ABSTRACT
The relationship between culture, commodities and tourism has long since been a topic for debate. Many authors have used ethnography to demonstrate links between the tourism industry and the commodification of culture (e.g. Smith 1989; Boissevain 1996) in situations when traditional culture serves both to promote cultural tourism as an industry and, more recently, as a resource to ensure economic growth in the region. In this sense, the 'production' of culture faces a challenge. Whether or not we conceptualise culture as a set of human activities that allows adaptation to a given ecosystem, the fact is that throughout the westernised world, once 'nature' has been brought under almost total control, a rather reductionist notion of 'culture' has been propagated, and one that follows an instrumental, rationalist logic rather than an expressive one. In other words, 'culture' is conceived as useful for achieving tangible objectives rather than for making social space comprehensible. Due to this shift in perspective, a new commodity, packaged under the term of 'cultural heritage', is being deliberately created, and even represented as both a basis for the creation of regional, local or group identities, and an endogenous resource for developing a given territory. This duality highlights a key point: the more globalism is attained in every social dominion, the more culture becomes de-moralised, stripped of any moral content. This is merely a consequence of the dialectics of being and action, between a group's self-recognition and its capability to exercise power over 'nature' as well as the culture of others.
