Rio de Janeiro Case Study

3 Key excerpts on "Rio de Janeiro Case Study"

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  eBook - ePub

  Urban Nature

  Enriching Belonging, Wellbeing and Bioculture

  • Michelle L. Cocks, Charlie M. Shackleton, Michelle L. Cocks, Charlie M. Shackleton(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Today, Rio’s beaches are considered one of the most democratic spaces in the city, with the free access allowing for a variety of cultural groups of different social and economic standing to mingle. Beaches have been chosen as the point of entry for this study because of their centrality for the city and its inhabitants.

  Conceptual perspective and study information

  Rio de Janeiro’s rich biological and cultural diversity, which offers a laboratory for the study of biocultural diversity, is recognised by the Brazilian state and UNESCO. In 2012, the World Heritage Committee included Rio de Janeiro in the list of World Heritage Sites, recognising it as both a natural and cultural landscape, which was the very first time that the concept of ‘cultural landscapes’ had been applied to a big city.

  Inherent to the contemporary concepts of both ‘complexity’ and biocultural diversity is a recognition that associations between nature and culture need to be restored. Complexity theory requires thinking and practices that overcome the dichotomy that society has created between nature and culture. Within this perspective, the recognition, understanding and protection of biocultural diversity is seen as essential for the resilience of social-ecological systems and for the sustainability of life.

  Biocultural diversity linkages are now recognised as being present and reflected within cityscapes (Mendonça 2014), as the many chapters of this book illustrate. Such linkages and relationships have been brought into the cityscape through processes of migration. Traditional people migrating from rural areas to cities often bring their knowledge, perceptions and ways of interacting with nature into the city. Descendants of traditional people may rescue older traditions or recreate traditions from rural communities in cities. Additionally, as cities expand, they may incorporate more traditional rural areas, with the rural-urban divide thus becoming less pronounced and biocultural diversity being enriched. However, is it not only indigenous and traditional cultures that contribute to the network of linkages that make up biocultural diversity; it is all communities, including those associated with highly complex modernised societies (Cocks 2006, Elands et al. 2015, Mendonça 2014). These may be relevant factors for building a process of wellbeing and belonging, as well as for producing conflict.

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  Mapping Worlds

  International Perspectives on Social and Cultural Geographies

  • Rob Kitchin(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  These include public-sector Brazilian universities which offer graduate courses in geography, notably, those in Goiânia, Fortaleza, Uberlândia, as well as other universities in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The research production from these sources is significant, and published books by Almeida and Ratts, as well as Haesbaert and Monteiro, will be commented upon at a later stage of this present paper. The expansion of studies in cultural geography in Brazil led to a Regional Conference on the Historical Dimension of Culture being held in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in 2003. This was organized by the International Geographical Union (IGU) by means of the Working Group of Cultural Approach in Geography, presided over by Paul Claval, and which involved approximately 100 papers, of which sixty were by Brazilian scholars. Translation as a strategy One of the concerns of the organizers of the periodical Espaço e Cultura and of the series of books published under the title Geografia Cultural has been to contribute towards the establishment of a solid theoretical base for Brazilian cultural geography. This cultural turn which occurred in Brazil, albeit in a restricted sense, from the beginning of the 1990s, may run the risk of being appropriated in a superficial and ephemeral manner, and thus be transformed into a fashion, only to be quickly substituted by yet another. A type of superficial and ephemeral appropriation has already occurred within Brazilian geographical studies, first with the so-called ‘theoretical-quantitative geography’ in about 1970, then, for a second time, with ‘radical geography’, stemming from a Marxist matrix, around 1980. In the case of humanist geography, its diffusion and adoption was even more ephemeral and limited, and its few adherents were incorporated into cultural geography in the 1990s

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  Worldwide Destinations Casebook

  • Brian Boniface, MA, Chris Cooper, MA Boniface(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Rio is one of the world’ great cities but in the last 25 years has reached the stagnation stage of the destination area life cycle. To maintain its position as one of the leading resorts of the world, Rio has embarked upon an ambitious programme of revisioning and regeneration which integrates tourism with other economic and social sectors of the city. This is proving to be successful and is having a number of positive outcomes.

  Discussion Points

  1. Evaluate the importance of Rio de Janeiro as an international venue for major sports events.
  2. Debate the pros and cons of favela tours, from the viewpoint of the tour organisers, local people representing the visited communities, the city authorities and the tourists themselves. Assign roles to members of the class.
  3. Describe the social and environmental problems that threaten Rio’s prospects as a sustainable tourist destination. What is being done to address these problems?
  4. Investigate the features that make Rio’s Carnival one of the world’s great event attractions, and assess its economic and social impact on local communities.
  5. Discuss in class whether there are any common ‘lessons for success’ from this case and the Isle of Man case (case 16 ).

  KEY SOURCES

  Santana, G. (2001) Tourism in South America. Haworth, New York.

  This study is mainly adapted from Railson Costa do Souza, 1998.

  WEBSITES

  www/embratur.gov.br/ www/rioconventionbureau.com.br www/rio.rj.gov.br Passage contains an image

  A Lodge for Eco Tourists, Staying in the Amazonian Rainforest. Cuyabeno National Park, Ecuador.

  © istockphoto.com /Stockcam

  Case 37

  Ecotourism in the Ecuadorian Amazon

  Introduction

  The fate of the world’s largest rainforest and its native inhabitants is a matter of global concern. This case study focuses on ecotourism in Ecuador’s share of the Amazon Basin, as an alternative to less sustainable forms of development. On completion of this case you will:

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