| Popis: |
Since the 1980s, a considerable amount of scholarly activity has focused on Maya heritage and, especially, on the influences of a globalizing tourist industry flooding Maya-land. In this paper, however, we argue that contemporary Maya identity and cultural processes do not simply reflect and refract globalizing influences such as tourism. In some areas at least, on-going historical processes working in combination with much more recent, non-tourism related influences continue to affect Maya views of identity and heritage. We describe the development of an association of traditional healers in southern Belize whose goals include the promotion of both their medical practices and the broader intellectual and cultural heritage in which these practices are entrenched, and whose target population is their own people, not tourists. Our findings prompt us to reconsider how scholars characterize the influence of global tourism on Maya heritage and culture and to appreciate how issues of cultural heritage and its m... |
