Nicknaming tourism as development: commercialization of culture and nature in CHT, Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

Tourism in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) has nowadays been sensitized a prospective channel for the local development that generates a new socio-economic reality. It also provokes some critical issues regarding commercial use and its profit-making venture. This paper aims to understand how culture and nature are commercialized in the process of crafting a ‘uniqueness’ of CHT that materialize the public and private policies of tourism development, and how tourism is branded by the development actors as a potential means of local development. The study found that the tourism expansion has increasingly been nicknamed as development and impelled indigenous participation to the economic benefits, in which process culture and nature became saleable products. A considerable number of locals and tourists as informants were sampled and interviewed between November 2019 and early February 2020. This study adopted by qualitative methods, tried to explore the local perceptions of tourism development and its outcomes. The study contributed to the development of balanced tourism and its sustainable outcomes, and a deeper understanding of culture-specific ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism
• development
• culture
• nature
• commercialization and CHT

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Nearly two decades of bloody conflict between the state security forces and the indigenous local troops, was formally come to an end after the 'CHT Accord' in 1997, but it is popularly known as 'peace accord'.

2 https://www.forestpeoples.org/en/region/bangladesh/publication/2010/urgent-action-cultureenvironment-and-biodiversity-endangered-chi (Retrieved 23th December, 2020).

3 A local leader, customarily works for a very small unit of the revenue circle called Mouza.

4 A customary administrative leader, generally serves for a village.

5 According to John Urry, the notion of the 'tourist gaze' implies that tourists exercise the power towards local inhabitants with the approach they gaze them, which is linked to the anticipations of ‘authentic' performance and presentation of locals (see, Urry, 1990, 2002).

6 https://www.thedailystar.net/lifestyle/reader%E2%80%99s-chit/sajekvalley%E2%80%93where-hills-touch-the-sky-1314646 (Retrieved 15th November, 2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

S. M. Sadat al Sajib

S. M. Sadat al Sajib is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. Mr. Sajib is pursuing a PhD in Environmental Sustainability and Well-being at the University of Ferrara, Italy. He has been working on tourism and development, environment and biodiversity conservation, minority and refugee issues since the very beginning of his professional career as a faculty of Anthropology. He was involved in two collaborative projects with London School of Economics (LSE), and School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University (UK) as a Research Associate. Sajib has published couple of articles and presented a number of papers in the international conferences and workshops on development, tourism, peace and conflict issues with a special reference to indigenous minority and Rohingya refugee. He has published articles and book chapters in leading publishers such as Orient Black Swan, Routledge, SAGE Publications and Springer Nature.