Impacts of Tourism on the Sense of Ethnic Identity of Tujia Residents in Enshi.

Ethnic identity is the unanimous identification with an ethnic group by its individual members and is also an essential component of ethnic consciousness. In the Theory of Native, ethnic identity is regarded as innate. However, in the Theory of Tool, one ethnic group interacts with other ethnic groups, and its formation and maintenance depend on the social boundaries among them. As an aspect of modernity, tourism has an important impact on the maintenance, conversion and reconstruction of ethnic boundary. On one hand, tourism by economic means, could shape or strengthen the ethnic identity, whose basis is cultural identity. On the other hand, tourism may also weaken the ethnic identity. There are different types of impact of tourism on the ethnic identity with noticeable features at different stages. Therefore, under the influence of tourism, ethnic identities in minority areas are in a multi-dimensional track of development and in different directions. Life story of individuals is the diachronic material based on psychological analysis of members of ethnic groups. This method is mainly used in ethnology and historical studies. Through this way, the relationship between ethnic identity and tourism showed in the personal life experiences of a member of the chosen ethnic group can be generalized for the study of the impact of tourism on individual's sense of ethnic identity. Application of such a method not only enables the text to be more realistic because of the narration of personal experiences, but to some extent, also helps individuals in ethnic groups to restore their discourse right. Based on the record of the life story of a young woman of Tujia ethnicity, the article analyzes the evolving sense of ethnic identity of an ethnic individual during the process of tourism development. It finds that the impacts of tourism on ethnic identity lie in that the "potential status" of ethnic culture has been raised due to the economic growth caused by tourism, that tourism products create the collective memory and cultural landscape of the ethnic group, that cultural tourism is deepening the level of ethnic identity, and that the over-exploitation and the blind-development of ethnic tourism will mislead the direction of ethnic identity. In the development of tourism, ethnic culture is included in the category of consumption culture and strengthens individual's ethnic identity. However, compared with other forms of tourism, ethnic tourism is far more like a "tourist gaze". What in the life of ethnic people is to be shown and preserved in tourism is decided by the market. Therefore, it blocks the natural development of ethnic cultures and such living ethnic cultures will be "museumized" (become dead exhibits in the museum) or be transformed into cultural commodities of the "tourism ethnicity". In such a situation, the profit-oriented ethnic culture has become a new symbol of ethnic identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]