81 research outputs found
Migration into tourism micro-entrepreneurship – socioeconomic advancement or mobility trap?,
No full textThe notion of tourism micro-entrepreneurship offers the prospect of self-determination, income and further career outlooks for residents. However, tourism development in Southeast Asia has also been criticised for creating uneven development and transforming host communities into passive tourees. Along the intersecting fields of tourism, migration and micro-entrepreneurship, this chapter discusses opportunities and challenges for ethnic minority souvenir vendors who moved into Thailand’s tourist areas. Ethnic minority micro-entrepreneurs can mobilise their social and cultural capital by carving out their own niches in the tourism industry. Their activities create employment for themselves and other members of their own ethnic group and – to a minor extent – can support the livelihoods of their left-behind families. Yet, the majority of Thailand’s ethnic micro-entrepreneurs in the souvenir business come from socioeconomically marginalised regions and remain at the fringes of a business niche in urban and beach-side tourism hotspots that do not offer sustainable career prospects
Mapping tourism, sustainability, and development in Southeast Asia
No full textTourism in Southeast Asia traces back many years, with early forms of travel including pilgrimage, and travel for trade, land, resources, missions and warfare. Tourism is thus a long-established economic, religious, and social activity in the region though mass tourism is a rather recent phenomenon which largely began to expand in the 1970s. In the past decades, tourism in Southeast Asia has seen unprecedented growth while the region has also undergone major changes in relation to markets, mobility and integration between countries in economic and political terms. The creation and expansion of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations from a defence alliance to a political and economic relationship between member countries is significant in the formation of the Southeast Asian identity. The Philippines were isolated from airline connections for many years but experienced tourism growth as access options improved. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book
Researching tourism and development in Southeast Asia: Methodological insights
No full textTourism for development has become an essential research field in its own right, also in Southeast Asia. Researchers and scholars within the region, but more broadly from around the world, dedicate themselves to understanding how to use tourism most efficiently as a development strategy. Much of this research is based on anthropological approaches, with field work as the prime method employed. However, very little has been said about the challenges that researchers with different positionalities encounter in the field, such as access to the field, language or working with interpreters, and power relations. This chapter therefore debates these challenges and points towards ways to address these by drawing on examples from the authors’ fieldwork in foreign and familiar fields. Examples include discussions on the above-mentioned challenges, with a specific focus on the emic versus etic perspective, also seen as the ‘insider-outsider’ debate. In doing so, the chapter demonstrates that there is no ‘ideal’ position from which to do research in the Southeast Asia. It deromanticises the idea of fieldwork at home as delivering more truthful accounts of the field and, finally, points towards the need for reflexivity in order to make our field research in Southeast Asia more robust and effective
Globalising Thailand through gendered ‘both- ways’ migration pathways with ‘the West’: cross- border connections between people, states, and places
No full textThe chapters in this volume study transnational social relationships and cross-border connections between ‘ordinary’ people that arise from the increasingly large-scale mobilities and migrations between Thailand and ‘the West’. While Thai and Western people’s social relationships are usually studied as personal stories within a cross-border marriage migration perspective, this book considers it necessary to see them as more than marriage migration.
Even though a focus on the ‘personal life stories’ of marriage migrants provides valuable insights, it can also mask consideration of the structural context of socially embedded cross- border connections and exchanges, as well as state restrictions, that, first, make people’s decisions to move a possibility in the first place, and second, shape a migrant’s post- migration life- trajectory and experiences, relative to others in their origin and settlement societies. The chapters on Thai women who marry and move with older Western men, Western men and women who move to Thailand to retire or for leisure, and Thai rural families transformed by mobilities and migration, try to draw out their gendered experiences of transnational living. The individual choices that shaped these lives, and the surprising prevalence of lives like these in Thailand and abroad, needs to be understood within context as an outcome of the specific globalisation processes that have shaped Thailand through transnational links to other parts of the world over the last decades. Globalisation and penetration by foreign capital, cultures, and people through mass tourism is key to this explanatory backstory as well as the internal rural/ urban cleavages that drive Thailand’s economic development
Exhibiting the ‘Other’ Then and Now: 'Human Zoos' in Southern China and Thailand
No full textVom 18. bis ins frühe 20. Jahrhundert hat eine Form öffentlicher Ausstellungen, bei der die Ausstellungsobjekte echte Menschen waren, weltweite Popularität genossen. Diese kolonialen Ausstellungen stellten das Andere dar und konzentrierten sich dabei zunächst auf körperliche und später dann auf politisch-ökonomische und sozio-kulturelle Unterschiede der ausgestellten und oftmals aus überseeischen Kolonien 'importierten' Menschen. Diese Form ungleicher Darstellung wird im Allgemeinen als 'menschlicher Zoo' bezeichnet und kombiniert die Funktionen Ausstellung, Performance, Bildung und Herrschaft. Obwohl das Zeitalter der menschlichen Zoos in den 1940er Jahren endete, können ähnliche Entwicklungen und Machtbeziehungen im ethnischen Tourismus moderner Kulturen festgestellt werden. In Südostasien und China existieren verschiedene 'ethnische Dörfer' und 'ethnische Themenparks', die exotisch erscheinende ethnische Minderheiten zahlenden einheimischen und internationalen Touristen zur Schau stellen. Während einige Beobachter diese Touristenattraktionen als menschliche Zoos verurteilen, argumentieren andere, dass sie zur Erhaltung der seltenen Kultur beitragen und eine Einkommensquelle für die ausgestellte ethnische Gruppe darstellen. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt einen kurzen Überblick über diese fragwürdigen Attraktionen und stellt einige Beispiele aus Thailand und China vor. (ICD
Straßenmärkte als Schauplätze informeller Ökonomien in Wien und Budapest. Lernen von den Phänomenen im Stadtraum
No full textTourism and the Sustainable Development Goals in Southeast Asia
No full textThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 goals adopted in 2015, are aimed at reconciling economic, social, and ecological progress at a global level - ensuring a sustainable future for developed and developing countries alike. Tourism in Southeast Asia is particularly thought to make an important contribution - given its substantial economic role - to the SDGs. While the United Nations initially only linked three SDGs to tourism, it bears often underused potential to contribute to the entire set of goals. Yet, the relationship between tourism and sustainable development is regarded as ambiguous - an industry strongly characterized by an overdependence on international tourists and foreign investment, showing a patchy track record of negative impacts and conflicts. In addition, in times of COVID-19, tourism has become a dormant industry, leaving behind substantial economic gaps, particularly in Southeast Asia. With regards to the SDGs, little research exists to date that investigates whether and how tourism can contribute to reaching the goals’ targets to achieve a more sustainable development. This article thus outlines the current situation for tourism for development in Southeast Asia, and discusses the links between tourism and the SDGs, particularly at a time when the region - and theindustry at large - have been strongly impacted
8th EuroSEAS Conference, Wien, 11.–14. August 2015. Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft|Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft - Band 157 157|
No full text- …
