How Does Tourism Affect Jamaican Culture

Nowhere else on earth will you find a culture as dynamic as the one visitors encounter in Jamaica. Its people are a mixture of the many ethnicities that have landed on the island's shores over the past several centuries. Weathering enslavement and oppression, the Jamaicans are survivors and their past is full of fascinating stories just waiting to be told. Jamaica is a mixed economy with public sectors as well as private sector businesses. Major sectors of the Jamaican economy include agriculture, mining, manufacturing, tourism and financial and insurance services. Tourism and mining are the leading foreign exchange earners. In the tourism literature, much attention has been paid to the way in which cultural events have become altered by tourism, either because tourism provides a conduit through which these events are modernised and commodified, or because the cultural content of these events is altered to match the tourists’ view of authentic local culture, (Greenwood, 1989; Richards, 2001). A common assertion in the tourism and culture literature is that tourism induces cultural change

According to Wang (2000), authenticity is known as a modern occurrence which results from the experience of inauthenticity. This view was also confirmed by Goulding (2000) where he stated that the desire for authentic experience is a modern epitome of the religious pilgrim but because of the post modern society it is fundamentally inauthentic for those who seek it, they would have to seek authenticity elsewhere. In achieving the experience of the past Goulding further stated that the reasons increased heritage interest with the moral, social and identity crisis which were experienced over the past decades. Boyd (2002) argued that the tourists’ concern for authenticity depends on a person’s degree of isolation from modernism. Boyd also stated that authenticity is regarded to central to the isolation of heritage