Paradigm or Predator? Eco- and Community Museums in Scotland and Costa Rica

Recent decades have seen a rise in scholarship on the tourist imagination relating to the western gaze towards other cultures. In this essay, my theoretical standpoint is located in a nexus between museum studies, tourism studies, and anthropology, wherein the dynamic between the visitor and the her...

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Pubblicato in:URI:https://journals.openedition.org/iss,
Autore principale: Brown, Karen E.
Natura: Article ou chapitre numérique
Lingua:Anglais
Pubblicazione: ICOFOM Study Series 2018
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Accesso online:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
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Riassunto:Recent decades have seen a rise in scholarship on the tourist imagination relating to the western gaze towards other cultures. In this essay, my theoretical standpoint is located in a nexus between museum studies, tourism studies, and anthropology, wherein the dynamic between the visitor and the heritage encountered can no longer be accepted as an innocent one. The contemporary examples I draw on from Scotland and Costa Rica – Skye Ecomuseum, and the Boruca and Rey Curré museos comunitarios – attract diverse international visitors, and tourism to both destinations is showcasing a life lived at a remove from the western world of capitalism and modernity, one experienced within, and at one with, stunning natural surroundings. However, as I will elucidate, both communities are concurrently experiencing the homogenising influences of globalisation while striving to maintain and strengthen their distinctive local identities in the response to predatory tourism.