Identity Tourism

Identity Tourism- This term is Nakamura 's title of her article Identity Tourism. She mentions the way netowrking companies use images of people of different ethnicities and cultures as tourism. She says that by promising to bring people together, they destroy other ethnicities. They showcase people who aren't white and put them up for view for the Western "tourists". These people aren't being brough together, but are rather being separated because of how different they are from the rest of society. On pp. 94-96 she gives the example of Sikander, an Indian man on an elephant whose image is used to advertise for a networking company. A caption on the image shows him saying he has a problem with his hardware. This doesn't bring him closer to the 'global community'; it destroys his identity and shows that he can only assimilate if he becomes how the company wants him to be. The main point Nakamura makes is that these companies put people of other ethnicites on display as if they were removed from the rest of the world and can only be brought in if thye become something else, more Westernized.