Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
well as how different agents shape and engage with development from their different goals
and roles, including individuals, households, communities, private companies, governments
and international organisations, amongst others (Lawson, 2007; Willis and Kumar, 2009).
On the other hand, tourism is known to be the world's largest industry (World Tourism
Organization, 2010) and its sustained growth has particularly impacted the Third World,
where arrivals have increased by 9.5 per cent annually since 1990 (in contrast with 4.6 per
cent worldwide) (Scheyvens, 2007a, 2007b). Overall, tourism remains an unequal activity,
however, where richer countries have a huge infl uence on the numbers of tourists travelling
and receiving most of its revenues (Harrison, 2001a, 2001b). Given its size and rate of growth,
tourism has been identifi ed as an opportunity for development since the 1960s (Brown and
Hall, 2008), and different views of development have infl uenced the ways in which tourism
is approached.
Over time, research in both development and the study of tourism for development have
evolved in interconnected trajectories, moving from descriptive research towards more theo-
retically sophisticated and politically informed research, although this has tended to be slower
for tourism studies (Hannam, 2002). Geographic engagement with tourism and development
has also moved towards more critical approaches as a result of the 'cultural turn' (Bianchi,
2009 and
Chapter 5
in this volume; Gibson, 2008). Since the 1980s, research has included a
more refl exive approach (Nepal, 2009) and has tended to see tourism as an activity intimately
linked to more general economic, political, social, geographical and environmental processes,
situated in wider power contexts (Mowforth and Munt, 1998), attending to its complex local
and global nature (Milne and Ateljevic, 2001).
This chapter will fi rst explore different development theories and the ways they have
infl uenced approaches to tourism, and second, will identify current key issues in the geogra-
phies of tourism and development.
Approaches to the study of development and tourism
The use and power of the term 'development' increased sharply after the Second World War,
a time when the reconstruction of Europe infused optimism in capitalism and the colonial
system was declining, becoming crucial in the maintenance of the infl uence of the West
(Potter
et al.
, 2008). Since then different approaches to and critiques of development have
emerged, and although they are presented in a relatively chronological order here, it must be
noted that these approaches overlap and co-exist over time in contested ways.
Modernisation theories
Modernisation theory became prominent during the 1950s and 1960s when, in the context of
the Cold War, it inspired the discourses of freedom and democracy and the supply of aid with
which the West aimed to counter the infl uence of communism in the Third World (Gwynne,
2009). Although there is not a unique version of modernisation, one of the most infl uential
ideas in modernisation theory is Rostow's fi ve stages of development through which tradi-
tional societies become modern societies, a process in which the West is constructed as the
norm for development (Rostow, 1960). Modernisation theory saw development as a process
of economic growth, which therefore should be measured by economic indicators such as the
Gross National Product, and assumed that wealth would naturally trickle down through the
population. It was understood as a process of catching up with the West, where Third World
countries should aim for 'urbanisation, industrialisation, nation-state building, and the
