The art of the weak: Tourist encounters in East Africa

Abstract

This article is based on long-term anthropological fieldwork among the semi-nomad Mursi people of South-Western Ethiopia. I have investigated different underlying meanings of local performances for tourist audience. Here, my aim is to demonstrate the need to pay attention to the complexity of these local performances in small-scale African communities. I argue that the different acts that local people put on for their visitors are not cognitively homogeneous performances but carry complex cultural meanings. I propose that anthropological studies of ‘tribal’, ‘cultural’ or ‘ethnic’ tourism should pay more attention to the different tactics that local people apply in order to control tourist consumption and performance.