Performing Culture in the Global Village

Abstract

■ This paper discusses the revival and performance of cultural traditions and 'ethnic lives' for a tourist audience in the third and fourth worlds using the example of a newly emergent development on Wala island, Malekula, Vanuatu. It examines issues of the commodification and objectification of culture, in the light of debates about the 'invention of tradition', in relation to a global tourist industry. A major concern is with the politics and values involved in an active appropriation on the part of indigenous populations of their past and how this might relate to a notion of authenticity in the context of a Melanesian culture.