ABSTRACT
Writing on tourism and cultural identity in Third World communities, MacCannell (1992: 168) maintains that ‘reconstructed ethnic forms are appearing as the more or less automatic result of all the groups in the world entering a global network of commercial transactions’. Under these conditions, he claims, ‘ethnicities can begin to use former colorful ways both as commodities to be bought and sold, and as rhetorical weaponry in their dealings with one another’ (ibid.). While MacCannell’s description highlights the importance of economic as well as political outcomes of ethnic tourism, it does not do justice to the mechanisms involved in producing such outcomes, the roles of different stakeholders, or the relationship between the commercial and the political.
