Scenario Planning: A Planning Tool for an Uncertain Future

This paper uses scenario planning as a tool to identify key external drivers, build plausible scenarios, and develop policies and strategies. Drawing on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Arizona as a case study, the purpose of this study was to develop a systematic scenario planning process that helps the agency in preparation for uncertainties. Two scenario workshops were conducted to cover a wide range of social and natural resource related issues. Various expert participants from universities, agencies, and community stakeholder groups were invited to participate and engage in scenario planning activities. The study developed plausible scenarios as well as policies and strategies for each scenario. The paper discusses methodological and practical implications

Tourism and decolonisation: locating research and self

This paper critically explores decolonial theory and its relevance for tourism studies. We suggest that while postcolonial and related critical theoretical perspectives furthered understandings of the consequences of colonisation, such critical theorising has not provided an epistemological perspective of tourism which legitimises the cosmologies of, and actively empowers, traditionally marginalised groupings. We review published tourism research which adopts critical and postcolonial perspectives, and argue that while these have been valuable in terms of exposing the existence and effects of dominant discourses and practices in tourism, their emancipatory objectives are limited because tourism knowledge is still predominantly colonial. Epistemological decolonisation is thus presented as a more radical project which can provide an ‘other’ way of thinking, being and knowing about tourism. Keywords: colonial; decolonisation; decolonial theory; de-linking; epistemological; postcolonia

Theorizing Scientific Tourism in Indigenous Community: A Horizontal Co-Production Approach to Research

This conceptual paper explores theoretical linkages between scientific tourism and sustainability outcomes within indigenous communities. Drawing on sustainability science, boundary work theory, indigenous knowledge, and decolonial frameworks, we present a typology of scientific tourism situations mapped according to the degree in which they allow co-production of solutions that combine indigenous and scientific knowledge. This paper is based on the premise that co-produced solutions are essential for sustainability outcomes and they require effective boundary organizations capable of translating and coordinating across cultural paradigms. Two approaches to scientific tourism that can facilitate sustainability outcomes, particularly in indigenous communities, are proposed. The first approach requires cognition of knowledge plurality and researcher reflexivity. The second entails boundary organizations as well as tools and strategies necessary for horizontal co-production. Implications for future scholarship on scientific tourism in marginalized and/or global south communities are discussed

Stakeholder Opinions About Tourism

Research on sustainable tourism is growing but often not done in tandem with a community led initiative to effect policy. This study was part of a community and tourism sustainability effort that involved a stakeholder-involved process in a community in the southwestern U.S. The community is a popular destination by in-state, national and international tourists. This paper focuses on the results of two of the several data collection efforts that were part of this project: resident survey and business owner/manager survey. Specially, the findings of this research show that the community atmosphere factor that includes indicators related to the physical environment and safety most contributes to a high QOL in the community and must be a priority consideration in sustainable tourism planning. Conversely, the crowding factor most severely detracts from QOL with traffic, crowding and congestion being detrimental to QOL

Social Production and Consumption of Space: A Lefebvrian Analysis of the Kumbh Mela

Kumbh Mela is the world’s largest pilgrimage gathering on the shores of the River Ganges. Drawing on Lefebvre’s (1991) trialectics of space framework, this paper interrogates the spatial dynamics of the Kumbh Mela through the spatial meanings espoused by local and international pilgrims. Accounting for dominant discourses that frame the event as occurring in and around a sacred waterscape, five focus groups with pilgrims were conducted at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, India. The findings indicate that local pilgrims were aware of river pollution, but they used discursive strategies to decouple this material fact from their lived spiritual experiences; from this vantage point the sacred was believed to be insulated from the secular. International pilgrims’ perceptions significantly differed, from those of their local counterparts, in that the sacred waterscape was seen as polluted and the onus was on them to remedy what they believed locals had neglected to do; for this group cleaning the River was a sacred act. The findings indicate that despite the existence of dominant spatial conceptualisations of a sacred waterscape, through use of the space, new and often competing spatial meanings arise that illuminate our understanding of the human condition and the social relations therewithin