Political Ecology of Tourism

Community, power and the environment

Mary Mostafanezhad, Roger Norum, Eric J. Shelton, Anna Thompson-Carr, Mary Mostafanezhad, Roger Norum, Eric J. Shelton, Anna Thompson-Carr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138859449
• eBook ISBN: 9781317509349
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Why has political ecology been assigned so little attention in tourism studies, despite its broad and critical interrogation of environment and politics? As the first full-length treatment of a political ecology of tourism, the collection addresses this lacuna and calls for the further establishment of this emerging interdisciplinary subfield.

Drawing on recent trends in geography, anthropology, and environmental and tourism studies, Political Ecology of Tourism: Communities, Power and the Environment employs a political ecology approach to the analysis of tourism through three interrelated themes: Communities and Power, Conservation and Control, and Development and Conflict. While geographically broad in scope—with chapters that span Central and South America to Africa, and South, Southeast, and East Asia to Europe and Greenland—the collection illustrates how tourism-related environmental challenges are shared across prodigious geographical distances, while also attending to the nuanced ways they materialize in local contexts and therefore demand the historically situated, place-based and multi-scalar approach of political ecology. This collection advances our understanding of the role of political, economic and environmental concerns in tourism practice. It offers readers a political ecology framework from which to address tourism-related issues and themes such as development, identity politics, environmental subjectivities, environmental degradation, land and resources conflict, and indigenous ecologies. Finally, the collection is bookended by a pair of essays from two of the most distinguished scholars working in the subfield: Rosaleen Duffy (foreword) and James Igoe (afterword).

This collection will be valuable reading for scholars and practitioners alike who share a critical interest in the intersection of tourism, politics and the environment

Part I

Communities and power

Introduction to Communities and power

Anna Thompson-Carr

Communities are messy places. Watts and Peet point to how the term ‘community’ ‘is often invoked as a unity, as an undifferentiated entity with intrinsic powers, which speaks with a single voice to the state, to transnational NGOs or the World Court. Communities, of course, are nothing of the sort’ (2014, p. 24). Communities are collective in nature; the social cohesion that results in a community relies not on the individual but a group of individuals who may share characteristics such as ethnicity, heritage, religious, spiritual, cultural beliefs and values as well as geographical spaces. Watts and Peet note how communities are regarded as:

a locus of knowledge, a site of regulation and management, a source of identity and a repository of ‘tradition’, . . . which necessarily turn on questions of representation, power, authority, governance and accountability, an object of state control, and a theatre resistance and struggle.

(2014, p. 24)

Thus, even members of environmental organisations that seek to protect ecological systems through acts of resistance or protesting (their values manifesting in ‘political ecology in action’) can consider themselves to be united as a community through their shared values (c.f. Lovelock, 2005).

In the past, communities have often been linked by their geographical proximity. Physically, tourism destinations consist of individual or networked communities that are the core of tourism spaces. Thus, today community members engage with tourism from geographically distant spaces, not only as providers of tourism experiences but also through their involvement in planning tourism or supplying tourism businesses. The people living and working within communities include the personalities that are the human face of tourism interactions – providers of positive tourism experiences. Critically, community members are also tourists themselves and travel domestically or internationally thus bringing back new forms of knowledge (e.g. ecological knowledge) that can be rejected or adapted and utilised in the sustainable management of, or involvement in, local tourism. Newcomers to communities, including tourists and migrants, non-resident business and property owners, politicians, government agencies and NGOs significantly influence how communities act. Community activists may be involved in environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs), yet live alongside other community members who are working for businesses or government agencies that could be perceived as being at the core of local environmental problems. Thus community members directly influence political processes as insiders. Community members may be politicians, business leaders or activists. Responsible tourism research requires an awareness of the diverse makeup of the communities in which researchers work. Communities have the right to participate in decision-making processes that influence how tourism activities or infrastructure are planned. Positive outcomes for sustainable tourism development can hinge on the ability of communities to protect, manage and, if necessary, reclaim their traditional resources as a step towards self-determination. Community conflicts may still arise if the need to provide for visitors results in environmental degradation from tourism, with or without community consent. The loss of community access to and control of natural resources can affect their ability to participate in the tourism sector as a means of sustainable development. Decades have passed since Garrett Hardin’s seminal paper, The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin called attention to the impacts of over-population and unceasing human demands for using natural resources (Hardin, 1968). Since then, pro-environmental endeavours within communities have dramatically increased. Sustainability development initiatives, such as those advocated in ecotourism or voluntourism, have sometimes been viewed as futile - James Lovelock observes such efforts as carbon off-setting may simply be a ‘rearrangement of Titanic deck chairs’ (Aitkenhead, 2008) – but communities can influence positive change. Communities in countries with weak (or non-existent) environmental legislation or immature natural area planning systems are at a disadvantage when it comes to the management or governance of their natural resources. Unfettered tourism development may not be as harmful as other industries that are more resource intensive. However, communities also face increasing battles when ‘growth at all costs’ is being pursued.

Within tourism studies there has been considerable interest in researching and understanding the impacts of tourism development and tourists’ activities on communities. However, this attention rarely draws explicitly from political ecology frameworks. For example, Takeda (2015) wrote about the Haida Gwaii First Nation people’s management of forestry and fishing industries on their islands, but tourism is barely mentioned as it is seen as a recent development option under negotiation by the community. Adams and Hutton (2007) provide a notable contribution in their book exploring communities alienated from their lands as a result of protected area designation. Stonich’s (1998) seminal article details one of the first studies of tourism development using a political ecology approach to research the impact on Honduran Ladino and Afro-Antillean communities’ members access to and use of freshwater, land and marine resources. Fifteen years after Stonich’s paper was published, Cole (2012) used a mixed-methods approach to explore the issues surrounding water inequality in the Canggu community in Bali, where local and outsider activities in the tourism, agriculture, mining and forestry sectors impacted on freshwater resources to the detriment of the local community’s future sustainable viability. For indigenous communities the processes of colonialism have often resulted in their being denied access to natural resources. However, post-colonial experiences have seen opportunities for improving livelihoods if lands and waterways are returned or reclaimed through collective action. According to the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues of the United Nations (2004, p. 2):

Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system.

Intergenerational empowerment of indigenous people through their ownership or management of the natural resources that are utilised for tourism purposes by or within their communities is an important goal of sustainable tourism development. Political management of resources has implications for how tourism evolves in a community. For example, in New Zealand the Department of Conservation granted local Kai Tahu Māori the sole concession for whale watching in Kaikoura resulting in an internationally recognised ecotourism venture controlled by local indigenous peoples (Thompson, 2013). In an indigenous tourism context, a political ecology approach can include topics such as ‘indigenous politicisation and empowerment, indigenous social movements and social movements for alternative and anti-globalisation tourism’ (Pereiro, 2013, pp. 214–215). Thus, indigenous community development at local levels is not immune from the influence of international politics and the United Nations implores that governments support the maintenance of traditional relationships with natural resources in the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Part Six, Article 25 (United Nations, 2007).

The theories of Foucault are significant when one considers community actions involving discourse and resistance, particularly with respect to Robbin’s five theses of political ecology (Robbins, 2004, p. 22). When considering the applicability of Foucault to political ecology studies, Robbins noted the relevance to communities when reflecting on Foucault’s notion of governmentality which is ‘the way governmental management and governance become normalised within communities and individuals themselves’ (Robbins, 2004, p. 75). Such normalisation can result in individuals and societies going about daily actions (without questioning) as subjects of the state. A paradox can arise here. If people are ‘normalised’ as governed beings then will they become politically active and free thinking with a genuine concern for their environmental and ecological wellbeing? Or are they perhaps engaging in ways that those in governance roles may have already anticipated and can thus pre-empt? Fortunately Foucault posits that power is not confined to those in government – power permeates human relationships throughout all of society therefore power can be wrested back from those in governance as an outcome of political action. This can occur when community groups, asserting their environmental concerns, engage in knowledgeable discourse (in particular discourses of local ecological knowledge or traditional ecological knowledge). It has distinct applicability for researchers within a political ecology of tourism context, for instance applying Foucault’s understandings of ‘power’ within tourism studies enables researchers to identify and explore individual and community discourses as a force for social change (whatever the outcome).

Hollinshead (1999) was one of the first tourism/cultural studies scholars to argue the benefits of a Foucauldian approach for enriching our understandings of tourism studies. Communities and individuals, both indigenous and non-indigenous, may present a diversity of discourses and acts of grass roots resistance. Such discourses or acts can challenge those in power (i.e. Robbins’s ‘corporate, state and international authorities’) and assert a community sense of belonging to place (of place identity). Power dynamics within tourism and communities may therefore be understood when local histories and knowledge are examined for insights into socio-political conditions through adopting the Foucauldian methodology of discourse analysis.

Readers may or may not agree with the use of Foucauldian approaches in contributing to our understandings of communities and power dynamics within a political ecology framework. While the researchers in this section make no mention of Foucault there is nevertheless evidence within their chapters that asserts the truth(s) that power relationships are inescapable when exploring the political ecology of communities. The chapter discourses presented suggest that socio-ecological changes occur for the betterment of society and the natural world, as individuals and communities seek to assert the right to have meaningful relationships with the environments within which they live.

Drawing on emerging themes in political ecology of tourism, the five chapters in this section examine communities’ experiences with tourism. Examples of both ‘First World’ and ‘Third World’ political ecology are represented. In Chapter 1, Stroma Cole explores the gritty implications of tourism developments diverting water resources from local communities in Costa Rica and Bali. Cole uses a gendered approach to analyse her interviews and identifies how tourism development can have different implications for men and women. The following two chapters in this section explore communities whose traditional lands are designated as protected areas and therefore are renegotiating their involvement in national park management systems or with government agencies as they seek to assert traditional land rights. Chapter 2 explores the outcome of community collaboration where a community member (Rigney) was a vital member of the research team throughout the project. The chapter examines the cultural significance of water to a community by recounting the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal community of South Australia’s struggle against a legacy of colonialism. In Chapter 3, Chaderopa reports on his in-depth study of the Makuleke Community (South Africa) and the complexities surrounding their co-management (with SANParks) of an area in Kruger National Park. The remaining two chapters explore urban communities. In Chapter 4 on Vrindavan (India), Luthy explores adaptive management and the ability of devotees on pilgrimage to unite because of their spiritual beliefs in order to conserve a sacred forested landscape. Finally, Chapter 5 on Denmark’s Roskilde Festival investigates the social phenomenon of festival eco-voluntourism, showing the implications of new (albeit, transient) communities being forged around shared ideals. The five chapters present a diversity of experiences within equally diverse communities but are united by an emphasis on the significance of active community participation and community-led decision making in planning and development processes.

References

Adams, W. and Hutton, J. (2007) People, parks and poverty: Political ecology and biodiversity conservation. Conservation and Society, 5 (2), pp. 147–183.

Aitkenhead, D. (2008) James Lovelock: ‘enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan’, The Guardian, 1 March 2008. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange [Accessed 10 June 2015].

Cole, S. (2012) A Political ecology of water equity and tourism: A case study from Bali. Annals of Tourism Research, 39 (2), pp. 1221–1241.

Hardin, G. (1968) The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, December 1968, pp. 1243–1248.

Hollinshead, K. (1999) Surveillance of the worlds of tourism: Foucault and the eye-of-power. Tourism Management, 20(1), pp. 7–23.

Lovelock, B. (2005) Tea-sippers or arsonists? Environmental NGOs and their responses to protected area tourism: a study of the royal forest and bird protection society of New Zealand. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 13 (6), pp. 529–545.

Pereiro, X. (2013) Understanding indigenous tourism. In: Smith, M. and Richards, G. (eds), Handbook of Cultural Tourism. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 214–219.

Robbins, P. (2004) Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. New York: Blackwell.

Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues of the United Nations (2004) The Concept of Indigenous Peoples. Paper presented at the Workshop on Data Collection and Disaggregation for Indigenous Peoples, New York, United Nations.

Stonich, S. (1998) Political ecology of tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 25 (4) 979–983.

Takeda, L. (2015) Islands’ Spirit Rising: Reclaiming the Forests of Haida Gwaii. University of Vancouver: British Columbia Press.

Thompson, A. (2013) Māori tourism: A case study of managing indigenous cultural values. In: Smith, M. and Richards, G. (eds), Handbook of Cultural Tourism. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 227–235.

United Nations (2007) Universal Declaration on the Rights of ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Political Ecology of Tourism
• Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART I Communities and Power
• PART II Conservation and Control
• PART III Development and Conflict
• Conclusion: Towards Future Intersections of Tourism Studies and Political Ecology
• Afterword
• Index