"We are even poorer, but there is more work" an ethnographic analysis of ecotourism in Nicaragua /
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
[College Station, Tex.] :
[Texas A&M University],
[2010]
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| Online Access: | Link to OAK Trust copy |
| Abstract: | This dissertation later invokes the dominant literature on local reactions to tourism development coming out of the field of tourism studies that uses stage-based models to show that increasing experience with tourism leads to increasingly negative reactions to tourism. This is contrasted with ecotourism research that has shown how increasing participation in ecotourism leads to more favorable attitudes towards ecotourism projects. This dissertation examines these two seemingly disparate perspectives in the context of an ecotourism project. Three groups representing different levels of involvement with ecotourism are compared. The results support traditional tourism theory, suggesting fruitful opportunities for integration of research on conventional forms of tourism with research specific to ecotourism. Finally, a political ecology approach is adopted to reveal mutually reinforcing cycles of capital accumulation and impoverishment leading to environmental degradation in the region resulting from tourism development in the region, as originally described in the influential book Social Causes of Environmental Destruction in Latin America. While that work focuses primarily on agricultural activities, here recent ethnographic research on ecotourism in southwestern Nicaragua is contextualized within rapid tourism development in the region and examined through a political ecological lens to reveal how tourism is responsible for the same destructive cycles revealed above. Despite achieving certain on-site success, even ecotourism contributes to, if not enables, larger processes of environmental exploitation in the Nicaraguan context. |
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| Item Description: | "Major Subject: Recreation, Park, and Tourism Sciences" Title from author supplied metadata (automated record created 2010-03-12 12:08:51). Electronic resource. |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |