Paper short abstract:

The sudden interest in 'cultural heritage' interfered and conditioned many of the anthropological interests. This bring us back to the relation between power, knowledge and critical social thinking.

Paper long abstract:

Based upon many years of fieldwork in tourism context I reflect upon the theoretical and methodological problem of studying 'culture' in tourism environments. Though tourism has been Spain's most important source of income, very few social scientists has paid close attention to it. The cultural, developmental and research policies were not especially fond of promoting the study of tourism. However, once tourism trends moved from heliothalasotropism into culturalism and ruralism during the eighties, 'culture' has been perceived as a resource. From then on, development planning in rural areas and research projects started focusing on what was labelled as 'cultural heritage/patrimonio', and dozens of expertos en patrimonio, articles, books, congresses, seminars appeared in the market. Regarding anthropology, this sudden interest in 'cultural heritage', much on the contrary, interfered and conditioned many of the anthropological interests; what bring us back to the relation between power, knowledge and critical social thinking. I conclude that in order to face this dilemma, anthropologists must pay closer attention to cultural heritage/patrimonio as a 'meta-cultural product', and should deeply analyse the mediation role of tourism space in order to understand the production and reproduction of meanings both among tourists and neighbours. I exemplify my arguments on this process with some case-studies I have carried out in different parts of Spain.

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