René van der Duim

Ordering, materiality, and multiplicity: Enacting Actor–Network Theory in tourism

In this article, we demonstrate how Actor–Network Theory has been translated into tourism research. The article presents and discusses three concepts integral to the Actor–Network Theory approach: ordering, materiality, and multiplicity. We first briefly introduce Actor–Network Theory and draw attention to current Actor–Network Theory studies in tourism with a focus on how the approach is sensitive toward heterogeneous orderings. The following section discusses how more recent Actor–Network Theory approaches emphasize multiplicity and thus multiple versions of every ordering attempt. This leads us toward ontological politics, which have bearings on how we approach and understand research methods and how we perform tourism research. In conclusion, we argue that Actor–Network Theory enables a radical new way of describing tourism by critically investigating its ontological conditions.

Floating markets in Thailand: same, same, but different

ABSTRACT In the last 60 years floating markets in Thailand, traditionally serving as central places for trade and exchange of agricultural products, have disappeared, were displaced or reappeared as tourism destinations. By making use of insights from actor-network theory, this study shows how floating markets in Thailand reorganize people, canals, boats, homes, fruits, vegetables and souvenirs in certain and multiple ways. Our comparison of five floating markets (Damnernsaduak, Thaka, Amphawa, Bang Namphueng and Pattaya) illustrates that floating markets in Thailand differ in terms of actors, buyers and vendors, products and objects, time and space. They sustained over time because they were able to adapt to new circumstances.

Implementing Tourism-Conservation Enterprises: A Comparison of Three Lodges in Kenya

Since the early 1990s, nature conservation organizations in Eastern and Southern Africa have increasingly attempted to integrate their objectives with those of international development organizations, the land-use objectives of local communities and the commercial objectives of tourism businesses, leading to diverse institutional arrangements for the protection of nature and wildlife outside state-protected areas. The African Wildlife Foundation, an international nature conservation organization, has contributed to this trend of market-based institutional arrangements by developing the tourism-conservation enterprise (TCE) model. However, the implementation of TCEs highly depends on the context in which they are established. In this chapter we analyze and compare the implementation of three TCEs in Kenya. Based on a content analysis of data from individual semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews, site visits, as well as document and literature review, this chapter demonstrates the commonalities and differences in the institutional arrangements and the performance of the three lodges at the local level. It also identifies a range of longer term governance challenges, such as the need to address local political struggles, the relations between partners, and transparency and accountability in the arrangement.

Novel Institutional Arrangements for Tourism, Conservation and Development in Eastern and Southern Africa

Over the last two decades across eastern and southern Africa a range of novel institutional arrangements for tourism, conservation and development have emerged. In this chapter we clarify how we attempt to understand these innovative institutional arrangements and explain the key questions that run through the chapters of this book as well as their relevance. We further elaborate on how different contemporary institutional arrangements are framed from instrumentally and critically oriented views and clarify the middle position that we take by providing a stage for reflection on these different views. The chapter closes with a concise outline of the contribution each chapter makes to this book.

Tourism-conservation enterprises for community livelihoods and biodiversity conservation in Kenya

Tourism-conservation enterprises (TCEs), such as eco-lodges, are a relatively new strategy of the African Wildlife Foundation for enhancing community livelihoods and wildlife conservation in wildlife-rich areas outside state-protected areas in sub-Saharan Africa. This article investigates the extent to which TCEs succeed in meeting these objectives by focusing on two enterprises in Kenya: the Sanctuary at Ol Lentille and the Koija Starbeds. Empirical data were gathered between October 2010 and March 2013 through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, literature review and document analysis. Both TCEs demonstrated significant contributions to employment, education, healthcare and security. Compared with the Starbeds, the Sanctuary realised a much larger conservation area and more pronounced biodiversity recovery. The analysis showed that the contribution of TCEs to livelihoods and biodiversity conservation depends on the nature of the partnership arrangement, as well as the local, national and international contexts in which they operate.

Co-creating tourism research: Towards Collaborative ways of knowing

Co-creation has become a buzzword in many social science disciplines, in business and in tourism studies. Given the prominence of co-creation, surprisingly little discussion has evolved around its implications for research practices and knowledge production as well as what challenges there are for fulfilling the promise of co-creation in tourism research. This book aims to contribute to this discussion by addressing how tourism research comes together as a collaborative achievement and by exploring different ways of collaborative knowledge production in tourism research. It is structured to offer, on one hand, an introduction to the ontological basis for collaborative research and, on the other hand, a set of empirical examples of how collaborative knowledge creation can inform tourism design, management, policy and education. The theoretical accounts and empirical cases of this book display how research collaborations can offer modest, local yet often impactful insights, traces and effects. It therefore will be of value for students, researchers and academics in tourism studies as well as the wider social sciences.

Institutional Arrangements for Conservation, Development and Tourism in Eastern and Southern Africa

This book describes and analyzes six novel conservation arrangements in eastern and southern Africa, illustrating how tourism is increasingly used and promoted as a key mechanism for achieving conservation and development objectives outside state-protected areas.

Promoting Conservation Tourism: The Case of the African Wildlife Foundation’s Tourism Conservation Enterprises in Kenya

This chapter examines the organizational form of tourism conservation enterprises, which has been developed and promoted by the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) since the late 1990s. By deploying commercial tourism as a mechanism to attain conservation and livelihood goals, tourism conservation enterprises are interesting cases to illuminate the market-based approach to conservation. This chapter describes the development of this organizational form, its main features and the main challenges in implementing and managing these ventures. The chapter concludes with an outlook on this market-based approach to conservation. It suggests that tourism conservation enterprises need to be marketed as being distinct from mainstream safari lodges, if they are to become a separate market category in the wildlife tourism industry. Only when tourists and their service providers, such as tour operators and tourist boards, understand the added value of these conservation ventures, sufficient benefits can be generated to achieve the ventures’ social mission.

Female Tourism Entrepreneurs in Zanzibar: An Enactment Perspective

Although gender has become an established research topic in tourism studies over the last decades, the role of religion in relation to women participating in tourism has been less explored. Moreover, gender has been mainly discussed from a Western perspective, while other viewpoints have received little attention. By focusing on women participating in the tourism industry in Zanzibar we make a contribution to both voids in tourism studies. This article provides an account of how Zanzibari women working in tourism are confronted with particular constraints brought about by the Islamization of Swahili culture. Moreover, it is argued that whereas women find themselves bound up by particular Islamic norms and values, they are able through the enactment of their environments to challenge, negotiate, and resist these. In so doing they create the freedom to make their own choices, which, as will be shown, reach beyond their labor position. The research findings are discussed in terms of the concept of enactment as proposed by Weick in 1995 and explore the ability of women to participate in the construction of their own environment. The article concludes by arguing that women enact their environments in diverse ways, and how these environments are understood by them as either constraining or enabling them in taking over agency over their lives.

A Dynamic Perspective on Institutional Arrangements for Tourism, Conservation and Development in Eastern and Southern Africa

This book set out to present an overview of different institutional arrangements for tourism, conservation and development in eastern and southern Africa. These approaches range from conservancies in Namibia to community-based organizations in Botswana, private game reserves in South Africa and tourism conservation enterprises in Kenya, as well as transfrontier conservation areas. This chapter presents a comparative analysis of these arrangements. We highlight that most arrangements emerged in the 1990s, aiming to address some of the challenges of ‘fortress’ conservation by combining principles of community-based natural resource management with a neoliberal approach to conservation. This is evident in the use of tourism as the main mechanism for accruing benefits from wildlife. We also illustrate the empirical relevance of these novel arrangements by charting their growth in numbers and discussing how these arrangements take various forms. We furthermore highlight that although these arrangements have secured large amounts of land for conservation, they have also generated governance challenges and disputes on tourism benefit-sharing, affecting the stability of these arrangements as producers of socioeconomic and conservation benefits. We conclude this chapter by exploring how climate change, developments in tourism and trophy hunting, governance challenges and the emergence of new forms of conservation finance are likely to instigate change in institutional arrangements for tourism, conservation and development, as well as open up new directions for research.