Community-based ecotourism : transformation towards better quality of life?

Abstract

Thai rural communities had been politically, sociocultually, economically voiceless and powerless in development and conservation before national transformations in 1997. This initiative promotes human development and participation of communities, particularly rural area in civil society. Community-based ecotourism (CBET) has been promoted as a tool to empower and support economies. Although local people have limited knowledge and capacity regarding ecotourism and development approaches, these can be learned with the collaborative efforts of external bodies and local communities. This thesis examines how CBET operations transform the local way of life. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with policy-makers and related ecotourism stakeholders to examine CBET in the rural communities of Mae Kampong, Ban Busai and Khiriwong. Ethnographic techniques were employed to understand the complexity of social interactions. The results reveal transformations in power relations among local members and between local communities and external bodies. Given that the villagers in CBET communities promote themselves as a collective group, the issues of obscure power differentials, power resistance and dominance, and inequality in intra-community management, which lead to social conflicts and disparity between individuals and within communities, still exist. Nevertheless, these issues can be internally managed which is a foundation for participation towards collective power. Whilst the communities gradually accumulated experience, knowledge and knowhow through CBET operations over time, they have also learned the way to connect community collective power with external power-bases- supranational institutions, state, institutions, governmental organisations, non-governmental organisations, academics, tourists and entrepreneurs - in order to gain benefits to enhance their way of life. The study concludes that empowerment in CBET can arise and is a viable proposition in the cases studied.

Date of Award	2016
Original language	English