Among the piranhas: the troubling lifespan of ethnic tropes in “tribal” tourism to Vietnam

ABSTRACT

This article presents findings from mixed-method research into ethnic tourism in Vietnam. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and ethnographic research carried out in Sapa, northern Vietnam, the article examines how minority Indigenous groups are represented in ways that reproduce certain racial and gendered tropes that are drawn upon by tourists before, during and after actual tours. Findings from the study suggest that ethnic tourism is having a marginalising effect on minority ethnic women, who are becoming excluded from social, symbolic and economic space for behaviour that is deemed inauthentic. Tourists are drawing on a narrow range of Orientalist tropes throughout different stages of their participation in ethnic tourism and are carrying forward their pre-conceptions into tourism environments. Therefore, the ways in which indigeneity is packaged for tourists and the ways that tourists “authenticate” ethnicity inform their desires, which then shape their behaviour and interactions with locals. By bringing together ideas about authentication and gendered Orientalism and Othering, the analysis shows that the power play and its effects on Indigenous groups are considerable and troubling, with the whims and desires of tourists steering tourism organisation, including the surveillance and controlling of Indigenous women traders in and around the town.

KEYWORDS:

• Tribal tourism
• Ethnic tourism
• Indigeneity
• Ethnic tropes
• Vietnam
• Gendered Orientalism

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Institute for Asian and Pacific Studies (IAPS), University of Nottingham, which funded this fieldwork.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The author acknowledges that Vietnam attracts approximately half of its 10 million visitors from other Asian countries, with China being the largest single sending country. However, the research is concerned with the especial commodification of difference in tourism aimed at Western consumers and is limited in practical capacity to explore the potentially very interesting and revealing market for ‘non-Western’ ethnic tourism.

Additional information

Funding

Institute for Asian and Pacific Studies (IAPS), University of Nottingham.

Notes on contributors

Esther Bott

Dr Esther Bott is lecturer in Sociology at the University of Nottingham. Her research interests lie in niche tourism markets in the Global South and she has carried out ethnographic work on tourism in Thailand, Nepal and Jordan. She is specifically interested in representations of “host” people, power dimensions, inequalities, and forms of domination and agency. She is currently working on a project in Nepal on orphanage tourism.