BANS-183 Solved Assignment

Selected session: Jan 2025

1) How did tourism become a recognised area of study in anthropology?

Core idea

Tourism anthropology looks at travel not just as “movement”, but as a cultural encounter that reshapes people, places, meanings, and power relations. In the BANS-183 course framing, tourism is closely linked with how “guests” behave, how “hosts” respond, and how societies reorganise cultural practices, identities, and resources around visitors.

Early stage: why anthropology noticed tourism late

Although people have travelled for centuries, tourism was not immediately treated as a “serious” anthropological topic. One reason discussed in the course is that tourism can look uncomfortably similar to what anthropologists themselves do—arriving as outsiders, observing culture, and producing representations. This made scholars cautious in the beginning, but it also became a strong reason to study tourism systematically.

1960s–1970s: tourism emerges as a distinct focus

The course traces the distinct rise of tourism anthropology to the 1960s and 1970s, when key scholars began writing about tourists, hosts, and cultural change. A major milestone was the work that culminated in Valene Smith’s edited volume Hosts and Guests (first published in 1977), widely treated as a landmark for the field. The background to this included growing academic interest and organised scholarly discussion through professional associations.

Institutional consolidation: conferences, publications, and new theories

• Scholarly networking and conferences: The course highlights how interested anthropologists came together through professional platforms (including meetings and themed sessions), creating an academic community around tourism research.
• Foundational studies and names: Tourism anthropology expanded through the contributions of scholars such as Nelson Graburn and Dennison Nash, alongside others working on cultural encounters, theory-building, and reconstruction of meaning in tourist settings.
• Major theoretical directions: The course notes that tourism was interpreted through multiple lenses—for example, as a symbolic system of signs and meanings (linked to semiotic approaches), as a modern form of power/imperialism, and also as a kind of transformative journey (drawing on ritual and pilgrimage-like interpretations).

1980s onwards: recognition as a legitimate subfield

As the volume of research increased, tourism anthropology gained clearer legitimacy. The course notes that anthropological work on tourism reached a level of prominence such that major tourism journals devoted focused attention to it, reflecting that it was no longer a marginal topic. From this point, the scope widened from “hosts only” to a broader set of issues: mobility, identity-making, cultural politics, and the production of new meanings in contact zones.

Contemporary expansion: environment, heritage, and new directions

By the turn of the century, tourism anthropology also increasingly addressed environmental and development concerns. The course specifically links newer work to ecotourism and interdisciplinary debates about political economy, social change, and sustainability. This shift matters because it connects tourism to long-term livelihood questions and conservation dilemmas, not just short-term cultural encounters.

Applied illustration for students

If you observe a popular tourist destination closely, you will usually see a pattern that mirrors the course argument: the place is “performed” to match visitor expectations, local services adapt to visitor comfort, and certain cultural elements become highlighted (while others are minimised). These everyday adaptations are precisely why tourism became a rich field for anthropological analysis.

Conclusion

Tourism became an anthropological subject when scholars recognised it as a powerful site of cultural production—where identities, meanings, and resources are negotiated between hosts and guests, and where modern institutions (markets, the state, and global heritage bodies) increasingly shape local life.

2) What do “tangible” and “intangible” heritage mean? Explain with examples.

Starting point: what heritage includes

In the course, heritage is explained as more than “old monuments”. Heritage includes places, objects, and also ideas that societies value and pass across generations. This wider framing is important because tourism often focuses on visible monuments, but cultural continuity also depends on living practices and knowledge.

Tangible heritage

Tangible heritage refers to material, physical items that can be seen and touched. Typical examples include monuments, historic buildings, archaeological remains, sculptures, and museum artefacts. In tourism, tangible heritage often becomes the “main attraction” because it is easy to market visually through photographs, brochures, and iconic imagery.

• Examples: Forts, temples, monuments, museum collections, and built heritage sites that are protected by national agencies or recognised by UNESCO.

Intangible heritage

Intangible heritage refers to non-material cultural elements—practices, skills, knowledge, expressions, and ways of life that communities recognise as their cultural inheritance. The course links this strongly with UNESCO’s emphasis on “safeguarding”, meaning practical measures that keep such heritage viable through documentation, education, transmission, and revival. Intangible heritage survives through continued practice in everyday life, not by existing “on its own” as an object.

• Examples: Festivals, languages, oral traditions, music, dance forms, handicraft skills, culinary expertise (recipes), textiles, and lifestyles such as nomadic or tribal traditions.
• Course example (India): Kalbelia dance and songs (Rajasthan) are discussed as an intangible cultural heritage example that gained wider visibility after international recognition, showing how tourism can support continuity—though often by shifting performances from ritual contexts to staged livelihood-oriented contexts.

Why the distinction matters in tourism

The course stresses that even when we visit a “building”, heritage is not only the structure; the embedded style, architecture, ideas, and symbolic meanings are also part of what is being conserved and experienced. In practice, tourism and heritage management must balance visitor access with the continuity of living traditions, especially when performances and cultural expressions begin to change form under market demand.

Applied illustration for students

Think of a heritage festival: the stage, costumes, and instruments may be tangible, but the heritage lies mainly in the performance knowledge, narratives, and community memory that keep the tradition meaningful. If only the costumes survive in a museum and the performance disappears, the heritage becomes incomplete.

3) Museums as cultural heritage: explain with suitable examples.

Why museums matter in tourism anthropology

The course explains that tourism, anthropology, and museums are closely connected because each involves a “journey” of perception: tourists travel to see, anthropologists travel to understand, and museums organise cultural materials so the public can encounter them. In simple terms, tourists collect memories, anthropologists collect ethnographic insight, and museums preserve material culture for long-term public engagement.

Museums as keepers of both tangible and intangible heritage

Museums do not only store objects (tangible heritage). They can also protect intangible heritage by documenting living traditions, supporting community narratives, and creating educational initiatives that keep practices visible and valued. The course notes that international museum frameworks recognise this dual role—preserving both tangible and intangible heritage of humanity.

Key concerns: representation and authenticity

A major issue raised in the course is authenticity: when an object or cultural display is placed in a museum, questions arise about whether it reflects lived culture or a “model” made attractive for audiences. This is directly relevant to tourism because museum exhibitions often shape what visitors believe a culture “really is”.

Changing museum practice (from collections to audiences)

The course describes a shift in museum priorities over recent decades: museums increasingly move beyond only preserving collections to also addressing public learning, inclusion, and social responsibility. This is linked with newer approaches (often discussed as “new museology” and the idea of the “post-museum”), where museums avoid a single authoritative voice and instead encourage multiple perspectives and constructive learning.

Examples students can use

• National museums and archaeological museums: These preserve sculptures, inscriptions, textiles, tools, and other artefacts that help visitors understand history through material evidence.
• Community or local museums: These can foreground local narratives (food traditions, craft skills, oral histories) and reduce the risk of an “outsider-only” representation.
• Living heritage spaces: Demonstration areas for crafts, music, or dance can help link objects to the skills and meanings behind them, connecting tangible displays with intangible practice.

4) What preservation measures are used for the Taj Mahal and the Bhimbetka caves?

Common principle: conservation has to manage tourism pressure

The course treats both the Taj Mahal and Bhimbetka as examples of how heritage tourism creates a practical dilemma: tourism revenue may support conservation, but visitor presence can also accelerate damage—especially in fragile sites like rock shelters, where harm is often irreversible.

Preservation and conservation of the Taj Mahal

• Institutional protection: The Taj Mahal is maintained as a national property and managed by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which sets site-specific conservation rules and visitor codes of conduct.
• Pollution control and access regulation: The course notes the problem of marble discolouration linked to high pollution levels. As a protective step, a buffer zone was created (within roughly a 2 km radius) where vehicles are not allowed, reducing immediate pollution stress near the monument.
• Symbolic management: The Taj is also presented as a national and even universal symbol (a “key symbol”), and tourism narratives may downplay some aspects (for example, religious features) to fit a broader heritage framing. This shows that conservation is not only technical; it also involves managing meanings presented to visitors.

Preservation and conservation of Bhimbetka rock shelters

• Fragility of the resource: Rock paintings and engravings can suffer wear through touching, crowding, and micro-damage; once degraded, they cannot be “restored” in the same way as many built structures.
• Visitor management and barriers: The course describes physical restrictions such as barriers and controlled zones, where visitors are stopped beyond certain points so that a safe distance is maintained between tourists and rock art panels.
• Education and guidelines: A key step for rock art conservation highlighted in the course is tourist education—clear rules and awareness that prevent accidental harm. These align with broader heritage-site management principles and international guidelines for World Heritage sites, implemented through national agencies such as ASI.

Applied illustration for students

At the Taj, regulation is strongly linked to pollution and crowd control; at Bhimbetka, regulation focuses on distance, restricted access, and strict “no-touch” discipline. The difference reflects the material nature of each site and the type of damage tourism can cause.

5) Commodification in tourism: explain with a course-based example (Unit 5).

Meaning of commodification in tourism

In Unit 5, commodification is explained as a process where cultural elements are rearranged for tourism—some aspects are highlighted, simplified, or staged so they become consumable for visitors. Over time, this can dilute cultural meaning by pulling practices out of their original context and turning them into products or performances designed for the tourist gaze.

How commodification typically happens

• Selection: A few easily recognisable cultural symbols (dance, dress, “traditional” welcome rituals) are chosen as the main representation of a community.
• Repackaging: The chosen symbols are modified to match tourist expectations—shorter performances, fixed timings, simplified narratives, and photogenic staging.
• Selling and branding: Culture becomes a “service experience” attached to hotels, resorts, souvenirs, photographs, and social media visibility.

Unit 5 example: staging local culture for tourist consumption

The unit describes how cultural performances and greetings can shift from community contexts into commercial hospitality spaces. For instance, what might traditionally be practiced on particular occasions becomes a routine “welcome package” in hotel lobbies—greeting songs, symbolic gestures (such as ceremonial welcome marks), and short dance performances presented as fragments of culture for visitor entertainment. The important anthropological point is not that welcoming guests is wrong, but that the meaning, timing, and ownership of the practice changes when it is repeatedly performed for payment and external validation.

Positive and negative outcomes (as discussed in the unit)

• Possible benefits: Income for performers, renewed pride, and greater visibility for traditions (especially among younger generations).
• Possible risks: Loss of depth, manipulation for profit, and replacing community meanings with staged “tourist-friendly” versions of culture.

6) Tourist and Guest: explain the terms briefly (about 150 words).

A tourist is commonly described in the course as a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home to experience change. This definition highlights that tourism is usually short-term and tied to leisure, pleasure, or specific interests such as heritage, religion, or nature.

The term guest is often used in tourism anthropology to emphasise the relationship side of travel: a guest enters someone else’s social space, uses local services, and depends on hospitality norms. That is why the course frequently pairs “guest” with “host”—the visitor is not only consuming a destination, but also participating in a social encounter shaped by expectations, communication, and unequal power or money relations.

In practical terms, “tourist” fits measurement and categorisation (domestic/inbound/outbound), while “guest” helps you analyse behaviour, interaction, and cultural negotiation at the destination.

7) Local environment versus tourist sites: what is the difference?

The local environment includes everyday community life and ecology: residents’ routines, livelihoods, language use, housing patterns, and how people relate to their landscape. A tourist site is the same place, but reorganised as an attraction—through branding, infrastructure, regulated entry, and curated experiences. The course explains that tourist spaces are often shaped by imagined expectations: visitors come wanting to see a destination as it exists in pictures and stories, sometimes preferring an idealised “past” rather than the complex present.

This difference creates tension. Locals may adjust behaviour and services to satisfy tourists, while tourism infrastructure can pressure natural resources. That is why the course insists tourism should not be studied in isolation from natural, social, and economic environments, since changes at the site usually spill into local life.

8) Ecotourism: meaning and key features (about 150 words).

Ecotourism is defined in the course as environmentally responsible travel to relatively undisturbed natural areas that helps people enjoy and appreciate nature (and related cultural features) while promoting conservation, minimising visitor impact, and ensuring beneficial socio-economic involvement of local communities.

Most course definitions converge on three practical criteria: (1) it supports conservation with meaningful community participation, (2) it provides real benefits to host communities, and (3) it is self-sustaining rather than short-lived exploitation.

The course also warns that ecotourism can empower or disempower. Community-based approaches are preferred when local people have stronger control over activities, training, and benefit-sharing (for example, locally run homestays), rather than outside operators capturing most revenue.

9) Sustainable tourism: explain in simple terms (about 150 words).

Sustainable tourism connects tourism with the idea of sustainable development—meeting present needs without reducing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. In the course, this is tied to environmental preservation and also to social and economic fairness, especially for local and indigenous communities.

In practical destination terms, sustainable tourism means: controlling pollution and crowding, protecting heritage and biodiversity, ensuring local people receive equitable benefits, and avoiding tourism models that create long-term damage for short-term profit. The course notes that ecotourism is sometimes treated as sustainable tourism because both aim to conserve natural resources while supporting community livelihoods; however, sustainability requires actual governance, participation, and fair distribution, not only “green” branding.

10) Field site and tourist spot: how does anthropology view this pair?

In tourism anthropology, the field site is where an ethnographer conducts long-term engagement to understand culture through relationships, observation, and context. A tourist spot, by contrast, is a place organised for short-term experience and pleasure, strongly shaped by images, expectations, and marketing.

The course explains that many tourist spots are historically significant, and visitors often arrive wanting the destination to match an imagined “ideal” created by stories and photographs. Locals and commercial actors may then sustain that imagined reality through selective presentation and performance. This creates a complex research setting where past, present, imagined, and real elements become entangled—making the tourist spot an especially rich, but methodologically challenging, field site.

11) Native and Host: explain the terms (about 150 words).

In the course framing, native refers broadly to people who belong to, live in, and identify with the destination community. Host highlights their role within tourism: they receive visitors, provide services, and negotiate cultural and economic exchanges with guests. The host-guest encounter is often brief and unequal, frequently concentrated in tourist spaces such as hotels and resorts, and shaped by language, communication, and length of stay.

The course also explains that tourism can influence hosts in different ways. Sometimes hosts copy guest mannerisms only temporarily (a form of cultural drift). In other cases, when contact becomes more continuous and changes are passed across generations, it can move toward acculturation. These concepts help students describe how tourism reshapes social life, identity, and everyday practices in host communities.