COMMODITIZATION VERSUS CULTURAL INTEGRATION - TOURISM AND IMAGE BUILDING IN THE KLONDIKE

''Cultural commoditization'' may be seen as an insidious aspect of cap italist development in international tourist markets. As Greenwood (19 77,1989) argues, the appropriation of a culture's rituals and symbols for external consumption may unwittingly deprive local people of the m eanings by which they organize and interpret their lives. This paper s eeks additional ethnographic grounding for such arguments. Is an assoc iation between commoditization and destruction of social-cultural inte grity identifiable in northern communities? Can the commoditization pr ocess reinforce, rather than undermine, local cultural themes and valu es? May deleterious and beneficial effects play out differently across different classes and sectors of a community experiencing transformat ion by tourism? These questions form a framework for interpreting inte rethnic exchange and the developing tourist economy in Dawson City, an Athapaskan Indian/EuroCanadian community and historical gold mining c enter in the Klondike region, Yukon Territory.