Tourism and Cultural Identity in Nagaland

Abstract

This research study attempts to examine the ways in which the Nagas themselves use the Hornbill newline Festival and Tourism at large to construct newer identity configurations incorporating not just identity newline markers of race or ethnicity, nationalism and religion but also those made available by global culture newline industries. Most studies of hosts, both the subjects of the tourist gaze and the sites have been focused on newline impacts, effects, limiting and constructing host communities and sites as passive victims on whom newline tourism and tourists are imposed. It is hoped that this study would contribute to a small but growing body newline of work within tourism studies that contests these constructions and instead focuses on the agency of the newline hosts and the strategies which are deployed to co-opt tourism in new, possibly empowering constructions newline of identity, in ways that return the tourist gaze and also extend beyond the spectatorship of the tourist to newline everyday life. newline The politics behind the development of tourist sites is explored and analyzed. While tourist sites are newline pitched, sanctioned and developed using the rhetoric of tourism as development, it is found that newline hegemonic struggles within Naga tribes as well as the power equation with the Centre, both in monetary newline and symbolic terms inform these developments . newline The emergence of photography, both at the amateur and professional level, as a local cultural practice is newline examined as a means of expressing, challenging and re-presenting Naga cultural identity. The production newline of images in tourism brochures, coffee table books, advertisements, professional portfolios and social newline media are found to be informed by a tradition of representing cultural identity begun by the western newline anthropologist, missionary and administrator. But at the same time also used global cultural material and newline new technologies enable local photographers greater agency in articulating newer identity configurations. newline The representation of the body both in image and performance, attire and fashion are also found to be newline sites where cultural identity is challenged and reconfigured. newline This work concludes that the tourist gaze hardly operates in one direction in the case of the Nagas. This newline gaze is constantly being met, challenged and reconfigured. In the displays and performances of Kisama newline Heritage village and within tourism brochures and publications, the tourist gaze is however tacitly newline acknowledged. Outside this arena of cultural performance however, tourism is becoming a space where newline other ways of seeing and representing more hybrid identities have become possible. To the extent that newline fewer people are concerned about what the tourist would like to see and more about what they would like newline to show and see for themselves. newline Key Words: Tourism, Host Perspective; Naga Identity, Hornbill Festival newline