Study title

This research is concerned with how the Embera - an indigenous Amerindian group, who have historically inhabited relatively inaccessible rainforest environments - reach out to the world, and in what respects their unprecedented rate of contact with outsiders contributes to their emerging global awareness. More specifically the research investigates changes in the cultural representation and social organisation of an Embera community in Panama (Parara Puru) whose inhabitants make their indigenous culture available to visiting audiences of tourists. Through long term anthropological fieldwork, qualitative data will be collected to explain: the effects of indigenous tourism on the Embera identity-making processes, politics of representation and emerging global awareness the consequences of the increased visibility of Embera culture that has resulted from the involvement of the Embera in tourism and the flow of information in the global media; the relationship of the new economic strategies of the Embera with older and more established ones the desire of the Embera to explore and systematically collect knowledge about their own history and culture, and the consequences of this phenomenon for the re-evaluation and re-articulation of Embera identity in the contemporary world.