The Construction And Practice Of A Circle: An Ethnography Of Tourism Planning

Anthropology of Tourism in China is still far from being the mainstream research. One of the reasons is the lack of ethnographic study on tourism. This thesis sets foot in a new area of research:to study the circle of tourism planning with ethnographic perspectives. I hope my thesis can provide a copy of ethnographic material of tourism planning circle based on the ethnographic observations and understanding, so as to construct the subjectivity of China anthropological research. Meanwhile, another purpose of this thesis is to show and to analyze the culture of the circle. I hope this thesis can evoke consciousness and reflection of tourism planning circle, and help us avoid the tendency of "involution" with its self-satisfaction.This thesis is the only exploratory and experimental ethnography of tourism planning up to now. Based on the literature review, the main contents of the thesis includes the following aspects:to give a brief historical retrospect of the rise of tourism planning and the formation of tourism planning circles in China with Giddens's modernity theory(Chapterâ… ); to analyze the construction of the tourism planning subject(Chapterâ…¡); to show the process of tourism planning from different perspectives(Chapterâ…¢); to discuss the competency for innovation of a tourism planning circle(Chapterâ…£); to analyze the game rules among the subjects of tourism planning(Chapterâ…¤); to investigate the styles and authorities of the texts of tourism planning(Chapterâ…¥); to discuss power, discourse and equity issues related with tourism planning(Chapterâ…¦). Finally, I draw a reflective summary based on my own field experiences and personal understanding about tourism planning circles (Chapterâ…§). I argue that the construction and practice of tourism planning circle implies a process of establishment and operation of tourism expert systems which is a consequence of modernity.Based on the literature review and field experience, I propose the following viewpoints:First, tourism planner gaze is one aspect of tourism gaze theory. The power and authority implied in Tourism planner gaze is in fact the power and authority of Giddens's so-called "disembedded" expert systems and it is a consequence of modernity. The tourism planning is a process of the "disembedded" expert systems "reembedding" the tourism destination. In other words, the tourism planning is a localized process of the expert professional knowledge. Planner gaze reflects not only their own eyes, but also the eyes of the clients, the tourists, the government and other relevant stakeholders, so planner gaze is the result of "compound gaze".Second, the tourism destination is an open social-ecological system with multi-component, multi-variable and dissipative structures, so the destination system shall bring about the phenomenon of entropy increase. As a process of intellectual labor, tourism planning involves complex organization, application and innovation activities. In the process, people try to guide the development of tourism through inputting knowledge (information) into the destination system to counteract the entropy increase of the system. This is equivalent to input negative entropy to eliminate uncertainty of tourism development. Tourism planning is in nature a process of seeking, developing, and creating negative entropy.Third, it seems that tourism planning is a kind of market activity between the two parties conducting the market. In fact, the object of tourism planning is a tourism destination with the purpose of serving the public (including the hosts and tourists), so tourism planning is a kind of public instrument which bears the responsibility to provide public goods for society.Finally, tourism planners and planning operators should transcend modernity and go beyond the traditional opinions with a philosophy of perfect values and social conscience "to be conscience of heaven and earth, to stand for masses destiny, to pass the endangered knowledge and to create an eternal peace" and reflects the ultimate concerns of the human spirit so that tourism activities can finally become a source of promoting social harmony.