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The Political Economy of Backpacker Tourism: Explorations of Tourism Actors’ Embeddedness in Colombia

Thieme, Juliane, Hampton, Mark P., Stoian, Carmen R., Zigan, Krystin (2021) The Political Economy of Backpacker Tourism: Explorations of Tourism Actors’ Embeddedness in Colombia. Current Issues in Tourism, 24 (13). pp. 1830-1855. ISSN 1368-3500. (doi:10.1080/13683500.2020.1806793) (KAR id:82513)

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Abstract

Located in a broad Political Economy approach, this paper presents a new conceptual framework, based on Ferguson (2010) and Mosedale (2011), to assess the reciprocal relationship between tourism development and the power relations of the main actors within the backpacker tourism sector: backpackers; businesses catering for them; and tourism policy makers. We explore how these power relations change through the actors’ social, cultural and political embeddedness. An ethnographic multi-method approach was applied to the under-researched Latin American context with fieldwork conducted in Salento, Colombia. The analysis demonstrates that power inequalities exist concerning knowledge, financial and social power that did not seem to be diminished by backpacker tourism development. We further found that social and cultural embeddedness informed the political embeddedness of the actors. Our findings have important implications for policy makers addressing power inequalities in tourism.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/13683500.2020.1806793
Uncontrolled keywords: Embeddedness, Tourism Development, Backpacker Tourism, Political Economy of Tourism, Colombia
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Kent Business School - Division > Department of Leadership and Management
Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Anthropology and Conservation
Depositing User: Juliane Thieme
Date Deposited: 19 Aug 2020 09:10 UTC
Last Modified: 22 Feb 2022 00:00 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/82513 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Thieme, Juliane.

Creator's ORCID:
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

Hampton, Mark P..

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1481-4665
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

Stoian, Carmen R..

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9329-8181
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

Zigan, Krystin.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7615-2244
CReDIT Contributor Roles:
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