Can Ecotourism in the Global South Develop the North?

Daniel Newell McLane
Additional contact information
Daniel Newell McLane: Department of Sociology, Saint Lawrence University, Canton, NY, USA

International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development (IJSESD), 2015, vol. 6, issue 2, 102-116

Abstract: Ecotourism is often framed as a development tool in the traditional sense of bringing capital to developing countries in exchange for an exported good. Unlike most commodities however, tourism does not merely bring capital to the South, it brings people. While recognizing that the presence of Northern bodies has often been seen as a concrete example of power inequity between the North and South, in this paper I argue that the embodied nature of this exchange allows for the potential of a type of development that moves from South to North through the generation of what is termed biotic capital. Biotic capital refers to the size and coherence of 1) an environmental imaginary, 2) the individuals within that imaginary and 3) the biophysical. Biotic capital that promotes sustainability is created through the reinforcement of already existing environmental orientations as well as recruitment of tourists by messages perceived as apolitical.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve. ... 18/ijsesd.2015040107 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:igg:jsesd0:v:6:y:2015:i:2:p:102-116

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development (IJSESD) is currently edited by Elias G. Carayannis

More articles in International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development (IJSESD) from IGI Global
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journal Editor ().