TY - JOUR
T1 - Friction in the forest
T2 - a confluence of structural and discursive political ecologies of tourism in the Ecuadorian Amazon
AU - Marcinek, Annie A.
AU - Hunt, Carter A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a M.G. Whiting Indigenous Knowledge Research Grant from the Pennsylvania State University Interinstitutional Center for Indigenous Knowledge.
Funding Information:
Another such frictious example occurs in the park’s facilities. In 2009, a $50,000 grant from the US Embassy provided funding for refurbishments, new educational equipment, chairs, desks, cabinets, and projectors for library and laboratory buildings. The grant came with the arbitrary condition that US Civil Rights history be worked into the curriculum for Ecuadorian schoolchildren who visit the park. Evidence of the grant manifests in the form of plaques inscribed with the US Embassy logo that embellish all signs in the municipal park and in a photo exhibit of US Civil Rights leaders on display in the library. The project has been at the mercy of whichever institutional entity is willing to invest at a given time and a shifting set of stipulations attached to such investments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2019/4/3
Y1 - 2019/4/3
N2 - Tourism in the Anthropocene is a powerful driver of global connections that has direct consequences for social and environmental well-being across the planet. This political ecological analysis of tourism in the Ecuadorian Amazonian presents ethnographic vignettes to account for the ways that interwoven global discourses related to biodiversity conservation and community development are encountered, contested, and leveraged to advance particular approaches to tourism at the local level. We invoke Tsing’s theory of friction to frame these discursive encounters in the context of tourism-related decision-making in the community of Misahuallí, including instances of discursive shifts being leveraged into improved well-being of local residents. This paper makes an important contribution to the scholarship on the political ecology of tourism by bringing the emic perspectives of local residents to the forefront and by demonstrating the value of Tsing’s friction metaphor for analyzing the global connections inherent in tourism. Frictions between inequities and imbalances of power, perpetuated by both the structures and discourses associated with the use of tourism to address conservation and development objectives, remain at the vanguard of tourism research as we move through the Anthropocene.
AB - Tourism in the Anthropocene is a powerful driver of global connections that has direct consequences for social and environmental well-being across the planet. This political ecological analysis of tourism in the Ecuadorian Amazonian presents ethnographic vignettes to account for the ways that interwoven global discourses related to biodiversity conservation and community development are encountered, contested, and leveraged to advance particular approaches to tourism at the local level. We invoke Tsing’s theory of friction to frame these discursive encounters in the context of tourism-related decision-making in the community of Misahuallí, including instances of discursive shifts being leveraged into improved well-being of local residents. This paper makes an important contribution to the scholarship on the political ecology of tourism by bringing the emic perspectives of local residents to the forefront and by demonstrating the value of Tsing’s friction metaphor for analyzing the global connections inherent in tourism. Frictions between inequities and imbalances of power, perpetuated by both the structures and discourses associated with the use of tourism to address conservation and development objectives, remain at the vanguard of tourism research as we move through the Anthropocene.
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U2 - 10.1080/09669582.2018.1560450
DO - 10.1080/09669582.2018.1560450
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85060611295
VL - 27
SP - 536
EP - 553
JO - Journal of Sustainable Tourism
JF - Journal of Sustainable Tourism
SN - 0966-9582
IS - 4
ER -