‘As Unspoilt As Possible’ – A Framework for the Critical Analysis of Ecotourism

With the critique of ‘fortress conservation’, ecotourism has become an important element of biodiversity conservation (Butcher 2007: 22ff, Chatty/Colchester 2002): local people are no longer driven out of nature reserves, they are included in conservation efforts instead. Ecotourism has been developed in the context of such conservation efforts. Promising to reconcile ‘man’ and ‘nature’, ecotourism is increasingly popular across the globe. In countries like Laos, where I am currently conducting research on ecotourism, tourism is one of the main economic sectors, and natural and cultural ‘heritage’ are primary tourist attractions (e.g. Schipani 2007: 5, LNTA undated: 25). Biodiversity conservation is central to Lao PDR’s socioeconomic development strategy, and so is ecotourism, as it helps to alleviate poverty in rural areas and at the same time protects natural resources. And Laos is just one example regarding the relative importance of conservationthrough-enjoyment. Thus, investigating into ecotourism promises a whole range of sociological insights about current forms and forces of globalisation. The rise of sustainable tourism is accompanied on the one hand by a profusion of manuals, project assessments etc. dealing mainly with the ‘How’s’ of ecotourism policy and practice and thereby tending to disregard the concept’s specific socio-cultural ‘nature’ – ecotourism as such, its inner logic, remains largely a black-box. This kind of approaching the matter extends into academic writing as well. On the other hand, there are also accounts critical to its ideological, particular and hegemonic ‘nature’ (e.g. Mowforth/Munt 2009, Butcher 2007, Cater 2006, West/Carrier 2004) – the ‘What’s’, so to say. They in turn largely dismiss the practical side of ecotourism. In this article, I would like to further a critical approach to ecotourism that combines both, its ‘what’s’ and ‘how’s’. The ‘nature’ of ecotourism is also made up and socially mediated by its very practice. From a pragmatist’s perspective, in turn, a reasonable way of conducting ecotourism, if there is any, can only be pursued when the inner logic, the historical and cultural premises of the ecotourism concept as it is applied is accounted for. Hence, a critical view on ecotourism has got to understand how the symbolic structure of ecotourism conjoins with institutional power and social practice, i.e. how hegemonic logics realise themselves, or are realised respectively, via the action of conscious social actors. In order to understand the reality of ecotourism, it is important to view ecotourism as a culturally particular construct (Cater 2006) that has been generalised around the world. The following discussion deals with the ecotourism concept as a social fact constituted by particular socio-cultural rationales. The purpose is to develop an analytical framework that serves the empirical investigation of the social re-/production of inequality and dependence through ecotourism. Throughout this paper, I will develop a series of interrelated concepts that can be usefully applied to study the power relations implied in the social phenomenon of ecotourism. The framework presented here is essentially theoretical and, even though developed on the basis of some initial empirical research, it is a generalisation largely disregarding any concrete context. The analytical framework developed here combines two important strands of critical sociology: Bourdieu’s theory of social practice (e.g. Bourdieu 1984, 1993) and critical theories of the ‘Marxist’ tradition (e.g. Horkheimer/Adorno 2003, Horkheimer 2004, Adorno 2003, Marx 1959a, Marcuse 1964). The model presented is not to be ‘applied’ in the sense that empirical reality is treated to fit its scheme. To the contrary, fieldwork will be vital for its correction or, possibly, its invalidation. The following discussion draws upon the assumption that binary rationales of mutual exclusion symbolically reflect and facilitate actual, ‘material’ social exclusion through legitimisation. For example, the man-nature divide in biodiversity conservation renders the imposition of restrictions concerning resource extraction on local communities in and around nature reserve reasonable. The basic analytical problem is how and where discoursive figures translate into