抄録
Tourism has been a key topic in anthropological studies since the 1990s. Previous studies have highlighted many issues with regard to culture, such as invention, authenticity and objectification of culture. Debates in anthropology of tourism reveal the dynamism of culture in the context of unfair power relations between hosts and guests. Exposure of such findings is one of the crucial achievements of earlier studies on anthropology of tourism.
However, tourism anthropology tends to focus its discussion only on the tourism site; it ignores the context of daily life in the tourist site. Moreover, it overlooks how “objectified culture” in the context of tourism would be changed. The framework of post-colonial anthropology analyses the field in a simplified manner, that is, whether hosts are exploited or not. As such, researchers may fail to understand the field in depth given the lack of ethnographic description beyond the current condition. For this reason, the current paper discusses the attitude of the hosts’ community towards culture from a diachronic standpoint. This paper uses as case study Kayan tourism in northern Thailand.
The Kayan are also known as “Longneck Karen” among tourists. Tourism in their villages has been criticized as having a “human zoo” set-up because of the vulnerable status of Kayan as refugees from Burma (Myanmar). They reportedly have no choice but to wear rings for the sake of tourism in order to survive; thus they are oppressed. Although such a perspective fits in the macro context of tourism, it overlooks the essence of Kayan culture and how their condition of life is changing. This paper employs ethnographic methodology to present a clear depiction of the historical process of the establishment of Kayan tourism and its changes since the 1980s.
