Tourism in the Sepik River of Papua New Guinea
Favouring the local over the global
By Eric Silverman
Tourism, without question, is a process that is fuelled by the interests and privileges of countries which in world-systems theory are classed as the 'core'. Papua New Guinea, of course, is a Fourth World country located in the 'periphery'. From this perspective, tourism is often averred to be a form of cultural prostitution, as it were, whereby local people commodify their culture into staged performances and cheap trinkets. Tourism, in other words, erodes local culture of its 'authenticity' since the sole function of touristic practices is to get money. This macro perspective, however, is naive and ultimately ethnocentric. It is particularly evident in the much-acclaimed film Cannibal Tours. Yet this perspective studies the local experience of tourism from an idealistic ideology that, in the end, foregrounds Western yearnings and concepts, and backgrounds local experiences. Furthermore, this view of tourism denies local people the ability to act with intention, to create meaning, to resist hegemony, and to forge hybrid forms of culture. It is a perspective, in sum, that privileges the global over the local.By contrast, I would like to develop a perspective on tourism in which the local is privileged over the global, based on my research in the middle Sepik River of Papua New Guinea, focusing on tourist art in the the Eastern Iatmul village of Tambunum. It is true that some categories of tourist art are indeed commodifications and even examples of what Walter Benjamin termed 'mechanical reproduction'. Nevertheless, the spectrum of tourist art and artefacts reveals the presence of complex, hybrid, and innovative aesthetic creations. These works attest to the ability of local people to utilize tourism as a context in which to represent and even to create novel forms of personal identity and ethnicity.
It is also interesting to analyse the implications of the construction and the role of a tourist guesthouse in village social life. This 'place' has engendered a complex dispute within the village that enhanced rather than replaced or deteriorated local politics, leadership, and totemic prestige. Furthermore, the guesthouse enabled local men to utilize vocational skills and to create, in a sense, a new 'centre' of the village that is located in a new concept of regional space. Finally, the guesthouse, like many genres of tourist art, is ornamented with mythological themes that express sexuality in ways that seem unique to the touristic encounter. I want to pose the question: Why do local people make erotic assertions in tourism? The guest house, then, is a touristic location that enables the reproduction and even the re-creation of local culture.
Finally, it is important to discuss language and literacy in the touristic encounter, as well as the suggestion that the touristic 'gaze', usually attributed only to Westerners, is often 'turned' to visitors themselves. This may be done by focusing on a written sign that requested donations for the Tambunum school. This sign, in many respects, exemplifies the paradoxes of tourism. Indeed, the concept of paradox perhaps best sums the touristic encounter between local people and Western visitors in the Sepik River.
Eric Kline Silverman is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN 46135, USA.