African Tourist Encounters: Effects of Tourism on Two West African Societies

Abstract

AbstractThis article compares encounters with tourism in two African communities, the Dogon in Mali and the Kapsiki in north Cameroon. The societies are comparable in many respects, but the effects on them of the tourist presence quite different. The Dogon react to tourism by bolstering their cultural pride and self esteem, and they develop inventive ways of gearing their cultural performances to tourist demands without compromising the rituals to which the performances belong. For them, the tourist presence signals the importance and intrinsic interest of Dogon culture. The Cameroonian Kapsiki (called Higi in north Nigeria) interpret the attention bestowed upon them and their country as indicating that they are marginal, living at the rim of the habitable world. They translate the tourist quest for ‘authenticity’ as being ‘backward’ and left out. The reasons for these different reactions are traced to processes inherent in cultural tourism, to the specific agenda of tourism in either place, and to some characteristics of the host '. The overall effect of tourist encounters with local communities seems to be to reinforce existing patterns of identity construction and to restate the images of the relevant ‘other’ already current in those cultures.