Cultural Commodification InThey Are Taking Our Culture Away
802 Words4 Pages
Abstract “They Are Taking our Culture Away” by Elisabeth Kirtsoglou and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos discusses the Garifuna community and their struggle with cultural commodification and how their community handles and tries to fix it. Throughout “They are Taking our Culture Away” Elisabeth and Dimitrios looked at the many ways the Garifuna are being commodified. Within this paper what they researched will also be discussed and also what can be done to help preserve this culture. Commodification as a broad topic will play a large role in this paper, and whether or not culture is a commodity that should be bought and sold. Commodification will also be talked about in terms with what role it plays in a culture and the affects that it has on modern tourism and the tourist’s outlook on the world and other cultures.
Commodification
Commodification is defined as a way “to make something into an object for commercial use”. In terms of culture and tourism, “commodification refers to using a place's culture and the cultural artifacts to make a large enough profit to support part of the area's economy”. Commodification is found everywhere in modern tourism. Although there may be good things about cultural commodification, such as profit, there are many more bad aspects to it. For example, commodification alters a tourists' potentiality to have an authentic experience while visiting another culture. This then introduces the tourist to a false culture and strays them away from the