TOURISM
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IS BN 978-974-7534-62-7
WL Order Code 22 231
US$27.00
Bangkok 2001, 348 pp., illus., partly in
color, 150 x 210 mm, pbk. |
Tan Chee-Beng, S. C. H. Cheung & Yang Hui (eds.);
Tourism, Anthropology
and China. Studies in Asian Tourism No. 1
These conference proceedings bring together sixteen ethnographic case studies
on tourism in China and elsewhere by Chinese and non-Chinese scholars.
While
Yunnan is a particular focus, tourism in Guizhou, Hong Kong, and Macau are
also studied. A number of papers deal with ethnic tourism and conservation,
and major anthropological perspectives on the study of tourism are also presented.
An important aspect of China’s economic development over the past
two decades, tourism has had a major impact on local economies and socio-cultural
development, topics insightfully pursued here.
The volume makes a major
contribution to the study of ethnic tourism, an activity closely intertwined with
representing ethnic minorities, their interaction with the state, as well as their
management of marginality, modernity, and globalization. |
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IS BN 978-974-480-009-1
WL Order Code 22 294
US$27.00
Bangkok 2002, 280 pp., 150 x 210 mm,
pbk.
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Westerhausen, Klaus; Beyond the Beach:
An Ethnography of Modern Travellers
in Asia. Studies in Asian Tourism No. 2
This work examines drifter-style tourism, a sanitized and institutionalized tourism alternative, in Asia. Over the last thirty years drifter tourism has
developed its own myth and spawned a mobile subculture of Western travelers.
The study seeks to illustrate the historical background, nature and ideology of
present-day travelers in Asia and to present an “insiders view” of the subculture
based on more than sixty in-depth interviews conducted in the field.
The
impact of those travelers on destinations in Asia is documented by chronicling
the fate of the islands Koh Samui and Koh Phangan in Southern Thailand.
Those islands, at one stage or another, were some of the largest travel centers
in Southeast Asia and subsequently achieved Hollywood fame through Alex
Garland’s popular novel The Beach.
However, even without Hollywood, Asia’s
travel subculture is worth paying attention to. With rapidly increasing numbers
of travelers, it now represents a viable market in its own right, one that fits in
well with an ecologically sustainable tourism product.
However, development
of this tourism alternative is frequently being undermined by unsustainable
growth due to a lack of planning and by the destruction of its destination sites
by other tourism sectors. Experience shows that without advance strategies for
their development, many of those sites tend to develop either in an unsustainable
manner or become the target of “hostile takeovers” by outside operators
and competing tourism sectors.
This state of affairs has been instrumental in
condemning travelers to remain always just one step ahead of conventional
mass tourism.
See also Erik Cohen; Thai Tourism in Thailand |
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