Local culture: a rural community’s most valuable capital asset?

Abstract

While smaller rural communities cannot compete in the same arena of larger, mega tourism destinations, they do have one competitive advantage – their specific and unique local cultures. This cultural element differentiates a community from all other communities. While some rural communities have turned local cultural festivals and traditional celebrations into tourism attractions that draw visitors to the community, the benefits of these attractions to the local rural community are generally limited. Others have taken more aggressive strategies to commodify specific aspects of living local culture, traditions, customs and heritage into products to be directly sold to and consumed by tourists, providing a steady flow of economic benefit to the community. In this sense, local culture is a capital asset. While not all rural communities have strong or substantial cultural dimension, there are many that do which have not yet realized its economic potential. Drawing from recent doctoral research and theory, this concept paper discusses the notion of local culture as cultural capital and community capital asset when considering tourism development.