Political Ecology of Tourism: Community, Power and the Environment

347 Pages·2016·2.71 MB·English

by  Mary Mostafanezhad

Political Ecology of Tourism
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 treat-
ment 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: com-
munities and power, conservation and control, and development and conflict. While geographi-
cally 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 environ-
mental 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, environmen-
tal subjectivities, environmental degradation, land and resources conflict, and indigenous ecolo-
gies. 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
Mary Mostafanezhad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the
University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
Roger Norum is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds School of
English and a researcher on the HERA-funded project Arctic Encounters: Contemporary
Travel/Writing in the European High North and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative
Training Network in Environmental Humanities. Trained in social anthropology, his
research focuses on sociality, temporality, travel and the environment.
Eric J. Shelton works with environmental NGOs in New Zealand and strives to situate
nature-based tourism within environmental philosophy.
Anna Thompson-Carr is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Tourism at the University
of Otago, NZ. She has conducted research and published in high-quality tourism journals
on visitors’ experiences of cultural values for landscapes in New Zealand with a focus on
integrating cultural values within interpretation.
Contemporary geographies of leisure, tourism and mobility
Series Editor: C. Michael Hall
Professor at the Department of Management, College of Business and
Economics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
For a complete list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
The aim of this series is to explore and communicate the intersections and rela-
tionships between leisure, tourism and human mobility within the social sciences.
It will incorporate both traditional and new perspectives on leisure and tour-
ism from contemporary geography, e.g. notions of identity, representation and
culture, while also providing for perspectives from cognate areas such as anthro-
pology, cultural studies, gastronomy and food studies, marketing, policy studies
and political economy, regional and urban planning, and sociology, within the
development of an integrated field of leisure and tourism studies.
Also, increasingly, tourism and leisure are regarded as steps in a continuum of
human mobility. Inclusion of mobility in the series offers the prospect to examine
the relationship between tourism and migration, the sojourner, educational travel,
and second home and retirement travel phenomena.
The series comprises two strands:
Contemporary geographies of leisure, tourism and mobility aims to address
the needs of students and academics, and the titles will be published in hardback
and paperback. Titles include:
1 The Moralisation of Tourism 5 The Media and the Tourist
Sun, sand . . . and saving the world? Imagination
Jim Butcher Converging cultures
Edited by David Crouch, Rhona
2 The Ethics of Tourism Jackson and Felix Thompson
Development
Mick Smith and Rosaleen Duffy 6 Tourism and Global
Environmental Change
3 Tourism in the Caribbean Ecological, social, economic and
Trends, development, prospects political interrelationships
Edited by David Timothy Duval Edited by Stefan Gössling and
C. Michael Hall
4 Qualitative Research in Tourism
Ontologies, epistemologies and 7 Cultural Heritage of Tourism in
methodologies the Developing World
Edited by Jenny Phillimore and Edited by Dallen J. Timothy and
Lisa Goodson Gyan Nyaupane
8 Understanding and Managing 10 Tourism and Climate Change
Tourism Impacts Impacts, adaptation and
An integrated approach mitigation
C. Michael Hall and Alan Lew C. Michael Hall, Stefan Gössling
and Daniel Scott
9 An Introduction to Visual
Research Methods in Tourism 11 Tourism and Citizenship
Edited by Tijana Rakic and Donna Raoul V. Bianchi and
Chambers Marcus L. Stephenson
Routledge studies in contemporary geographies of leisure, tourism and
mobility is a forum for innovative new research intended for research students
and academics, and the titles will be available in hardback only. Titles include:
40 Scuba Diving Tourism 46 Trust, Tourism Development
Edited by Kay Dimmcock and and Planning
Ghazali Musa Edited by Robin Nunkoo and
Stephen L.J. Smith
41 Contested Spatialities Lifestyle
Migration and Residential 47 A Hospitable World?
Tourism Organising work and workers in
Michael Janoschka and Heiko Haas hotels and tourist resorts
Edited by David Jordhus-Lier
42 Contemporary Issues in Cultural
and Anders Underthun
Heritage Tourism
Edited by Jamie Kaminski, Angela
48 Tourism in Pacific Islands
M. Benson and David Arnold
Current issues and future
challenges
43 Understanding and Governing
Edited by Stephen Pratt and
Sustainable Tourism Mobility
David Harrison
Edited by Scott Cohen, James
Higham, Paul Peeters and Stefan
49 Social Memory and Heritage
Gossling
Tourism Methodologies
44 Green Growth and Travelism Edited by Stephen P. Hanna,
Concept, policy and practice for Amy E. Potter, E. Arnold Modlin,
sustainable tourism Perry Carter, and David L. Butler
Edited by Terry DeLacy, Min
Jiang, Geoffrey Lipman and 50 Affective Tourism
Shaun Vorster Dark routes in conflict
Dorina Maria Buda
45 Tourism, Religion and
Pilgrimage in Jerusalem 51 Scientific Tourism
Kobi Cohen-Hattab and Noam Edited by Susan L. Slocum,
Shoval Carol Kline and Andrew Holden
52 Volunteer Tourism and 56 Tourism and Development in
Development Sub-Saharan Africa
The lifestyle politics of Current issues and local realities
international development Marina Novelli
Jim Butcher and Peter Smith
57 Tourism and the Anthropocene
53 Imagining the West through Edited by Martin Gren and
Film and Tourism Edward H. Huijbens
Warwick Frost and Jennifer Laing
58 The Politics and Power of
Tourism in Palestine
54 The Practice of Sustainable
Edited by Rami K. Isaac,
Tourism
C. Michael Hall and Freya
Resolving the paradox
Higgins-Desbiolles
Edited by Michael Hughes, David
Weaver and Christof Pforr 59 Political Ecology of Tourism
Community, power and the
55 Mountaineering Tourism environment
Edited by Ghazali Musa, Edited by Mary Mostafanezhad,
James Higham and Eric Jacob Shelton, Roger Norum
Anna Thompson and Anna Thompson-Carr
Forthcoming:
International Tourism and Research Volunteer Tourism
Cooperation and the Gulf Angela M Benson
Cooperation Council States
Developments, challenges and Managing and Interpreting D-day’s
opportunities Sites of Memory
Edited by Marcus Stephenson War graves, museums and tour
and Ala Al-Hamarneh guides
Edited by Geoffrey Bird, Sean Claxton
Protest and Resistance in the and Keir Reeves
Tourist City
Edited by Johannes Novy Co-Creation in Tourist Experiences
and Claire Colomb Nina Prebensen, Joseph Chen and
Muzaffer Uysal
Women and Sex Tourism
Landscapes Authentic and Inauthentic Places
Erin Sanders-McDonagh Jane Lovell and Chris Bull
Political Ecology of Tourism
Community, power and the environment
Edited by
Mary Mostafanezhad,
Roger Norum, Eric J. Shelton and
Anna Thompson-Carr
First published 2016
by Routledge
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© 2016 selection and editorial matter, Mary Mostafanezhad, Roger Norum, Eric
J. Shelton and Anna Thompson-Carr; individual chapters: the contributors.
The right of Mary Mostafanezhad, Roger Norum, Eric J. Shelton and Anna
Thompson-Carr to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of
the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
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ISBN: 978-1-138-85944-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-71722-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
List of figures x
List of contributors xi
Foreword xvi
ROSALEEN DUFFY
Introduction 1
MARY MOSTAFANEZHAD, ROGER NORUM, ERIC J. SHELTON
AND ANNA THOMPSON-CARR
PART I
Communities and power 23
Introduction to Communities and power 25
ANNA THOMPSON-CARR
1 A gendered political ecology of tourism and water 31
STROMA COLE
2 Ngarrindjeri authority: a sovereignty approach to tourism 50
RON NICHOLLS, FREYA HIGGINS-DESBIOLLES
AND GRANT RIGNEY
3 Co-management of natural resources in protected
areas in ‘postcolonial’ Africa 70
CHENGETO CHADEROPA
4 ‘Few people know that Krishna was the first environmentalist’:
religiously motivated conservation as a response to
pilgrimage pressures in Vrindavan, India 92
TAMARA LUTHY
5 Festive environmentalism: a carnivalesque reading of
eco-voluntourism at the Roskilde Festival 108
METTE FOG OLWIG AND LENE BULL CHRISTIANSEN
viii Contents
PART II
Conservation and control 129
Introduction to Conservation and control 131
ERIC J. SHELTON
6 Unsettling the moral economy of tourism on Chile’s
Easter Island 134
FORREST WADE YOUNG
7 Rethinking ecotourism in environmental discourse in
Shangri-La: an antiessentialist political ecology perspective 151
JUNDAN (JASMINE) ZHANG
8 (Re)creating forest natures: assemblage and political
ecologies of ecotourism in Japan’s central highlands 169
ERIC J. CUNNINGHAM
9 Ecotourism or eco-utilitarianism: exploring the new
debates in ecotourism 188
STEPHEN WEARING AND MICHAEL WEARING
PART III
Development and conflict 207
Introduction to Development and conflict 209
MARY MOSTAFANEZHAD
10 Political ecologies and economies of tourism
development in Kaokoland, north-west Namibia 213
JARKKO SAARINEN
11 Cleaning up the streets, Sandinista-style: the aesthetics of
garbage and the urban political ecology of tourism
development in Nicaragua 231
JOSH FISHER
12 The political ecology of tourism development on
Mount Kilimanjaro 251
MEGAN HOLROYD
13 ‘Absolutely not smelly’: the political ecology of disengaged
slum tours in Mumbai, India 270
KEVIN HANNAM AND ANYA DIEKMANN
Contents ix
14 Composing Greenlandic tourism futures: an integrated
political ecology and actor-network theory approach 284
CARINA REN, LILL RASTAD BJØRST AND
DIANNE DREDGE
Conclusion: Towards future intersections of tourism studies
and political ecology 302
ROGER NORUM, MARY MOSTAFANEZHAD, ERIC J. SHELTON
AND ANNA THOMPSON-CARR
Afterword 309
JAMES IGOE
Index 317