The Evolution of Development Theory and Tourism - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 39

that lower multiplier effects and high levels of leakages were closer to reality,
resulting in a focus on the dependency paradigm. The title of de Kadt's 1979
book Tourism: Passport to Development? indicates the uncertainty involved in
using tourism as a development tool. The negative impacts of tourism in
developing countries began being documented in anthropology and sociology
(Graburn & Jafari, 1991). In the 1980s and 1990s, the economic neoliberal or
globalisation paradigm gained prominence and tourism studies focused on
international markets, competitive exports and free trade. This paradigm is
still extremely influential today. With the growing importance of the envi-
ronmental movement, tourism research came to embrace the concept of sus-
tainability as part of the alternative development paradigm with ecotourism
research in particular becoming more prevalent (Butler, 1993a; Holden, 2000;
Pigram, 1990; Smith & Eadington, 1992; Wall, 1993a, 1993b). These chang-
ing trends in tourism research were analysed by Jafari in 1989 (cited in Smith
& Eadington, 1992), who aggregated writings on tourism into four groups:
the advocacy platform, the cautionary platform, the adaptancy platform and
the knowledge-based platform. Initial support for tourism was called into
question when the impacts of tourism were examined leading to calls for
more responsible or alternative tourism. The knowledge-based platform is
based on a more holistic approach with the aim of creating a scientific body
of knowledge on tourism.
As the 1980s moved forward, there was continued recognition that
many in the world faced extreme difficulties in day-to-day living, calling
into question the entire concept of development. Development thinking
moved into an impasse led by those in the post-development paradigm ques-
tioning the very concept of development itself. From the impasse in the
1990s there was an emergence of a multitude of voices with different ideas,
many criticising the concept of globalisation which continued to hold eco-
nomic and political influence on the world stage. Many of these ideas in the
1990s and 2000s centred on the human development paradigm, focusing on
human rights, civil society, human security and the pro-poor agenda.
Through the 1990s and 2000s, tourism incorporated aspects of human
development with pro-poor tourism and tourism-related NGOs gaining
increased recognition. The most recent paradigm shift, which began in the
new millennium and particularly in 2008 after the global economic crisis,
is global development, which Hettne (2009) recognises as being so new it is
an emerging discourse focused on improvement in the quality of interna-
tional relations and global governance by way of new, yet to be realised,
supranational political institutions. Tourism again has moved with the
times, incorporating more global-related initiatives including contributing
to the UN Millennium Development Goals and recognising global climate
change. The seven main development paradigms profiled in Table 2.2 are
analysed below in greater detail regarding the extent that they have
informed or have the potential to inform tourism.