353368, 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 sufcient basis for reclaiming Maya identities. Keywords: culture, com-
moditization, identity, Maya, Belize. 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Resume: La marchandisation de la culture:tourisme et identite maya. Cette etude 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` cote des ruines mayas les
plus visitees du Belize. Bien que la majorite des villageois avaient abandonne leur identite
indige`ne, ils ont repondu a` la demande du tourisme pour des representations des caracteris-
tiques essentielles de la culture maya en utilisant de nouvelles voies dacce`s aux traditions
quils ne pouvaient plus apprendre de la vieille facon; ils se sont donc servis des publications
des archeologues et des epigraphistes qui etudient les Mayas des temps anciens. Tout en
developpant leur expertise dans les traditions culturelles de leurs ancetres, les villageois
netaient pas surs que leur acquisition de ces connaissances constituat une base sufsante
pour la recuperation de leur identite maya. Mots-cles: 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 specically for the tourism market. Against this perspective, other
scholars have asserted that such transactions between tourists and tou-
rees generate new cultural congurations 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 rst 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 eld of Maya studies,
where constructivists cast Maya culture as a (relatively recent) social
construction, while essentialists dene it in terms of continuities that
have persisted across centuries from pre-colonial times into the
present.
Early studies suggested that touristic commoditizationthe offering
of cultural products and practices for moneyresults 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 toureesthe host population confronted
with the arrival of tourists in their midstprotect 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 ourishing, 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 commoditiesartifacts or performancesas 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 ex-
ible.
Adams extends such an approach by dening 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 eld of con-
temporary Maya studies, pitting a set of approaches sometimes lumped
together as essentialist against those dened as constructivist.
Essentialist work denes 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 uid cultural elds of urban areas (Redeld 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-
cial giving that link humans to larger cosmic processes and perpetu-
356 CULTURAL COMMODITIZATION
ate the grand cycle of cosmic and terrestrial existence (Fischer
1999:476). Religious specialists play an important role in maintaining
this covenant. Essentialist scholars dene this cosmological core as
generative; its logic shaped the new patterns that emerged as Mayas
confronted colonialism and more recent impositions (Farriss 1984:8;
Fischer 1999). Thus, this core has constituted Mayaness across both
time and space, across centuries and across the whole Maya region
(Carlsen 1997:62).
While essentialists have focused on the persistence of a cosmological
core that has shaped Maya culture across time, constructivists have
argued that the culture of contemporary communities is not an artifact
of pre-Columbian times; rather, it is the product of their interactions
with powerful non-Maya forces. Anthropologists who hold this view
have focused on transformations that colonialism and subsequent
development efforts by Guatemalan and Mexican states imposed on
indigenous communities; while some cast these impositions as over-
whelming (Hawkins 1985), others emphasize Maya elaboration of cul-
tural responses in resistance to these impositions (Smith 1990; Wolf
1957).
More recently, some constructivists have adopted poststructuralist
approaches to explore the construction of the concept of culture itself
and of Maya culture more specically. These analyses begin with the
assumption that culture is a reication produced by anthropologists as
a means to describe and explain peoples lives in an orderly fashion,
rather than an entity that ordered the world prior to anthropologists
discovery of it (Wagner 1975). Thus, in addition to exploring the
actions of Maya peoples and the states to which they are subject, these
analyses incorporate the efforts of cultural anthropologists and archae-
ologists in constituting the entity Maya culture (Castan