TY - JOUR
T1 - Geographic imaginations: exploring divergent notions of identity, power, and place meaning on Pha-ngan Island, Southern Thailand
AU - Malam, L
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - This paper explores contrasting narratives of place meaning in a tourism site in Southern Thailand. Specifically, I analyse the parallel discourses of community change through tourism development embedded in international backpacker narratives, and those of the local Thai elite. By configuring identity and power around binary oppositional categories such as West as economically powerful and dominant/non-West as economically weak and subordinated, 'traditional' tourism studies often locate the dynamics of change in the international tourism industry. To date, there is little research on the very real and important ways that people working in tourism assert agency and understand their own identities in everyday contexts. I argue that local communities can, and often do, shape the changes that tourism development initiates in very creative and adaptive ways.
AB - This paper explores contrasting narratives of place meaning in a tourism site in Southern Thailand. Specifically, I analyse the parallel discourses of community change through tourism development embedded in international backpacker narratives, and those of the local Thai elite. By configuring identity and power around binary oppositional categories such as West as economically powerful and dominant/non-West as economically weak and subordinated, 'traditional' tourism studies often locate the dynamics of change in the international tourism industry. To date, there is little research on the very real and important ways that people working in tourism assert agency and understand their own identities in everyday contexts. I argue that local communities can, and often do, shape the changes that tourism development initiates in very creative and adaptive ways.
U2 - 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2008.00381.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2008.00381.x
M3 - Article
SN - 1360-7456
VL - 49
SP - 331
EP - 343
JO - Asia Pacific Viewpoint
JF - Asia Pacific Viewpoint
IS - 3
ER -