Department of Anthropology
Doctoral Research
Encountering Development, Rethinking Tourism: The Convergence of Development and Tourism
By Rochelle Spencer
Summary
My research is concerned with exploring the global convergence between community development and tourism with the empirical study conducted in the unique development context of Cuba. The research is interdisciplinary in nature drawing on anthropology, sociology, tourism studies, human geography and cultural studies and combines theoretical approaches from post-development, discourse analysis, post-structuralism and theories underpinning the anthropology of tourism.
My time working for an international NGO in Britain and my travel experiences instigated my academic interest in the relationship between 'development' and tourism. I started thinking about the links between 'development' and tourism while travelling through Africa for several months, often visiting many of the delegates that were working for the NGO I had worked with and witnessing many of the projects. Through these experiences I was compelled to pursue postgraduate research to investigate this phenomenon further. On various levels it provides an interesting and complex dialectic. These two domains have developed independently yet often existed side by side and overlapped. My preliminary research indicated an increasing convergence between the two. Many development agencies and human rights organisations (such as Oxfam Australia, Care International, Global Exchange) are getting involved in tourism by organising tours to visit the projects they fund abroad. In addition, large donor agencies such as DFID and ODI are conducting research into how tourism can be utilised as a developmental tool, proposing a set of community centred tourism strategies directed by poverty alleviation objectives.
This phenomenon raises many questions concerning the agendas of development bodies for becoming involved in tourism, the experiences afforded to travellers in a learning capacity, and the broader consequences for development in Third World countries. Interestingly, both development and tourism have been seen as a panacea for the people of the Third World and have been strongly criticised for negatively impacting on them in varied ways. Arguably, this increasing convergence can be seen as an attempt to move towards better and more efficient practices for addressing development issues. Conceivably, development bodies are anthropologically rethinking the tourism encounter by attempting to mediate a more 'culturally sustainable' and 'educational' form of tourism. As eyewitnesses to the many negative effects of commercial tourism, development agencies, trade unions, church groups and human rights organisations are engaging an alternative form of tourism that attempts to sensitise tourists to local conditions rather than cocoon them in an environmental bubble at the expense of local people. This increasing interest by development bodies in tourism is linked to the simultaneous emerging trend to incorporate an educational focus, or a learning objective, into travel. Highlighting that increasingly, travel can be motivated by a desire to learn about the key development issues facing the culture being visited. Arguably, educational travel provides opportunities for personal growth and has long term consequences for development. But do these tourists demonstrate a genuine interest in development issues or are they solely in pursuit of cultural capital? Hence, is the culture contact within this form of tourist encounter culturally sustainable, educational, and more significantly, does it have the potential for contributing to sustainable development and positive outcomes for development?
The fieldwork for this research was carried out between October 2001 - June 2002 and December 2002 - March 2003 in Cuba with the support of Global Exchange, a human rights organisation based in San Francisco and Oxfam Australia, a development NGO. My ongoing role with Oxfam is to co-ordinate small group delegations from Australia, Britain and America and my role with Global Exchange during that period was as a participating researcher. The focus of these study tours is to meet with government officials, non-government organisations, grassroots organisations and local people and to visit development projects learning about Cuban development issues pertaining to areas such as education, healthcare, sustainable agriculture, gender and the environment. Ethnographically, I investigated the tourism development nexus by studying the role of these study tours as they feed into the broader objectives of the development industry's move towards community oriented tourism strategies. In doing so, the experiences of people partaking in these study tours as a form of 'culturally sustainable' and 'educational' tourism was explored in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the impacts of tourists' experiences on their long-term attitudes and behaviour and hence what implicit consequences this might have for development.
Book Chapters
Forthcoming S. Mishra (Eds.) Tourism Business: Some Reflections on a Changing Paradigm. Sage Publishers.
2005 Broad, S. and Spencer, R. 'Shifting Paradigms: the convergence of tourism, conservation and development,' in S. Babu, B. J. Parida
Conferences and Colloquia
2000 Fieldwork Frustrations, Fixations and Flusters: Complexities of Entering the Field in the Dualistic Role of Ethnographer and Tourist. Postgraduate Conference, Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University.
2000 Deconstructing Travel Texts: Myths, Narratives and Negotiations in Tourism Discourse. Anthropology: Visions and Futures 2000 Conference Australian Anthropological Society, University Western Australia.
2000 Anthropological Dimensions of Tourism. Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University.
1999 "Giving Something Back"? An Analysis of Myth, Representation and Narrative in Tourism Discourse. Knowledges, Narratives, Negotiations Conference. English and Cultural Studies Department, Latrobe University.
1999 Representation and Positioning in Tourism Discourse: A Semiotic Analysis. Department of Leisure and Tourism, University of Newcastle.
1999 A Critical Analysis of the 'Alternative Responsible Tourism' and Development Nexus. Leisure and Tourism Studies, University of Newcastle.
Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.