real Borneo, right? But so often that’s the narrative travelers want, that’s what they look for, and that’s what they take home with them. They skip Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of Sabah, because it’s not real enough or authentic enough, ignoring the fact that while they’re in Sarawak’s cultural village or a simulated long house the “authentic” Borneo of 2010 is completely passing them by. It’s an either/or situation, not a process, for so many tourists. I see the same thing in Mexico — how many articles have you read about the “real” Mexico? What is that? Because I see the real Mexico not only in indigenous dances, but in the Cinnabon that just bought prime space on Oaxaca’s main pedestrian street.

I’m not saying that this means that local cultural traditions will die, and oh well. But rather that the “local past” and its traditions are often placed in this stagnant, unchanging bubble for tourists, while the rest of the culture is trampled by development (which tourists would rather ignore). At its most extreme (and I’m not saying this is inevitable or it happens wherever tourism thrives) this leaves us with a situation in which all that’s left of culture are false, recreated experiences that tourists pay for.

There’s obviously a lot of room, however, for positive tourist experiences that do help preserve parts o the local culture that are important to local people. Take, for example, the tourism surrounding the coca leaf in Bolivia. That’s a crucial part of Bolivian culture, and Bolivians have developed a tourist industry around it. I think that’s fantastic. But that was a Bolivian decision, and its an industry managed largely by Bolivians, not foreigners.

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you make good points, but they only seem to reinforce what sarah is saying.

i don’t interpret her rebuttal as an outright dismissal of potentially positive effects of tourism vis a vis ‘preservation,’ but, more ’something that should be considered and handled very carefully’ as exemplified by your points.

the main problem i had with the original piece was that it did read dismissively and seemed to be constructed out of fallacious arguments.

i looked at several of these here: http://thetravelersnotebook.com/notes-on-writing/how-to-discern-fallacious-arguments/

sarah wrote: ‘But I also don’t think that culture is necessarily being preserved, or being preserved in a beneficial and productive way, simply because tourists pay for it.’

i feel like that’s the ‘crux’ of this piece. it’s a nuanced but transparent declaration of belief, whereas weiner wrote ‘ The idea is simple: A culture is worth more alive than dead,’ which is a ‘bad analogy,’ a form of reifying.

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First, at the risk of sounding like an imperialist, I do believe that outsiders have the right to speak out in an effort to preserve or protect culture – to a certain extent, I think the art and music and clothing and customs and so on that human beings have created over the years belong to us all. An extreme – but still on point – example of this is the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. When the Taliban dynamited them, they took something from us all, regardless of the fact that Buddhas might mean little to local Afghans anymore. The same goes for the building of the dam in Egypt that threatened an ancient temple: outsiders objected, stepped in, and were heavily involved in a complex relocation process – not because westerners insist on seeing Egypt only in terms of its ancient civilization and have no interest in its modern reality, but because that ancient culture matters to anyone who’s interested in how we got to our collective modern reality. It doesn’t have to be sinister.

Second, I’m not convinced there’s anything wrong with this idea that “traditional culture no longer holds intrinsic value for the people of a particular country, but inside the bubbles “preserved” by tourism tourists can buy a different, antiquated vision, a traditional culture that is no longer of importance and value to local people.”

I’m going to take a Canadian example because I find it difficult to argue with Said – the obvious answer to any objection is that I’m too wrapped up in my own western cultural imperialism to see past my own nose. So. In Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, you can attend a ceilidh, listen to traditional fiddle music, hear songs sung in Scots Gaelic and watch young girls in kilts step-dancing. Does this represent the way Nova Scotians live now? Of course not. Do most Nova Scotians care about preserving these dying art forms, apart from the few who dedicate their lives to mastering them and passing them on? Probably not. But I don’t see tourists who go see these shows as bypassing the real, modern Nova Scotia in search of a fictional “authenticity.” I see them as enjoying a piece of our history, the same way you might in a museum. And I guess I see cultural performances and the like in other countries the same way – it doesn’t matter how relevant it is to today’s Turkey, or today’s Mexico, because I’m looking for a piece of the local past. That’s a big part of my travel process.

Now, I understand that a cultural performance in Mexico or Turkey comes loaded down with some baggage that one in Nova Scotia doesn’t – there are some totally valid points here about tourists and their expectations, particularly in, say, Asian or African countries. But I don’t think that baggage necessarily negates my point. I’m confident that I could go see the dervishes do their whirling thing without “fixing [Turkey] permanently in the past and flattening its people and culture into stereotypes.” I’m sure I’m not the only tourist who can manage that mental leap.

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In the Salzkammergut in Austria, the traditional culture is still very much alive, and something the locals greatly enjoy. For example, the pre-Christmas tradition of Krampus, when men dress up in hairy monter costumes with scary masks and huge bells on their backside and whip the other townsfolk. Or the pre-Lent Fasching celebration, where the whole town dresses up and a select group of men carry huge drums and go around town drinking free alcohol.

These are two examples that you wouldn’t see in Vienna, Salzburg or Graz.

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