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| THE APPLICATION OF BOURDIEU' S THEORY OF CULTURAL CAPITAL IN TOURISM PLANNING |
| WU Qi-yan1, WANG Zhao-jie2 |
1. School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, China;
2. School of Urban Construction and Management Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, China |
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Abstract The consumption culture of symbols and visual images is dominant in social consumption of postmodernism. Therefore, the developing and planning of tourism industry should not only satisfy tourists, but also respect the consumption culture. The term capital is usually associated with a narrowly defined economic category of monetary exchange for profit. However, Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital is an attempt to expand the category of capital to something more than just the economic and to identify culture as a form of capital. Bourdieu's cultural capital theory includes three areas which are the ability of culture, the product of culture and the system of culture. The authors apply the theory to analyzing these three areas in the tourism industry of Lijiang. The authors provide a case study of Lijiang's tourism planning. Lijiang City is an attractive tourist destination in Yunnan Province that exercises jurisdiction over four counties and an Old Town District. Lijiang is the main region inhabited by Naxi Group, one of China's 55 minority ethnic groups. In its long history, the local residents have established their splendid Dongba Culture which has absorbed aspects of the culture of Tibet and the Central Plains along the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. The authors firstly disassemble tourism cultural capital into three factors, namely, tourism cultural capacity or ability of culture, tourism institute and product of culture. Then the authors interpret their contexts in the tourism practice of these three disassembled factors. Finally, the authors present the details of planning practice of tourism cultural capacity, tourism institute and product of culture respectively. Taking example of the product of culture, the planning of Lijiang tourism, the authors, firstly, try to explore local history and ethnologic culture and then interpret it into modern artistic expressing; secondly, depending on the local history and ethnologic culture, a lots of tourism products are created by artists, for example the Images of Lijiang by famous film director Zhang Yimou, and Water, sand and Lijiang. The authors point out that the achievement of Lijiang's tourism reflect the fact that the planners of Lijiang and local government have successfully understood the importance of cultural capital in tourism planning and applied it into practice.
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Received: 21 December 2009
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2011, Vol. 26 
