Tourism Impacts on Yami Tribe
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Tourism impacts
As much as they are trying to preserve their culture and traditions, they are bound to have some impacts as they live a globalized country like Taiwan.
- The change or loss of cultural and traditional identity and values
As the Yami people welcome tourism into their country, they are afraid that tourism will create a globalization effect whereby the Tao will be affected by the tourist. A few influences that they may cause are commodification, standardization and loss of authenticity. Commodification refers to having to accept some amount of money as a token. While tourist enters the village they are bound to need to pay some amount of money. (WIEMAN, 1992)This indicates that money has become a form of token so that the tourist can enjoy or even experience the culture. Also, if they are to buy souvenirs from them, tourist will also have to pay money. (Wu, 2011)
Standardization refers to having to standardize their culture specially to cater to the tourist. As they promote tourism, the Taos have to get used to the changes that is catered to the tourist. As such their own culture will then be lost as they are not familiar with it anymore. Thus linking to the fact their culture is being improvised or even changed already. It is not real or true as we compare it to the culture in the past. In the tribe, it can be seen that many parts of the islands are built with transportation structure in attempt to cater to the tourist whereby roads are being built, hotels are increasingly available. (West, 2009, p. 901)
As such, even if they are welcoming tourist into their tribe, they chose to have stricter control and steady type of tourism into their tribe instead. (Island, 2005)
- Loss of youths in the Yami tribe
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