and Nakayama 2004 : 6). These aspects together with the changing of immigration
patterns and demographics result in a culturally diverse society across the globe.
This leads to the discussion on culture.
Culture is related to both material and non-material aspects. The material aspect
concerns artifacts, heroes, and tangible products such as CDs, DVDs, andfilms.
The non-material aspect is the socially constructed and subjective characteristics of
culture. Brown ( 1995 :8–9) explains different elements of culture at three levels,
starting from the shallow, the middle, and the deepest level, which interact among
one another. Manifestation of culture are artifacts; language; behavior patterns in
the form of rites, rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations; norms of behavior; heroes;
symbols and symbolic action; beliefs, values, and attitudes; ethical codes; basic
assumptions; and history. The shallowest level of culture is artifacts (stories, myths,
jokes, metaphors, rites, rituals, and ceremonies), heroes, and symbols. The middle
level of culture is beliefs, values, and attitudes. The deepest one is basic assump-
tions that concern the environment, reality, human nature, human activity, and
human relationship. All of these levels are useful for cultural study within the
tourism realm.
Another framework of culture, useful for analyzing culture, cultural diversities,
cultural differences and similarities, is the one that Servaes ( 1999 : 12) defines. He
outlines four interrelated analytical components: a worldview (Weltanschauung), a
value system, a system of symbolic representations, and a social-cultural organi-
zational system. These four elements of culture are interrelated (Servaes 1999 : 12).
Thefirst two elements are the immaterial parts of culture that can be manifested by
the last two elements.
One other definition of culture which is useful for this study is the one defined by
Agyeman ( 2013 ):
predicated on differences and on otherness, and is a complex, dynamic, and embodied set of
realities in which people (re)create identities, meanings, and values. Overlaying this is the
reality of hybrid or multiple cultural and group affiliations. In this sense, no one person can
be reduced to one single orfixed cultural form of identity.
This leads to the concept of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is an
assumption that there is no superiority among cultures and we should not compare
cultures in terms of values or merits (Hall 1959 ). This assumption is not universally
accepted as many communities still stick to the idea that their ways of life are better
than others, which is called ethnocentrism (Mohammed 2011 : 5). It is the tendency
to judge“the other”in terms of our own experiences and expectations (Mohammed
2011 : 5). Stereotyping is a way that one makes up a mental picture of groups and
their supposed characteristics and one evaluates individuals from each group
according to that mental picture, which can be a distorted view (Gannon 2008 : 36).
Tourism and travel across borders, as influenced by the interconnectedness of
this contemporary globalization period, bring people from other cultures to expe-
rience physically the otherness of another culture in a real-time situation. Tourist
experience can be a valuable tool for cultural education, but at the same time it can
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