P6-03 We are NOT Selling Things (Cultural Commodities): Creative Tourism and Sustainable Community Development


Call for papers

Themes


Convenor

Achariya Choowonglert
Department of Sociology and Anthropology,
Faculty of Social Sciences, Naresuan University

Co-convenors

Boonyasarit Aneksuk
Department of History,
Faculty of Social Sciences, Naresuan University

Jaruwan Daengbuppha
Department of Tourism,
Faculty of Business, Economics and Communication,
Naresuan University

Petchsri Nonsiri
Department of Tourism,
Faculty of Business, Economics and Communication,
Naresuan University

Abstract

As traditional cultural tourism is facing major challenge, this panel demonstrates creative relations between the tourists and the locals. Instead of such a naïve tone, the notion of ‘creativity’ in the field of marketing allows us to see things in new ways. By this perspective, we do not see new products/services naïvely as a cultural commodity, for the most part. Rather, to manage the relationships is the way of applying ‘creative market approach’. This process is quite multifaceted. It starts, firstly with the acceptance of new paradigm of tourism market shifting from economic profit priorities toward sustainability concerning to both society and environment. Sustainability can be adapted to a holistic, integrated view of marketing, social equity, environment protection, and economic livability. It may be relevant in the sense that the consumers pay for the products produced under environmental and social responsibility. More profoundly than that, the sustainable tourism concerns about the community as a living system. That concern means the well-being of the society. This notion is that ‘societal market approach’.

Secondly, creative tourism is asked for being an activity for social understanding and peace. Tourist is not a simply consumer seeking to satisfy personal needs with cultural commodity and enjoy personal experiences. The creative form of consumption suggests that people utilized objects as a resource or focus for interaction with other consumers/ or hosts rather than for the object’s experiential characteristics. It depends on the involvement of tourist-host themselves even though they utilize things produced from the intermediate output. However, after or beyond dependency of things, highly valued experiences or creative social relation will be emerged.

The last approach deals with ‘touristification’ or ‘internalization’ that tourist market culture penetrates into ethnic community. That is, marketing as a new culture is becoming an organic part of community’s life. When local people have learned to live with tourism, market culture becomes assimilated into the cultural norm of host societies in terms of locality and identity and the pattern of daily life. Thus, tourism can be positioned as an integrated part of a community’s living system based on the interaction in complex ways between host community and tourists and other stakeholders. In this vein, sustaining local culture and livelihood can be seen as ‘cultural hybridization’ of two worlds (i.e. inside and outside community). Hence, touristification enhances the quality of life of the local people, the community diversity and the differences.


This panel is officially endorsed by IUAES Commission on the Anthropology of Tourism (IUAES-Tourism)