This chapter begins by considering the global political and economic context in which sex tourism... more This chapter begins by considering the global political and economic context in which sex tourism has developed, and then explores its connections to inequalities structured along lines of gender, race, age and class. It is concluded that tourist development in less economically developed countries brings together tourists and locals in a profoundly unequal way, and 'ordinary' tourists as well as hard-core sex tourists can take sexual advantage of the inequalities and asymmetries of power that underpin and are reproduced by tourism.
This chapter critically analyses the potential of a Fair Trade Tourism label to address issues of... more This chapter critically analyses the potential of a Fair Trade Tourism label to address issues of inequality and injustice in international tourism in less economically developed countries (LEDCs). It starts by presenting the backdrop of unfair, unequal, neocolonial exchange that has given rise to the present capitalist tourism economy, and exploring issues of corporate power and the problems of unfair international trade agreements. It then explores tourism certification in general before examining Fair Trade certification in particular. The International Network on Fair Trade in Tourism, set up in 1999 by the UK non-governmental organization Tourism Concern, is used as a case study to highlight the outcomes of an international multi-stakeholder consultation process on Fair Trade in Tourism conducted between 1999 and 2002. The purpose of the case study is to illustrate the complexities of developing an international consensus on the key criteria for such a concept; and to emphasize the need for shifting the decision-making process on trade justice from a Eurocentric to a polycentric approach, originating from within the communities that it aims to benefit.
Poorly regulated tourism and weak water governance are undermining access to water and sanitation... more Poorly regulated tourism and weak water governance are undermining access to water and sanitation for many peope in the global South. This inequity is leading to social conflict, while hampering the tourism sector’s contribution to wider sustainable development. Our latest report explores these issues through five case studies from Bali, The Gambia, Zanzibar, and Goa and Kerala in Southern India. It offers 9 Principles of Water Equity in Tourism, plus recommendations for governments, the tourism industry and civil society
Why has political ecology been assigned so little attention in tourism studies, despite its broad... more 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 treatment 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: Communities and Power, Conservation and Control, and Development and Conflict. While geographically 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 environmental 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, environmental subjectivities, environmental degradation, land and resources conflict, and indigenous ecologies. 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 environmen
This chapter explains why gender equality and women's empower... more This chapter explains why gender equality and women's empowerment are a concern in tourism. It introduces the reader to the development and empowerment literature, before moving on to review studies of tourism and empowerment. Finally, some considerations that would seem critical in understanding the gender dynamics in tourism are highlighted.
This paper explores the interconnections between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and tou... more This paper explores the interconnections between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and tourism from a gender perspective. It is the first paper to take a critical analysis of how SDG 5 relates to tourism, and how tourism and gender equality interconnects with the other SDGs. First, we analyze the recent gender sensitive sustainable development agenda in order to set out the challenges-both past and present-that any sector involved in sustainable development faces. We then explore the links between the SDGs and tourism development from a gender perspective. In the third part of the paper, based on the field experiences of the authors, we use the examples of SDG 6 ('clean water and sanitation') and SDG 8 ('sustainable economic growth and decent work') to highlight the interconnections between gender equality and the other SDGs. Finally, we suggest some tools to help tourism businesses improve their performance with respect to gender equality thereby enhancing their capacity to contribute towards the achievement of the SDGs. We argue that, without tackling gender equality in a meaningful and substantive way, tourism's potential to contribute to the SDGs will be reduced and sustainable tourism will remain an elusive 'pot of gold'.
This article explores the intersect between the human right to water, the United Nations Guiding ... more This article explores the intersect between the human right to water, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and the reality of hotels water use. Our qualitative study was based on semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and focus groups with hoteliers, government agencies and community stakeholders in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It examines the challenges faced by hoteliers to respect the human right to water and why hotels do not voluntarily adopt the Guiding Principles. The impeding factors identified include a lack of awareness, a lack of substantive voluntary schemes, the water tariff, the absence of data management; return on investment, profit and public image prioritized over environmental considerations; and inadequate regulations and their enforcement. Our study also indicates the potential of combining a human right to water impact assessment within the existing EIA to reform hotels water management and improve their water stewardship. In doing so, hotel water management would move beyond the domain of the hotel to consider their impact on the local community. This, the first study to take a human rightsbased approach to the study of hotel's water use, also identifies the further research required on this topic: legal enforcement and community participation.
From: The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the World Tourism Forum for Peace and Su... more From: The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the World Tourism Forum for Peace and Sustainable Development 2006. This meeting is the 3rd Annual Summit of the World Tourism Forum and will gather some 5000 professionals, scholars and students to discuss the main themes associated with sustainable tourism, such as biodiversity preservation, socioeconomic development, valuing cultural diversity and creating the conditions for world peace
... This is actually the essence of the emerging enquiry perspective of hopeful tourism scholarsh... more ... This is actually the essence of the emerging enquiry perspective of hopeful tourism scholarship (Ateljevic et al., 2007), which advocates an approach guided by moral agency, truth and responsibility. Hopeful tourism scholarship ...
Extensive fieldwork is seen as the hallmark of anthropology and usually involves undertaking parti... more Extensive fieldwork is seen as the hallmark of anthropology and usually involves undertaking participant observation for a year or more. However, in the field of tourism many anthropological studies often represent a snapshot (Wilson 1993) and are justly criticised for missing the diachronic nature of change brought about by tourism (Nash 1996). The study reported in this chapter was carried out over a ten-year period, 1989-1999, during which my position as researcher evolved and changed. The research was carried out in three distinct phases: a phase when I was a practitioner-cum-researcher, a phase of participant rural appraisal and a phase of long ethnographic fieldwork. The first two phases are very important to set the context and for understanding the researcherresearchee relationships of the third phase, which is the main focus of the chapter. This chapter discusses how the research process evolved as the relationships and understanding of the research setting changed over time. It examines the nature of relationships between researcher and respondent and how this affects the data-gathering process and impacts upon the ways in which research methods were applied, the quality of the data collected and the eventual uses the data can be put to
Water security requires not only sufficient availability of and access to safe and acceptable qua... more Water security requires not only sufficient availability of and access to safe and acceptable quality for domestic uses, but also fair distribution within and across populations. However, a key research gap remains in understanding water security inequality and its dynamics, which in turn creates an impediment to tracking progress towards sustainable development. Therefore, we analyse the inequality of water security using data from 7603 households across 28 sites in 22 low- and middle-income countries, measured using the Household Water Insecurity Experiences Scale. Here we show an inverted-U shaped relationship between site water security and inequality of household water security. This Kuznets-like curve suggests a process that as water security grows, the inequality of water security first increases then decreases. This research extends the Kuznets curve applications and introduces the Development Kuznets Curve concept. Its practical implications support building water security ...
This chapter begins by considering the global political and economic context in which sex tourism... more This chapter begins by considering the global political and economic context in which sex tourism has developed, and then explores its connections to inequalities structured along lines of gender, race, age and class. It is concluded that tourist development in less economically developed countries brings together tourists and locals in a profoundly unequal way, and 'ordinary' tourists as well as hard-core sex tourists can take sexual advantage of the inequalities and asymmetries of power that underpin and are reproduced by tourism.
This chapter critically analyses the potential of a Fair Trade Tourism label to address issues of... more This chapter critically analyses the potential of a Fair Trade Tourism label to address issues of inequality and injustice in international tourism in less economically developed countries (LEDCs). It starts by presenting the backdrop of unfair, unequal, neocolonial exchange that has given rise to the present capitalist tourism economy, and exploring issues of corporate power and the problems of unfair international trade agreements. It then explores tourism certification in general before examining Fair Trade certification in particular. The International Network on Fair Trade in Tourism, set up in 1999 by the UK non-governmental organization Tourism Concern, is used as a case study to highlight the outcomes of an international multi-stakeholder consultation process on Fair Trade in Tourism conducted between 1999 and 2002. The purpose of the case study is to illustrate the complexities of developing an international consensus on the key criteria for such a concept; and to emphasize the need for shifting the decision-making process on trade justice from a Eurocentric to a polycentric approach, originating from within the communities that it aims to benefit.
Poorly regulated tourism and weak water governance are undermining access to water and sanitation... more Poorly regulated tourism and weak water governance are undermining access to water and sanitation for many peope in the global South. This inequity is leading to social conflict, while hampering the tourism sector’s contribution to wider sustainable development. Our latest report explores these issues through five case studies from Bali, The Gambia, Zanzibar, and Goa and Kerala in Southern India. It offers 9 Principles of Water Equity in Tourism, plus recommendations for governments, the tourism industry and civil society
Why has political ecology been assigned so little attention in tourism studies, despite its broad... more 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 treatment 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: Communities and Power, Conservation and Control, and Development and Conflict. While geographically 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 environmental 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, environmental subjectivities, environmental degradation, land and resources conflict, and indigenous ecologies. 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 environmen
This chapter explains why gender equality and women's empower... more This chapter explains why gender equality and women's empowerment are a concern in tourism. It introduces the reader to the development and empowerment literature, before moving on to review studies of tourism and empowerment. Finally, some considerations that would seem critical in understanding the gender dynamics in tourism are highlighted.
This paper explores the interconnections between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and tou... more This paper explores the interconnections between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and tourism from a gender perspective. It is the first paper to take a critical analysis of how SDG 5 relates to tourism, and how tourism and gender equality interconnects with the other SDGs. First, we analyze the recent gender sensitive sustainable development agenda in order to set out the challenges-both past and present-that any sector involved in sustainable development faces. We then explore the links between the SDGs and tourism development from a gender perspective. In the third part of the paper, based on the field experiences of the authors, we use the examples of SDG 6 ('clean water and sanitation') and SDG 8 ('sustainable economic growth and decent work') to highlight the interconnections between gender equality and the other SDGs. Finally, we suggest some tools to help tourism businesses improve their performance with respect to gender equality thereby enhancing their capacity to contribute towards the achievement of the SDGs. We argue that, without tackling gender equality in a meaningful and substantive way, tourism's potential to contribute to the SDGs will be reduced and sustainable tourism will remain an elusive 'pot of gold'.
This article explores the intersect between the human right to water, the United Nations Guiding ... more This article explores the intersect between the human right to water, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and the reality of hotels water use. Our qualitative study was based on semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and focus groups with hoteliers, government agencies and community stakeholders in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It examines the challenges faced by hoteliers to respect the human right to water and why hotels do not voluntarily adopt the Guiding Principles. The impeding factors identified include a lack of awareness, a lack of substantive voluntary schemes, the water tariff, the absence of data management; return on investment, profit and public image prioritized over environmental considerations; and inadequate regulations and their enforcement. Our study also indicates the potential of combining a human right to water impact assessment within the existing EIA to reform hotels water management and improve their water stewardship. In doing so, hotel water management would move beyond the domain of the hotel to consider their impact on the local community. This, the first study to take a human rightsbased approach to the study of hotel's water use, also identifies the further research required on this topic: legal enforcement and community participation.
From: The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the World Tourism Forum for Peace and Su... more From: The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the World Tourism Forum for Peace and Sustainable Development 2006. This meeting is the 3rd Annual Summit of the World Tourism Forum and will gather some 5000 professionals, scholars and students to discuss the main themes associated with sustainable tourism, such as biodiversity preservation, socioeconomic development, valuing cultural diversity and creating the conditions for world peace
... This is actually the essence of the emerging enquiry perspective of hopeful tourism scholarsh... more ... This is actually the essence of the emerging enquiry perspective of hopeful tourism scholarship (Ateljevic et al., 2007), which advocates an approach guided by moral agency, truth and responsibility. Hopeful tourism scholarship ...
Extensive fieldwork is seen as the hallmark of anthropology and usually involves undertaking parti... more Extensive fieldwork is seen as the hallmark of anthropology and usually involves undertaking participant observation for a year or more. However, in the field of tourism many anthropological studies often represent a snapshot (Wilson 1993) and are justly criticised for missing the diachronic nature of change brought about by tourism (Nash 1996). The study reported in this chapter was carried out over a ten-year period, 1989-1999, during which my position as researcher evolved and changed. The research was carried out in three distinct phases: a phase when I was a practitioner-cum-researcher, a phase of participant rural appraisal and a phase of long ethnographic fieldwork. The first two phases are very important to set the context and for understanding the researcherresearchee relationships of the third phase, which is the main focus of the chapter. This chapter discusses how the research process evolved as the relationships and understanding of the research setting changed over time. It examines the nature of relationships between researcher and respondent and how this affects the data-gathering process and impacts upon the ways in which research methods were applied, the quality of the data collected and the eventual uses the data can be put to
Water security requires not only sufficient availability of and access to safe and acceptable qua... more Water security requires not only sufficient availability of and access to safe and acceptable quality for domestic uses, but also fair distribution within and across populations. However, a key research gap remains in understanding water security inequality and its dynamics, which in turn creates an impediment to tracking progress towards sustainable development. Therefore, we analyse the inequality of water security using data from 7603 households across 28 sites in 22 low- and middle-income countries, measured using the Household Water Insecurity Experiences Scale. Here we show an inverted-U shaped relationship between site water security and inequality of household water security. This Kuznets-like curve suggests a process that as water security grows, the inequality of water security first increases then decreases. This research extends the Kuznets curve applications and introduces the Development Kuznets Curve concept. Its practical implications support building water security ...
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Papers by Stroma Cole