The international political economy of tourism and the neoliberalisation of nature: Challenges posed by selling close interactions with animals

Rosaleen Duffy

Review of International Political Economy, 2013, vol. 20, issue 3, 605-626

Abstract: This paper examines the inter-relationships between neoliberalism, tourism and nature. It argues that scholars of international political economy (IPE) need to engage more fully with the role of nature in driving forward the logics of neoliberalism. Most scholars view nature as a source of accumulation or as an object of governance, but this paper uses the neoliberalisation of nature debate to extend our understandings of neoliberalism. In particular, global tourism has targeted and opened up new frontiers in nature, which serves to expand and deepen neoliberalism to a wider range of biophysical phenomena. This paper uses the case of elephant tourism to demonstrate how tourism is not just reflective of neoliberalism, but is in fact a key driver of it, acting as an environmental fix for capitalism. Further, this paper takes up the challenge of research on 'actually existing neoliberalisms' via engagement with locally specific contexts and emerging forms of socio-nature in the Thai tourism industry. It reveals how neoliberalism redraws the boundaries of access to nature, thereby shifting the distribution of costs and benefits. Hence, nature is one of the primary ways in which neoliberalism is constituted, albeit in a highly differentiated way. This reminds us not to reify neoliberalism and accord it a greater degree of power and coherence than it really has.

Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.654443 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:3:p:605-626

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rrip20

DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.654443

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Political Economy is currently edited by Gregory Chin, Juliet Johnson, Daniel Mügge, Kevin Gallagher, Ilene Grabel and Cornelia Woll

More articles in Review of International Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().