Abstract
Curiosity for the different and marginal develops, and is economically exploited, as a side-effect of globalization. An increasing (though still minority) part of it is directed towards what visitors perceive as peripheries of the world. For indigenous people in developing countries this development creates new challenges and has contradictory consequences. It generates new sources of income as service workers in the tourism industry as well as the opportunity of becoming tourism exhibits themselves, selling souvenirs, being photographed, opening their camps and villages to visitors, putting on shows of dances, ceremonies, traditional food, art, customs, etc. While these latter activities incorporate those people in the new economy, they also ‘freeze’ them culturally at the margin of society since it is their marginality that they exhibit and sell for profit. Such incongruent combination of economic incorporation and cultural marginality is examined with special reference to the Maasai pastoral groups in Kenya and Tanzania.
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