293 CHAPTER 16: THE FUTURE OF CULTURAL TOURISM: GROUNDS FOR PESSIMISM OR OPTIMISM? Richards, G. (2007) Cultural Tourism: Global and local perspectives. New York: Haworth Press, pp. 329-339. Greg Richards The different contributions to this volume not only reflect a wide range of different disciplinary viewpoints and geographic locations, but also contrasting views on the potential for cultural tourism to contribute to local development in the face of globalization. In the view of some, local authenticity is rapidly being replaced by global pastiche, and local communities seem powerless to stop this process. In the view of others, local communities still have the power to create new and authentic forms of culture, which can satisfy the visitor as well as strengthening local identity. This division seems to mirror wider debates about the rise of ‘cultural pessimism’ which Bennett (2001) argues is linked to environmental, moral, intellectual and political narratives of decline in the ‘postmodern’ world at the end of the 20 th century. Whether one adopts a pessimistic or optimistic view of cultural tourism depends to a large extent on one’s standpoint. There has tended to be a clear division, for example, between those involved in the cultural sector, who have largely been suspicious of the ‘disneyfication’ effects of tourism, and those linked to the tourism industry, who see the economic injections provided by tourists as saving, rather than degrading culture. However, there is growing evidence of a more sophisticated approach in both the cultural and tourism sectors, which recognizes the need to prioritize cultural goals while accepting the necessity to keep cultures alive through development as well as preservation. In his analysis of the relationship between culture and tourism, Eduard Delgado (2001:105) observed that “the new cultural tourism has to base itself, above all, on the offering experiences with three basic elements: diversity, interactivity and context”. The question of diversity in particular has cl early been at the forefront