the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

Theoretical Framework
CHAPTER THREE
3.1 Introduction: Theorising Tourism
Tourism has been an important factor in the developed economies since the mid­
nineteenth century, if not earlier (Feifer, 1986; Lofgren, 1999). However, the
development of analytical approaches, which attempt an explanation of this
phenomenon, is a more recent concern. There are a number of reasons for this,
including the tendency to view the pursuit of leisure itself and, by implication the
analysis of it, as a side issue to the more serious business of industrial production.
However, tourism is now a globalised business or industry, and within the social
sciences there have also been substantial changes towards viewing consumption,
rather than production, as a serious focus as enquiry (Corrigan, 1997).
The first comprehensive attempt to approach tourism from the perspective of the
social sciences was provided in 1976 by Dean MacCannell's book, The Tourist.
Despite its faults, the book succeeded in opening up tourism to a more generalised
and theoretically informed analysis than had previously been the case. The next
major development was the publication in 1990 of John Urry's seminal book, The
Tourist Gaze, which, as with MacCannell's, has also had a far-reaching impact on
the development of a theoretically informed social analysis of tourism. However, the
reality of the early twenty-first Century is very different from the Paris of the 1970s
and England of the mid-1980s which, respectively, formed the focus of MacCannell
and Urry's research. During this period we have moved from paradigms of social
analysis that grappled with modernity, to those dealing with postmodernity and more
recently, to paradigms that are starting to assess economic, social, cultural, physical
and political changes in terms of globalisation (Meethan, 2001 ).
Tourism is, in essence, part of the process of commodification (or commoditisation)
and consumption inherent in modern capitalism. Tourism is hence, best
80