Responsibility Of Citizens In The Developed Countries Analysis

Responsibility of Citizens in "the Developed Countries"

After reading Trask's book and watching Act of War, my impression and view on Hawai'i has totally changed. What I believe now is that people in "the developed countries" have responsibility to know the fact that indigenous people in "the developing countries" have been suffering from the (cultural) imperialism and to use their political and economical power to change the situation that indigenous self-determination and sovereignty are ignored. To be honest, my perception of Hawai'i was only as a tropical islands for vacation and as a place where Japan had attacked during the second World War. This was because the limited information and experience I had until now − studying the Japanese
Massive tourism means destruction of environment in Hawai'i. Forest and sea have had been damaged through the construction for tourism industry. Furthermore, the indigenous culture had been in danger because of the significant amount of outsiders including immigrants and tourists. The capitalism and materialism that tourists brought destroyed collectivistic culture that people take care of nature and share everything including food and land in Hawai'i. Another perspective in the destruction of culture is that tourism makes local language hard to survive since English has become the most important language in their economical activities. Although the phenomena is mostly because of the immigration and annexation before tourism became huge, tourism still promote it further. What is more, the identity of the indigenous people has been also threatened by tourism that has a feature of commercialization of culture and tradition, cultural prostitution as Trask coined. For example, tourism cheapens Hawai'ian culture such as hula that is "an ancient home of dance with deep and complex religious meaning." This cultural prostitution doe not only encourage the stereotype of Hawai'ian culture, but also hurts and changes the identity of Hawai'ian people. Moreover, the tourism has lead to the increase number of homeless people and
In countries where I have been in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, capitalism came and people change their traditional value of nature, and instead, introduce the idea of capitalism and consumerism. For instance, there are quite many Bedouin, nomad people, in the touristic places in Jordan, who have the tourism business. Their current tourism business is really systematic and commercialization of their culture for rich people. It is easy to see Bedouin people try to get unfairly large amount of money from rich tourists compared to the life standard in Jordan. The one who should be criticized is not the Bedouin people, but the tourists who ignorantly behaved in the past. Besides of tourism, I have observed the ethnocentrism among western countries forcing/trying people to follow the western value such as gender equality, human rights, and democracy. There has been criticism toward the Islamic countries for gender inequality and sometimes dictatorship. However, the way of practicing gender equality is totally different in the Islamic world from the western (Christianity) world, and I believe that most of the critics do not fully understand the value and viewpoint in Islamic