Interpretive Cultural Diffusion and Natural/Cultural Esotericism: Ecotourism and It’s Implications for Sustainable Resource Management, Small-Scale Fishery Development, and the Existential Crisis of the Modern Individual

Small-scale fisheries (SSF) in developing nations face a harsh variety of internal and external stressors on a global scale. International economic development, population increase, and environmental degradation are among a slew of difficult challenges facing the subsistence livelihoods of individuals in artisanal fishing communities. In order to prevent these communities from facing increased economic and political marginalization, development scholars have formulated a wide range of frameworks, hoping to provide foundational plans for reproducible fishery management. While these plans have had success in defining the variability and case-specificity of SSF management projects, leading authors still agree that plans for economic development and resource conservation are vastly underperforming. One potential economic solution for SSF development is ecotourism, an environmentally conscious brand of tourism that seeks to conserve the local resources and cultural heritage of endemic communities, while promoting their political and economic mobility. In this honors thesis, four case studies from SSF sites in coastal Tanzanian archipelagos are analyzed for consistent themes in the development process. Research is taken from academic literature, online sources, and personal study done in the area. All of these cases have some level of official marine protection, and all of these cases include some amount of tourism development. Results from the case studies indicate that whenever cultural barriers between different stakeholders have to be overcome in the communicative process, development remains gradual, with slow improvements over time. To explain difficulties in the information dissemination process, deep ecology interpretive theory is employed. This realization forms the basis for Interpretive Cultural Diffusion (ICD), an original theory with its roots in deep ecology. This theory helps to explore why overcoming differences in respective cultural frameworks is always a gradual process, with many resistances. Ecotourism development can be promoted by circumventing these obstacles, by avoiding a build-up of cultural resistances through gradual diffusion of ideas, and by engaging local stakeholders, encouraging them to define the development through their own cultural understanding. The paper goes on to illustrate how ecotourism not only benefits from this rationale, but also fundamentally promotes it. By applying popular motivations for ecotourism consumers, one can show that ecotourism provides a platform for local communities and ecotourists to actively share their philosophical foundations with each other, aiding in the cultural diffusion process. Through this, two new types of esotericism are defined in relation to each other, nature esotericism and cultural esotericism. In this relationship, the authenticity that tourists …