Issues

Cultural Heritage Tourism Research 

2008-11-26 07:39:00

Cultural Heritage Tourism Research at the Tsodilo Hills, Botswana

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley currently completing my ethnographic fieldwork among the Ju/’hoansi and Hambukushu of the Tsodilo Hills, Botswana. My research interests include cultural heritage, tourism, development, conservation, mapping oral history and memory, identity politics, and rock art. These interests come together in my dissertation project, which examines cultural heritage tourism as a means of development at a set of hills with a high density of rock art and now inscribed and conserved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

My central research problem in this project is whether commoditization of the Tsodilo Hill’s intangible heritage ultimately works against the conservation aims of UNESCO World Heritage. “Intangible heritage” pertains to the beliefs of the local communities who claim ancestral affiliation to the hills and regularly come to pray. Although in use by heritage practitioners for decades the concept of “intangible heritage” has only relatively recently been formally defined and employed by UNESCO. It refers to non-tangible aspects of culture such as oral traditions, folklore, and belief systems.

In 2005, the Botswana National Museum, NGOs from the Kuru Family of Organisations, and De Beers/DEBSWANA embarked on a collaborative management plan to develop the Tsodilo Hills for conservation and tourism, which outlines community participation and benefits. UNESCO World Heritage requires its member state parties to involve local communities nearby World Heritage Sites, so this management plan is a requisite step for Botswana. In my project I question that as the local communities of the Tsodilo Hills are increasingly consigned to self-reliance through cultural tourism development whether their intangible heritage is conserved or whether it becomes a commodity for tourist consumption.

The development of the Tsodilo Hills for tourism is explicitly inclusive of the local Ju/’hoansi and Hambukushu communities and is akin to the other community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programs in the region. However, both the Ju/’hoansi and the Hambukushu are ethnic minorities in Botswana, a nation-state long known to eschew multiculturalism in order to avoid tribal discord. Accordingly, another research problem I address in this project is whether spotlighting ethnic minority cultures through community-based tourism endeavors threatens a perceived sense of national unity.

Most of the community members who participate in tourism are women, and they participate in tourism primarily through the production and sale of crafts. Although men still dominate the local development boards, women are by far the largest demographic affected by the local tourism industry. I am also interested in how tourism as a means of sustainable development alters traditional gender roles as communities enter a cash economy.

After nearly two-years in Botswana, I will be leaving in January 2009 to write-up my Ph.D. dissertation back in California. While my project is firmly rooted in cultural critique I am aware of the necessity of collaborative research that directly benefits host communities. In addition to my central research questions above I also engaged in a smaller side-project to map intangible heritage at the Tsodilo Hills. Equipped with a digital voice recorder, a digital camera, and a GPS unit, I geo-referenced stories and memories the communities told me about the hills. I hope that the maps this side-project will produce will be useful to the communities’ ownership claims regarding the Tsodilo Hills.

Text and pictures by: Rachel Faye Giraudo

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Comments

How uplifting to have you recognize the people of the the Tsodilo Hills and the changes in their lives. And to bring to the front the women of the communities and their craft works, with the understanding that they are surviving all these changes in their way of life.

Submitted by Susan Giraudo on 27/11/2008 5:00:05 PM

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