Concept of Cultural tourism

 

Culture can be described as software of society a ‘design of living’, and as a code of conduct. Culture is model of behavior, which is a constant process of transformation (Luger, 2000). Culture is steered by communication, find its expression in symbols, convictions, values, judgments of taste, norms etc., which help to conserve and perpetuate the society and at the same time acts an agency of change. Culture is not a fixed, static element of a society. It rather implants new ideas and fields of interests into a society; it communicates outside perspective and thereby initiates the processes of permanent cultural change (Schmidt, 1992; in Luger, ibid). Individual aspects of a culture are used, modified and cast aside, depending how they contribute to the successful organization of reality. Cultural manifestations such as  
customs, creeds, pattern of consumption, lifestyles – ‘maps of meaning’ (Clarke et al., 1979; Luger, ibid.) that make things comprehensible for the members of culture-change under the influence of another set of manifestations such as the media and tourism which is also called as exogenous force. But, in cultural tourism, the tourists are not considered as change agents. Rather this form of tourism plays an important role for cultural preservation and cultural revitalization. In this kind of tourism both the material and non-material culture attracts the tourists and the tourists do not destroy the tourism.