Tourism and Cultural Change in Small-Scale Societies

As tourism increases in small, unindustrialized societies, it is increasingly important to understand its impacts and the primary process by which it produces cultural change. Gaining insight into how tourism leads to major cultural changes (which are often deleterious) will assist applied anthropologists, indigenous governmental departments, and perhaps even tourism agencies themselves in minimizing the damage that touristic activities create. Fieldwork on Yap Island and case study reviews indicate that tourism can increase indigenous jobs, foreign exchange reserves, cultural preservation, and education. Deleterious touristic impacts involve human displacement, subsistence disruptions, social conflict, loss of autonomy, dependency, crime, and other disturbances of the host culture. Analysis suggests that the impacts of tourism are magnified when tourists alter their hosts' economic base, particularly the indigenous land utilization and tenure relationships. Therefore, negative touristic impacts can be moderated in small-scale societies by keeping the activities and influences of tourists out of the domain of indigenous land relationships.