2 - Reshaping Proximity: Cultural Heritage Tourism and the Communal Imagination

Presentation Abstract
Tourism is a phenomenon that draws clear boundaries between the tourist as "other" and another "other" that accommodates the tourist. By drawing such a boundary, the proximity of tourists to the people they are visiting is tamed, and the inhabitants are not allowed to invade their proximity. This is a condition for successful cultural consumption, but it is also a condition for the degradation of the imagined community. This presentation attempts an ethnographical description of this dual process by tracing the life histories of cultural artefacts collected by museums and archives in the East and Southeast Asian region.