TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE INDIGENOUS EMPOWERMENT IN 'GLOCAL' CONTEXTS

• 발행기관: 세계문화관광학회
• 저자명: Mark Ewen
• 간행물 정보: 『Conference Proceedings』8th International Joint World Cultural Tourism Conference 2007, 96~102쪽, 전체 7쪽
• 주제분류: 사회과학 > 관광학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2007.11.30

영문 초록

This paper argues that there is a growing realisation that western conceptualisations of indigenous cultures in literature on tourism and sustainable development are often flawed. The paper identifies key areas of deficiency and uses examples from field research in a developing country to support its argument. It argues for a view of indigenous culture which demonstrates recognition of local perceptions, contexts and histories. Above all however, it argues the need for recognition of culture as a evolving process with locally determined reference points. Such empowerment is viewed as increasingly necessary in the current interface between global and local (or 'glocal', after Friedman, 1999:236-239) environments where developing world tourism often takes place. In present times conceptualisations of development in United Nations defined LLDCs are largely framed by the concept of 'sustainable development'. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) Report, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development of 1992 in Rio and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), have all contributed to the popularisation of 'sustainable development' in development discourse. However the sometimes bitter debates that took place at the Rio Summit (Mowforth and Munt, 1998) and which were again in evidence at the 2002 summit (peta, 2002) illustrated the differences between conceptualisations of development between the so-called 'developed' and 'developing' nations. In September 2002 the President of the WSSD noted in his draft political declaration: "We (the representatives of the peoples of the world) assume a collective responsibility to advance and strengthen the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development -economic development, social development and environmental protection - at local, national, regional and global levels" (United Nations, 2002: 1). Yet this statement appeared to overlook a third pillar - that of cultural empowerment. The idea of culture as comprising a central component of sustainable development is not one that features prominently in the western development discourse. Yet it is culture that determines how the concept is interpreted by the global and local communities and in particular the various values attributed to it. The oversight noted above also exists in the discourse of international tourism agencies. This is perhaps best evidenced through a brief analysis of a form of tourism designated by international agencies as a preferred means of achieving sustainable development. Despite its relatively small scale (World Tourism Organisation, 2002) 'ecotourism' has appeared to be the tourism development tool of choice for international agencies in recent times. This has been despite concerns that other more mainstream forms of sustainable tourism or alternatives of sustainable tourism were not receiving attention (Marsh and Haynes, 2002) and that people in the west were being mislead by the emphasis of international agencies on this form of tourism (Rao, 2002). Despite this, and the obvious incongruities in the name (see McIntosh, Goeldner and Ritchie, 1995:370), 'ecotourism' has been readily adopted by occidental industry, academia, and by various governmental, industry, and non-governmental organisations as the principal vehicle for tourism as a tool for sustainable development. This was manifest in the number of development projects utilising ecotourism, the number of operators claiming to represent ecotourism, and the number of government tourism plans that embraced it.

목차

ABSTRACT

REFERENCES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS