Paper short abstract:

The Swahili society on Lamu Island has a thousand year history of contacts with other cultures through trade and shipping. Today tourism is the gateway to contacts with distant peoples. The study reflects on socio-cultural consequences within the host community caused by contemporary tourism.

Paper long abstract:

Modern tourism is ought to be closely linked to sustainable development in economical, ecological as well as socio-cultural respect and could be regarded as an important part of an open society. Tourism gives opportunities for interaction between people from various backgrounds, but the consequences of this interaction could be difficult to predict.

Since 2001 Lamu is a World Heritage Site and tourism is based on its economic history and well preserved culture in combination with a rich but sensitive tropical landscape. One concern is how to develop tourism business and at the same time preserve a certain set of landscape values. This paper is based on observations and interviews within the host community in Lamu, focusing on the socio-cultural dimensions of sustainability and discusses the residents' adaption to and conceptualization of the transformations in their envisaged and experienced landscape as a result of the involvement in tourism activities.

The analysis shows that the interaction gives certain effects in the socio-culture landscape such as an accentuation of dissimilarities and tensions already existing between diverse groups in the local society. Tourism presence also creates the evolvement of a more explicit and complex moral landscape which serves to distinguish cultural insiders respectively outsiders from one another. In addition tourism participation indicates the importance of functional institutions and strategies to achieve sustainable development in all respects.

The work is conducted during 2009-2011 as a Licentiate thesis in Human Geography, Uppsala University, Sweden.