The four chapters in this section look at the relationship between tourism and one of the core concerns of anthropology. That concern is meaning, the significance that things have, manifested in images of them. In doing so, these chapters help illuminate some of the less obvious aspects and consequences of tourism of different sorts for the host countries in which it occurs, and the less obvious relationships between tourism and the social and political processes at work in those countries.

The sort of meanings and images that these chapters consider is that associated with groups of people and their practices, ranging from an entire country at one extreme, to specific and relatively small groups at the other. This sort of meaning is especially salient in tourism in poorer countries, the focus of these chapters. Some such countries continue to rely on the conventional attractions of sun, sand and sea in their coastal areas; and Chapter 9 is about one of these countries, Jamaica. However, such tourism is highly competitive, for one tropical beach is, after all, very much like another. Consequently, it is decreasingly attractive to countries that see tourism as a vehicle for economic growth. Many of these countries have, instead, been promoting the distinctive cultural groups within their borders that are exotic and attractive to visitors. The images and meanings associated with such groups, aimed outward at tourists, can be significant when seen in terms of the social and political context of the host country.

Chapter 6 presents a clear, straightforward example of this sort of cultural tourism, its images and meanings. In ‘Tourists and Indigenous Culture as Resources: Lessons from the Embera Cultural Tourism in Panama’, Dimitrios Theodossopoulos describes the Embera of Parara Paru on the Rio Chagres.