ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I explore issues related to the commodification of intangible cultural heritage in the Asian context, through a discussion of the confrontation between heritage and tourism in two specific Asian localities: one on Cheung Chau Island in Hong Kong and the other in Luang Prabang in Laos. Heritage, as an aspect of culture, has become recognized as an important tourism commodity (Boissevain 1996: 11). According to Watson and Kopachevsky (1994: 649–50), tourism-induced commodification extends beyond the consumption of sights – as articulated by Urry in his concept of the ‘tourist gaze’ (Urry 1990) – to include the full range of experiences and activities. I argue that the existence of heritage artefacts simultaneously within the value systems of heritage preservation and the value systems of tourism, as a result of such commodification, provokes relations between heritage interests and tourism interests that are, in some senses, adversarial and, in other senses, co-dependent. The development scenarios that arise out of such situations take different forms in different contexts, as illustrated by the two examples examined in this chapter.
