Definición de la Ingeniería de Requisitos

Upon return from fieldwork my empirical data consisted of transcribed interviews, focus groups, and a field diary filled with my personal observations as well as some in situ reflexive analyses. The priority was then to bring meaning to this empirical data to address my research aim. This involved an iterative process of analysis, comprising three stages. The first stage, required immersing myself with the complete data set, through reading and re-reading all the empirical data gathered. Braun and Clarke (2006: 87) note that this approach is time-consuming, but is essential for identifying potential patterns, and forms the “bedrock for the rest of the analysis”. Although familiar with the data set, after conducting the empirical research, I found this stage very useful for clarifying the nature and totality of the empirical data. This solidified two observations/reflections noted whilst in the field. First, how the volunteer tourism projects mapped onto an existing class structure in the indigenous communities, and the importance of social networks in understanding how each project operated. Second, prior reading of the volunteer tourism literature had led to an expectation that specific issues would be of importance to community members (e.g. length of time volunteers are in the community [Callanan and Thomas, 2005], the skills and experience of volunteers [Sin et al., 2015] and the quality of the work volunteers produce [Guttentag, 2009]). However, the empirical evidence indicated these issues were of little concern to indigenous host members. As, a result, they moved away from being an important area of interest, and were not subsequently a direct focus of the analysis. Recognising that my initial preparation and literature grounding did not provide a solid enough foundation for understanding the empirical evidence, I began to expand my knowledge through a critical reading of wider

97 development literature. Whilst in Ecuador, I had become aware of the concept of

Buen Vivir and its use in political discourses. It was through further reading upon my return, however, that I came to view it as a potential manifestation of an alternative to Western development.

Stage Two of the analysis involved conducting a more thorough systematic analysis of the empirical data through coding. Coding provides a means of digesting, organising and analysing large amounts of empirical data. Saldana (2015: 8) describes it is as a method of:

“…managing, filtering, highlighting, and focusing on the salient features of qualitative data for generating categories, themes, and concepts, grasping meaning, and/or building theory".

I numbered each line of the empirical data and assigned a word or phrase to areas of potential interest. These codes provided a method of “labelling a condensed meaning, which allows data to be thought about in new and different ways” (Graneheim and Lundman 2004: 107). I continually went through the transcripts and my field diary creating codes and sub-codes. For example, I coded references to ‘personal change’ by writing [PerC] next to relevant material, and subsequently produced a sub-code to identify the causes of this change, such as [TrNgo] for training by the NGO.

Winsome and Johnson (2000) have expressed concerns over the process of coding qualitative data. Firstly, coding reflects how the researcher filters the data based on their relationship to that data, rather than being an objective process in itself. Secondly, the researcher may become detached from the data, “resulting in loss of meaning and context and creating sterile and dehumanised data” (Winsome and Johnson 2000: 396). Aligning with a constructivist perspective, I recognise that the codes produced are based on one understanding of multitude interpretations of the empirical data. Following my fieldwork and immersion with the data, the codes produced reflected my situated knowledge of its contextual origins. To increase reliability, I used line-by-line coding, thereby ensuring that I stayed close to the data, rather than basing codes on assumptions and generalisations (Charmaz, 2014).

Moreover, I discussed my coding approach and its outcomes regularly with my supervisors at supervisory meetings. Finally, I ensured a consistent approach by re- coding the same transcript after a lapsed time-period (two weeks) and compared the results. These actions ensured that the analysis and conclusions drawn reflect a methodical and rigorous coding process. The initial round of coding resulted in the production of the following codes and sub-codes.

Code Sub-code

Personal change Project change

PerC ProC

Training by NGO TrNgo

Volunteer tourists Feedback VolFbk

Guide Intervention GdIvn

Peer learning PFbck

Experiential learning ExLrn

Social networks SocN

Personal relationship with facilitating NGO

PrlNgo

Personal relationship with project manager/s

PrlPm

Personal/family circumstances IndCir

Space of the home SpaHom

Location of home LocHom

Financial situation FinSit

Planning and investment to secure future rewards

ForPla

Friendly/engaging FreEng

Criticisms of projects CriPro

Uneven distribution of economic benefits

UneEco

Power not evenly distributed in organising projects

UnePow

The individual priorities over community well-being

IndCom

Economic

development EcoDev

Increasing number of volunteer

tourists IncVol

Receiving gifts from volunteer tourists

RecGif

Presenting culture positively

PrCuPv _{Challenge negative stereotypes}

Share positive aspect of culture

ChlStr ShPsCul

99 Volunteer Tourists Code Sub-code Perceived identity in community VlinO

Identify being a volunteer Identify being a tourist

IdVol idTou Performance of a volunteer identity VlSma

Othering community members Identifying/searching out signs of being a volunteer

Distinguishing volunteer identity to tourist identity

Self- monitoring actions

OthH IdsVl DiVi VolSem Change from being a volunteer tourist PerChg

Perception of position in world Change in life course

PerPoW ChgLc

During this process, I continued to reflect on Buen Vivir through critical reading and attending academic conferences. From my immersion in the host communities, however, I knew there was little evidence of Buen Vivir discourses and practices overtly influencing how the volunteer projects functioned. As a result, I decided to explore the discursive construction of Buen Vivir and tourism at the national level, thereby allowing empirical evidence from the local communities to be situated within the national context of tourism in Ecuador. As Crang and Cook, (2007: 10) note:

“Local cultures cannot be ring-fenced from large-scale, political and economic processes because the global is not 'out there', intruding annoyingly on the study, but is always 'in here', only existing throughvariously connected localities.”

As a result, this Third Stage of the empirical investigation took the form a critical genealogical approach, dissecting how tourism in Ecuador had developed over time. This involved conducting document analysis on a range of on-line material including Ecuadorian political documents, News Broadcasters, and travel publications. The principle source of information was the Ecuadorian Ministry of Tourism website, which contains promotional material, press releases, position papers, and speeches by Ecuadorian officials. In total 70 documents were accessed, in which I searched for

information relating to the Ecuadorian state’s strategy for tourism development, paying particular attention to references to Buen Vivir. I focused mainly on the period, 2007 to the present day, which reflects Rafael Correa’s election as President and the incorporation of Buen Vivir into Ecuadorian Constitution. However, I also included some material prior to this period if useful for the wider historical context. I made copies of the relevant pages and secured them safely on my computer, whilst also printing a hard copy for my records. This process lasted for two months, with all empirical evidence gathered by March 2017. A summary of the sources of information utilised in Chapter Four is summarised in Table 11 below:

Table 11. Sources from online search of documents relating to tourism development in Ecuador

Source Type of document

2009-2013 National Plan Government documents 2013-2017 Plan National Plan

Ecuadorian Tourism Ministry Website

40 different notices, promotional material and press releases, speeches at award ceremony

USAID Strategic Tourism Market Plan For Ecuador 1986

Aid document Travel Weekly online publication

2016

Popular media New Left Review online

publication 2012

Ecologist online publication 2015 Online Blog Ecuador Beach Front property 2015

Reuters website News Broadcasters Telesur website

CNN Travel

Doctoral Thesis Academic

To analyse these documents I again coded the data, with the information from these documents being read multiple times, each line numbered, and notes made next to areas of potential interest. This approach is supported by Blair (2015: 16) who notes that “content analysis is dependent on creating labels (codes) that can be applied to data in order to develop data into meaningful categories to be analysed and interpreted”. Subsequently, I grouped information together in the form of codes and sub codes. The results of this process is displayed in codes and sub-codes below

101 Code Sub-code Market mechanisms MarMec Branding BraIng Promotion ProOn

Standard and Certification schemes StaCer

Improve business environment BusEnv

Tourism as a means for

development TorDev

Focus on economic growth EcoGro

Contribution to GDP ConGDP

Contribution to employment ConEmp

Increase visitor numbers VisNo

Evidence of the Ecuadorian State adopting Buen Vivir PakBue Small-scale SmaSl

Environmentally conscious EncCon

Socially equitable and responsible SocRe

In light of the importance given to tourism by the Ecuadorian State, I had expected to find examples of practices being implemented to achieve Buen Vivir. However, although evidence of Buen Vivir being incorporated into State discourses was apparent, as the above coding indicates, the practices employed reflected those typical of a neo-liberal State. Through analysing the discourses and practices of the Ecuadorian state in relation to tourism and Buen Vivir, I began to notice links between the processes occurring at the national and community level. In particular, how the tourism industry functions in and reinforces the existing neo-liberal capitalist system, whilst limiting the space for alternative worldviews such as Buen Vivir to be fully realised. As a result, I returned to my interview/focus group/diary dataset and began re-coding the empirical evidence by merging, revising, and grouping codes into categories. The categories created reflect a “group of content that shares a commonality” (Graneheim and Lundman 2004: 107), interpreting the underlying meaning of these categories resulted in the emergence of themes. The codes, categories and themes underpinning the thesis can be seen in table 12 that merges the interview and document analyses:

Table 12. Codes, categories and themes underpinning the thesis

Code Category Theme

Personal change

Project change Desired outcome of volunteer tourism projects

Professionalisation of indigenous group members Economic

development Presenting culture positively

Social networks Social capital Human Capital Financial capital Built capital

The importance of different forms of capital to explain indigenous members involvement and perception of volunteer tourism

Personal/family circumstances

Criticisms of projects

Focus on living well rather than better

Focus on community rather than individual

The mobilisation of Buen Vivir discourses to resist neo-liberal discourses and practices

Market

mechanisms Use of neo- liberal

practices for tourism

development Practices of the neo-liberal developmental model packed within

Buen Vivir discourses.

Tourism as a means for development Evidence of the Ecuadorian State adopting Buen Vivir Use of Buen Vivir discourses by Ecuadorian State Perceived identity in community Reflexive volunteer tourist

Neoliberal subjectivity of volunteer tourists Performance of a volunteer identity Self- management Change from being a volunteer tourist Individual action

103 I used the themes emerging from this process to answer the Research Questions, as Figure 12 illustrates below:

Figure 12 Themes and their links to research questions