Sustainability: A Barrier to Tourism Development? - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 433

economic growth, its success measured by indicators such as income and
employment generation and the multiplier effect. At the same time, tourism
was seen as co-existing with its environment (Budowski, 1976; Dowling,
1992). That is, within the prevailing technocentrist environmental ideology,
tourism and conservation were considered separate issues and the potential
impacts were, for the most part, overlooked.
Cautionary
From the late 1960s onwards, there was growing awareness of increasing
conflict between tourism and its physical and socio-cultural environment.
Such conflict was occurring not only as a result of the rapidly increasing scale
and scope of international tourism, but also because tourism was evolving
'in a way that closely matches historical patterns of colonialism and eco-
nomic dependency' (Lea, 1988: 10). A number of commentators drew parallels
between tourism and the centre-periphery dependency model of develop-
ment (Britton, 1982b; Høivik & Heiberg, 1980), arguing that tourism desti-
nations were becoming dependent upon metropolitan centres for capital,
technology, expertise and tourists themselves. In other words, tourism
theory embraced the dependency paradigm of development, with tourism
reflecting the neo-colonial dependence model and, in particular, the dualistic
development model whereby development reinforces the dualistic, rich/poor
dichotomy within and between underdeveloped and developed countries
(Todaro, 2000).
Adaptancy
During the 1980s, attempts were made to bridge the ideological gulf
between the preceding antithetical positions in tourism theory. Alternatives
(to mass tourism) were proposed in the form of 'responsible', 'soft', 'appropri-
ate' or 'green' tourism, all of which attempted to transpose the concept of
alternative development - an endogenous development process based upon
the satisfaction of basic needs, self-reliance and environmental harmony -
onto tourism. Thus, the concept of alternative tourism proposes, in direct
contrast to mass, Fordist-type tourism production, locally controlled, appro-
priate small-scale developments with the community as the primary instiga-
tors and beneficiaries of tourism (Figure 15.1).
Knowledge
Inevitably, the idealism (Dowling, 1992) of alternative tourism over-
looked a number of 'fundamental truths' (McKercher, 1993a) of tourism, in
particular both the exogenous factors that influence the scale, style and rate
of tourism development and also the behaviour of tourists as consumers of
the tourism product. Moreover, by definition, it represented an alternative,