“We Are a Community, Not a Commodity”: The Politics of Representation in Tourism in CHT, Bangladesh

In the neoliberal movement facilitated by the corporate mechanism of commodification, the culture and identity of indigenous communities are reconstructed, represented, and commodified as exchangeable objects within the growing tourism economy of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. This paper unearths how multiple narratives and voices from diverse actors involved in tourism collectively construct a “Bengali tourist gaze,” portraying indigenous “other” as a “touristic race,” and how indigenous people resist this hegemonic discourse through their self-representation. Through the lens of critical tourism theories, it problematizes how the politics of representation reshape Indigenous everyday life into spectacles of “otherness.” Based on nine months of ethnographic and netnographic research, the findings illustrate the representational politics at play, highlighting the binary tensions between empowerment and exploitation inherent in tourism practices. The paper challenges conventional views on tourism, incorporating Indigenous voices into planning and policy, aiming to advance a shared model for cultural justice.