– Looking Beyond Economic Growth
3.4 Analytical Framework of Sociocultural Sustainability
Sustainability can be seen as a baseline, meaning that tourism development is not harmful to the local communities. In tourism research the concept of carrying capacity is very often used in the same context with the term of sustainability. Sociocultural carrying capacity is the volume of visitors that can be received before the host community’s society and culture begins to be irreversibly affected (Swarbrooke 2002, 261–262). It seems like these kinds of concepts draw attention primarily to the negative impacts of tourism, and Wall and Mathieson (2006, 52) argue that even the word ‘impact’ has come to have a negative connotation. However, the sociocultural impacts of tourism can be also positive. In fact, in order to guarantee the continuity of community-based initiatives, tourism development should be socioculturally benefi cial to local people.
Chambers (1983, 158) states that it is important “...to look for potentials, not for problems, not for obstacles, but for opportunities”. This study aims to look for possibilities instead of only pointing out the problems, and to look at the negative impacts as challenges instead of a static situation. It would be a pity to concentrate exclusively on the negative impacts even though the positive experiences are relatively small in relation to the number of today’s travelers (Barnett 2008, 35).
In this study the analytical framework of sociocultural sustainability is formed together with the principles of development studies and cultural
studies of tourism. The framework of this study is constructed around the idea that central human values of self-esteem and freedom of choice can be seen as means and goals of sustainable tourism development. It can be summarized that in order for rural community-based tourism to be socioculturally sustainable, tourism development should:
Support equal participation
-Promote awareness about the locals’ own rights, knowledge, new
-skills and confi dence
Promote the cultural heritage and pride of the local communities
-Respect cultural differences and foster intercultural under
-standing
Lead to individual and community empowerment
-These basic principles of sustainability have turned out to be complex to implement in practice. This shows that it is equally important to understand the local context of tourism development and the actual impacts of tourism.
In this study the local realities of tourism development are approached by following Wall and Mathieson’s (2006, 65–67) division of local tourism context to community characteristics, the state and type of tourism development and the host-guest relationship. But even though Wall and Mathieson (2006) include the brokers in the fi rst category of community characteristics in this study, I treat the role of the brokers as a separate fourth factor of tourism development in the destination area.
While the tourism initiatives are often started from outside the communities by different brokers, it is important to understand how the local people are participating in the rural community-based tourism development. I have used Jules Pretty’s (1995) typology of participation to understand and determine in which way the local people in tourism communities have participated in tourism development. His six types of participation range from fi rst level of passive participation, at which people are told what has been already decided and what has happened, to the sixth level’s self-mobilization, in which people have full control, and they take initiatives as well as develop contacts independently.
I have acknowledged that there are doubts about tourism’s possibilities to support empowerment if the local people are not ‘empowered’ already in the beginning of the tourism development process. Scheyvens (2002, 61; 2003, 233) argues that empowerment should be already precursor to community involvement in tourism since it can be seen as a means for determining and achieving community’s objectives. According to Mowforth and Munt (2003, 216, 218) the existing power relations could change only when the
initiatives are originated inside the local communities. These approaches are partly contradictory to the idea of development agencies promoting the empowerment from outside.
The criticism and questioning of the empowerment is very welcomed, because it reminds us about how it is not self-evident that all kind of participation in tourism activities automatically leads to individual or community empowerment. In this analytical framework I have brought together Stroma Cole’s (2006) and Scheyvens’ (1999; 2002) approaches of empowerment through tourism development. The reason for this choice lays in the fact that these authors have indirectly included the aspects of social and human capital as well as cultural values to their defi nitions of empowerment. In the empowerment framework by Scheyvens (1999, 235, 247; 2003, 59–63), social empowerment means that community cohesion improves as individuals and families work together to build tourism development. These concepts are central in community-based tourism, where the tourism should be based on community organizations, equity, fairness, active participation and positive action at the community level.
According to Cole (2006, 89), external contacts, self-esteem, pride and confi dence are central factors in tourism development that can increase empowerment. On the other hand, a lack of knowledge about tourism, a lack of self-belief, or a lack of skills can lead to disempowerment even though the locals were participating in tourism development. Scheyvens’ (1999, 247) defi nition of psychological empowerment is similar to that of Cole’s, although Scheyvens speaks about empowerment more at the community level. Psychological empowerment means that the community’s self-esteem is enhanced because of outside recognition of the uniqueness and value of their culture, natural resources and traditional knowledge. When the confi dence increases, it leads community members to look for further opportunities. (Scheyvens 1999, 247.)