ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMISSION FOR ASIA AND THE PACIFIC UNITED NATIONS New York, 1994 A study on the cultural impact of international tourism in Pakistan was undertaken in response to the request of the Government of Pakistan with financial assistance from the Government of Japan. The report was prepared by Mr. Shah Alam Khan and Mr. Farooq Ata, Consultants. The views expressed in the report are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations or of the Governments of any of the countries or areas mentioned in the report. The designations employed and the presentation of the material do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Mention of any firm or licensed process does not imply endorsement by the United Nations. This document has been issued without formal editing. ii About the Report This Report is an attempt at an assessment of the cultural impact of foreign tourism in Pakistan through the use of factor analysis technique with special emph,asis on measures to control the negative impact of foreign tourism flows. It i$ part of the ESCAP project for assessing the socio- cultural role of tourism sector and has been undertaken in accordance with Its guidelines and finance support. This Report is organized into seven Chapters. The problem and its setting has been introduced in Chapter I which also defines the general contours of culture, and the main forces governing Pakistani culture. The Chapter ends with the conclusion that Pakistan has its own cultural identity, determined by its history, geography, culture, religion, social values and the state of economic and physical development etc. It is concluded that the country is so vast that it cannot claim to be having complete uniformity in its cultural manifestations. Within Pakistan, cultural variations of fairly strong degree have led to the creation of cultural regions and patterns. Further, pockets of unique cultural values in remote areas are still available and are of interest for foreign tourists. Chapter II of the Report undertakes to lay down the methodological framework of this Study, highlighting its main objectives as laid down by the ESCAP, defining the scope of work to be undertaken and pin-pointing the approach and methodology followed for undertaking this work. The Study undertakes to analyse both micro and macro aspects and tries to answer questions such as the power of the foreign tourism in exerting changes on the cultural patterns of the Pakistani society, the usefulness of these changes the extent of erosion of cultural values due to foreign tourists arrivals vis-a-vis other forces and speed of cultural erosion due to foreign tourism as compared to the impact of other influences. For the micro analysis a questionnaire was used to obtain opinion of experts on the impact of foreign tourism on physical, economic, social, moral and cultural factors of the selected areas. In Chapter III of the Report, a bird eye view of the nature of Pakistani tourism products and its used pattern is presented. The Chapter comes up with the conclusion that despite one of the world's touristic jewels having such a wide diversity of scenery, adventure, sports activities, history, culture, religion and wildlife, Pakistan is still in its infancy in so far as the exploitation of its tourism potential is concerned. Whatever little tourism we receive mainly consists of the V.F.R. market, with share of holiday-makers being fairly low. These conclusions, have implications for interaction of foreign tourism with cultural aspects which are the subject matters of Chapters of the Study. Chapters IV and V begin with a classification of cultural pattern of the country into three main parts: rural, urban, and special cultures. The foreign tourist arrivals in each of these cultural zones have been quantified and a picture of interaction has been presented. Within the urban culture three sub-cultures, consisting of the cultures of 'upper elite', 'middle class', and poor masses have been selected to show the impact of foreign tourism. The distinctively separate cultural areas included in this Study are: Chitral, Thar desert, Hunza and Skardu and the interaction of foreign tour has been studied in Chapter V. In Chapter VI of the Report, an assessment of the cultural impact of foreign tourism at micro level based on the results of the application of factor analysis is presented. This Chapter shows the extent of impact on various factors by their main indicators, sub-indicators and areas etc. This Chapter comes out with the conclusion that foreign tourism has generated an impact of lower magnitude as indicated by scores earned by various factors and indicators. Nevertheless, policy measures are needed for containing the ill-effects of foreign tourism flows which is outlined in Chapter VII. These measures include: conducting proper research on problem-preventive actions and informative measures etc. The Chapter concludes with suggestions on preservation of architectural and historical finds of the country. vii Chapter I The Problem and Its Setting .1 INTRODUCTION In pursuance of its programme of studies for assessing the socio-cultural impact of international tourism, ESCAP entered into an agreement with the consultants for conducting a research study on this issue in the context of Pakistan. There are two important types of relationships between international tourism and socio-cultural fabric of a society:- (a) International tourism and socio-cultural aspects may enjoy a mutually supportive relationship when they are organized in such a way that each benefits from the other; (b) Tourism and socio-cultural aspects can be in conflict particularly when tourism imposes detrimental effects. The beneficent impact of international tourism on the local and national econor:nies through enhanced incomes, employment generation, balance of payment, higher public sector revenues, redistribution of incomes towards relatively neglected areas is now well documented. Direct beneficial contribution of international tourism to cultural preservation is the economic means by which it can befinanced. Again, the spill-over benefits of international tourism in the form of concern for protection of prime cultural resources for perpetuating tourism flows especially, the contribution towards makingthese known and rendering them accessible are of no less significance. However, tourism especially its international version is not all that benign. Innumerable instances of negative effects of this activity damaging the cultural ethos are available. It is argued that foreign visitors lead to commoditisation, commercialization and even bastardization of local arts and crafts. The simplicity, antiquity and originality vanishes as hosts start copying their guests. It is contended that other forces including mass media, education and urbanization are not as powerful as the presence of foreigners amidst locals in bringing about quick conversions because hosts, due to demonstration effect, react more quickly. This leads to faster changes in the centuries old cultural patterns, which critics contend are for the worst. It is, therefore, essential to analyse the socio-culture impact of international tourism to see as to how far it is symbiotic and to what extent in conflict at a given place and time? In what follows is a Report analysing the impact of international tourism on socio-cultural fabric of Pakistan. In this Report, attempt has been made at assessing the relationship of international tourism with Pakistani culture. 1.2 CULTURE The problem of adequately defining the term 'culture' is very complex and complicated as a minimum of about 82 formal definitions and about 120 explanatory notes are in currency in the literature. Despite the existence of such a large number of definitions, it basically refers to man's entire social heritage, all the knowledge, beliefs, customs and skills he acquires as a member of asociety. The culture or social heritage of any society is always specific, it is the 'distinctive way of life of a group of people, and their complete design for living', Culture presumes the existence of society and provides the necessary skills for making human society work. Culture is not restricted to certain special fields of knowledge; it includes ways of behaving derived from the whole range of humanactivity. Culture includes not only the techniques and methods of art, music and literature, but also those used to make pottery, sew clothing or build houses. The positive accepting approach is to study other cultures or the culture of sub-groups such that the standards of a particular culture are not judged by men of other cultures according to theirnorms. Nevertheless, while carrying out impact studies, some comparison gets made particularly within a given society. If culture includes a set of 'designs' for carrying on the life of society, then there must be cultural ideals. Ideals involve standards of perfection, whether in the skills of the artist or other professionals. Although a culture is a 'complete design for living', no one fully masters all of the knowledge and skills nor is motivated by all of the values of any culture, however, simple. The learning of culture is always selective. The individual learns some aspects of his culture because of his sex, his age, the group into which he is born and the locality in which "he lives. There is difference between culture and a social organization. The social organization is made up of inter-personal and group relations, e.g., family which is a unit of social organization but the form of the family and the familial behaviour are prescribed by the culture. One culture may value a kind of family in which the father is dominant; another may relegate him to a lesser position.