The ‘Real’ Bedik: Cultural Tourism and the Production and Marketing of ‘Authenticity’ in Senegal
(Southwestern University)
Global tourism is a vast enterprise emerging within Third-world economies, wherein “authentic” culture has become a highly valued and sought after commodity. This emergence of authentic culture as a commodity raises complications and conundrums centering on how authenticity is defined and marketed, especially within the context of historical inequality. Through an analysis of ethnographic fieldwork among the Bedik, a small ethnic minority in southeastern Senegal, I seek to critically examine how the Bedik have come to be represented as having an ‘authentic’ culture; and how the Bedik are positioned by others, and position themselves, as purveyors of “real” Africa. I show how these processes of creating Bedik culture entail a hydbrization between “tradition” and Western expectations. In addition, I explore how Bedik understandings of how visual images work helps to shape what they wish to create as authentically Bedik, and authentically African. My analysis ultimately questions the degree of agency the Bedik have in these cultural exchanges, and what role tourism is playing in the Bedik’s conception of their cultural identity.