| This dissertation examines connections between ecotourism as a global-scale industry, and as a localized experience in Quichua communities of the Upper Napo region of Amazonian Ecuador. The connecting filaments are spun by mediating institutions and agents at international, national, regional, and local levels who represent, market, regulate, and organize tourism activities. I argue that these practices are significantly controlled at the global scale, but, under certain conditions based on indigenous models for alternative development, ecotourism can be designed to better meet local needs.;Theoretical works on globalization, place-making, and cultural change guide my research. I start at a macro scale, looking at the Amazon as an imaginary geography produced by a history of representations. This is placed within current debates over the practices and impacts of global tourism, specifically the recent phenomenon of ecotourism. I then examine specific meanings and social relations associated with these practices, which remake particular "places" that constitute the ecotourism network.;On a broad scale, meanings are generated and social relations organized by a cultural apparatus that produces destination sites and creates objects of interest. Within the tourism industry, meanings and social relations are more clearly defined in travel exhibitions, travel writing and advertising, and by travel agents and tour operators. At the national level of host countries, historical experiences of nation- and identity-making tailor tourism to specific development plans. Regional influences include indigenous and non-governmental organizations, and political, social and economic conditions within Amazonian Ecuador.;The most ethnographically grounded section of my dissertation is at the local level. Here I examine ecotourism projects designed and managed by Quichua communities to see how they respond to the meanings and social relations generated at other levels. I conclude that while the tourism industry dictates many of the terms of engagement for destination sites, a history of indigenous organization, and the creativity of key meaning managers, opens space for local agency. This suggests there may be a middle ground between optimistic accounts of globalization as the inevitable, triumphant march of Western civilization, and pessimistic accounts of globalization as a Hobbesian spiral into isolationism and conflict. |
