ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a serious research handicap to all those, regardless of discipline, who are interested in the impact of tourism, wherever it has taken place. Davyyd J. Greenwood’s deeply pessimistic argument is that tourism turns culture into a commodity which is then packaged and sold to tourists. Local culture is, as a result, inevitably altered and often completely destroyed, and thereby ‘made meaningless to the people who once believed in it’. Greenwood’s paper has become one of the most powerful indictments of the corrosive effects of tourism in the literature, and one of the most often quoted. Tourism might be perceived by the local people themselves as having quite a different impact than that suggested by supposedly dispassionate outside observers and experts. In addition, local opinion may vary between communities – and social groups within them – depending on the nature and extent of tourism development in their midst.
