Unpacking Wildlife Tourism: Perspectives from Educational Research

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Unpacking Wildlife Tourism Perspectives from
Educational Research

• Constance Russell
• Faculty of Education,
• Lakehead University
• crussell_at_lakeheadu.ca

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• The overarching problem environmental
  degradation and exploitation of animals and
  humans
• One solution education

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Critical Environmental Education

• analyzing the hidden curriculum
• disrupting anthropocentrism
• connecting environmental and social justice
  issues
• addressing experiential under-nutrition and
  facilitating human experiences of
  more-than-human world

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Problematizing Experience

• Experience
• ?
• Knowledge
• ?
• Caring
• ?
• Action

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Ecotourism

• Contested definitions
• Rationales
• Economic
• Educational
• Continua eco versus mass
• shallow versus deep
• passive versus active
• consumptive versus low consumptive versus
  non-consumptive

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• Dependency on natural systems
• Duration of stay in natural areas
• Level of infrastructure needed
• Group size
• Physical challenge and accessibility
• Amount of economic leakage
• Local involvement
• Impacts on natural environment and wildlife
• Level of interaction with nature and locals
• Emphasis on learning
• Opportunity for tourists to become actively
  involved

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Problems with Ecotourism

• Economic leakage
• Disruption of human communities
• Disruption of natural communities (e.g.,
  introduction of non-native species, increase in
  toxic pollutants,habitat destruction, disturbance
  of wildlife, including changes in feeding,
  reproductive and land-use behaviours,
  habituation, disease)
• Little evidence of educational outcomes

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Why the Contradiction?

• Ecotourism as industry
• Social contexts
• Social construction of nature and other animals

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Research on orangutan-focused tourism (fieldwork
in 1992)

• participant observation
• guided conversations
• follow-up questionnaire
• collection of tourist photographs

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Pristine Nature
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Child
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Photographic Collectible
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Whalewatching Research (fieldwork in 1996)

• Pre-, post-, and follow-up questionnaires
• Interviews
• Participant observation

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Superwhale
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Spectacle
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Intimates
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Primate-Focused Tourism Internet Discourse
Analysis (2006)

• English-language
• Search words
• e.g., monkey tours 2,700,000 hits
• 658 companies
• 62 primate species targetted, with great apes
  most popular

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Exotic Primates and Peoples
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Rarity/Abundance
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Like Humans
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Harmless
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Photographic Opportunities
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Touch
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Recent Research Project African Safaris

• Case Studies
• South Africa National Parks and Game Reserves
  Royal Natal, Mkhuze, Cape Vidal, Addo Elephant
• Botswana National Parks Central Kalahari,
  Moremi, Okavango Delta, Chobe
• Kenya National Parks Nairobi, Amboseli

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Methodology

• Critical, feminist, postcolonial
• value-laden and political nature of research
• research as activism
• situated knowledges and partial perspectives
• illuminating complexities
• attention to particulars

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Methodology

• Qualitative
• Case Studies
• descriptive (rich accounts)
• interpretive (analyzing data in light of social
  construction theory)
• evaluative (determining educational outcomes and
  identifying educational potential and challenges)

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Methods

• Case studies in Botswana (Kalahari/Okavango
  Delta) and Kenya (Amboseli)
• Participant observation
• Interviews
• Collection of documents (e.g., brochures,
  postcards)

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Impacting Animals?
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Uncharismatic Primates
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Predators
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Broadening the Scope
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Local Peoples
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Learning about Research
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Contact
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Desire and Complicity