Exploring tradition in heritage tourism: the experience of Sri Lanka’s traditional mask art

Abstract

ABSTRACTIt has been argued that heritage tourism changes the meaning of cultural tradition as it comes to be treated as a commodity for touristic consumption. The notion is so widely held in contemporary heritage tourism studies that it gave inspiration and direction to this paper. Based on Sri Lanka’s distinctive tradition of wooden masking, this paper explores the interface and interaction between heritage and tourism in the tensions between the ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’. The paper is based on ethnographic field research. Heritage tourism was producing the unprecedented consequence of transvaluing the masking tradition as a market commodity. The tradition was not static, but changeable and flexible and thus ‘living’ in the global dance-drama of evolving cultural worlds. Treating the idea of its authenticity was, therefore, culturally sensitive; more pointedly, sensitivity to the process of creating and using the physical artifacts, which called for a more open and undefined approach to authenticity. In postmodern tourism economy, ‘inauthenticity’ was not problematic; the boundary between ‘authentic’ (real) and ‘inauthentic’ (fake) was so illusive and non-existent that ‘boundary crossing’ was a matter of (re)presentation. Heritage tourism contributed to reviving memory – the past – though selectively and imaginatively, thus the past being continuously (re)invented at present.