ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the deliberate uses of 'culture' in a more reified, instrumental sense. It examines heritage tourism, food and language as examples of how identity links regional culture with economic development. In countries like Britain, a 'heritage industry', attracting substantial public and private resources, has begun to replace the real industry upon which the country's economy depends, manufacturing heritage instead of goods. Finnish North Karelia, by contrast, has enjoyed significant regional development initiatives for some forty years. The problem of the identity of North Karelia as a tourist area is that it is becoming commercialised, stereotyped and conservative. Having regained independence, the Estonian government in 1992 prioritised tourism as part of a strategy to overcome the country's economic problems. Like South Karelia, Estonia had suffered severe repression under Soviet rule. The tourist season in Ireland, as in North Karelia and, to a lesser extent, in Estonia, is relatively short by international standards.
