Dissertation Research: Tourists and Amazonian Host: Impacts on Economy, Values and Forests

生态旅游，即第一世界的游客前往发展中世界具有生态吸引力的地方旅游，是一个相对较新的世界主要产业。 本论文研究项目涉及一位来自佛罗里达大学的文化人类学学生，他正在研究秘鲁亚马逊河流域的生态旅游项目。 研究的重点是分析商业旅游如何改变了当地社区的经济活动和生态价值观。 学生将研究生态旅游雇佣劳动对农业和觅食的影响。有待检验的假设是，有薪工作将转移人们从事农业和觅食的时间，而新的收入将引导人们利用新技术，并加强他们的觅食。 该项目还将审查密切参与生态旅游的当地人是否会接受与未参与的同龄人不同的文化和特性及自然概念。 有待检验的假设是，旅游业参与者将以更符合游客期望的方式认识和界定文化特征和自然环境。 方法包括参与者观察、与1997年访谈过的户主样本进行半结构化访谈，以及与社区成员样本进行深入访谈。 该项目将提供关于生态旅游对长期负责森林的人的影响的详细人种学资料。研究结果将有助于澄清生态旅游的商业化是通过过度开发破坏资源，还是通过促进当地管理和保护来维持资源的争议。

Eco-tourism, where first-world tourists travel to ecologically attractive places in the developing world, is a relatively new development to a major world industry. This dissertation research project involves a cultural anthropology student from the University of Florida, studying an eco-tourism project in the Peruvian Amazon. The focus of the research is to analyze how the commercial tourism alters the economic activities and ecological values of the host community, a society of native Americans. The student will examine the effects of eco-tourism wage labor on farming and foraging. The hypothesis to be tested is that wage work will divert time away from farming and foraging, while new income will lead people to by new technologies and intensify their foraging. The project will also examine whether natives who participate closely in eco-tourism will adopt notions of cultural and identity and nature that differ from their non-participating peers. The hypothesis to be tested is that participants in tourism will perceive and define cultural identity and the natural environment in ways that more closely match the expectations of tourists. The methodology involves participant observation, semi-structured interviews with a sample of household heads previously interviewed in 1997, and in-depth interviews with a sample of community members. This project will provide fine-grained ethnographic information on the impact of eco-tourism on the people who are permanently in charge of the forest. The results will shed light on the controversy over whether the commercialism of eco-tourism harms the resource by over-exploiting it, or maintains it by facilitating local management and conservation.