Paradigm or predator? Eco- and community museums in Scotland and Costa Rica

Abstract

Recent decades have seen a rise in scholarship on the tourist imagination relating to the western gaze towards other cultures. In this essay, my theoretical standpoint is located in a nexus between museum studies, tourism studies, and anthropology, wherein the dynamic between the visitor and the heritage encountered can no longer be accepted as an innocent one. The contemporary examples I draw on from Scotland and Costa Rica – Skye Ecomuseum, and the Boruca and Rey Curré museos comunitarios – attract diverse international visitors, and tourism to both destinations is showcasing a life lived at a remove from the western world of capitalism and modernity, one experienced within, and at one with, stunning natural surroundings. However, as I will elucidate, both communities are concurrently experiencing the homogenising influences of globalisation while striving to maintain and strengthen their distinctive local identities in the response to predatory tourism.