Ecotourism as a Western Construct

Abstract

Most of the burgeoning literature on ecotourism is essentially Western-centric, insofar as it accepts as given an approach that is deeply embedded in Western cultural, economic and political processes. Despite the plethora of definitions as to what actually constitutes ecotourism (Fennell, 2003; Page & Dowling, 2002), the most common denominator is that it is nature-based. However, in the same way that Macnaghten and Urry (1998: 95) suggest that ‘there is no single “nature”, only natures’, it therefore follows that ‘nature tourism’ will be variously constructed by different societies and therefore that there will be multiple ‘nature tourisms’. Despite the fact that it should be obvious that it is patently not the case that ‘one size fits all’ we have witnessed the internationalisation of ecotourism, as evolved from a Western ‘classical conservationist’ approach (suggested by Mowforth and Munt (2003) to be more akin to preservationism), and its apparent universality as a concept. This paper examines how this has come about before moving on to consider how uncritical acceptance of Western-constructed ecotourism and a failure to recognise that there is no universal or unique understanding will only serve to reinforce rather than reduce the very inequalities that it may attempt to reduce.

Keywords:

• culture and ecology
• ethnocentrism
• exclusion
• exclusivity
• hegemony
• indigenous people