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

生态旅游是指第一批世界游客前往发展中世界具有生态吸引力的地方旅游，对于一个主要的世界行业来说，这是一个相对较新的发展。本论文研究项目涉及佛罗里达大学文化人类学专业的一名学生，研究秘鲁亚马逊地区的一个生态旅游项目。研究的重点是分析商业旅游如何改变东道主社区的经济活动和生态价值，这是一个美洲原住民社会。这名学生将研究生态旅游雇佣劳动力对农业和牧场的影响。需要检验的假设是，有工资的工作将把人们的时间从耕种和觅食中分流出来，而新的收入将引导人们利用新技术，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采用与未参与的同龄人不同的文化、身份和自然概念。需要检验的假设是，旅游参与者将以更符合游客期望的方式感知和定义文化认同和自然环境。研究方法包括参与者观察、对曾在1997年访问过的户主进行的半结构化访问，以及对社区成员进行的深入访问。该项目将提供关于生态旅游对森林永久管理人的影响的细粒度的人种学信息。这一结果将澄清关于生态旅游的商业化是通过过度开发来损害资源，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.