4.1 PRESENTACIÓN DE RESULTADOS
4.1.1 PRESENTACIÓN DE RESULTADOS DE LAS ENCUESTAS
Ethical epistemologies, a notion introduced by Veijola219, call for responsible
relationships between researchers. In this sense, producing knowledge can be seen as an act of opening spaces and welcoming self and other to think differently.220 In my study, hospitality offers not only the theoretical and
methodological frameworks, but also shapes the styles and structure of the book. The division of the work into chapters follows Veijola’s221 approach 215 Dredge et al. 2013; Hales and Jamal 2013.
216 Tucker 2010, 2014.
217 McEwan’s (2009, 275) quotation of Spivak’s thought. See also Sharpe & Spivak 2002, 620. 218 Jennings 2009, 685; see also Hollinshead, 2007; Caton 2013; Chambers & Buzinde 2015. 219 Veijola has introduced the concept of ’Ethical epistemologies of tourism’.
220 Heinämaa 1996, 171; Veijola 1997, 35. 221 Veijola 1997, 43; 2003.
on hospitable writing, which – here – means welcoming the reader to visit the chapters chronologically or in any order she or he chooses.
Following the introduction, the second chapter takes a closer look at the previous research on community participation, not only in tourism research, but also in development studies. Bringing together these two fields of study is necessary in order to understand and anchor the discussions of community participation in relation to different development theories in general. Start- ing with the history of the participatory paradigm in development studies, the chapter traces different ideological, theoretical and practical grounds that have been shaping the debates on community participation since the 1960s. By doing this, the first section of the chapter demonstrates how the ideas of local participation have evolved from the discourses of imperialism towards discourses of small-scale, locally owned, inclusive development, especially in economically marginalized areas. Moving on to the develop- ment of the participatory paradigm in tourism research, I describe how the conceptualizations of community, participation, and empowerment have been approached, and later also criticized, in case studies on community-based tourism. However, while the critique in development studies has targeted paternalism and Eurocentrism in participatory discourses, tourism re- searchers have focused extensively on debating the benefits and limitations of community participation in tourism development. The chapter points out that the discussions on responsible and ethical forms of tourism have overlooked the rich and even contradictory roots of the idea of participation. Enriching and stirring these discussions in tourism require a readiness to re-examine how we relate to others.
Chapter 3 elaborates the theoretical framework of the study: the no- tions of hospitality and welcome as the foundation of ethical relations. My argument is that contemporary search for ethical encounters within tour- ism have primarily been driven by self-oriented, ethno- and Eurocentric ideas of hospitality, participation and responsibility. The call for hospitality can be seen as an interruption of this individualistic tradition of self. The chapter offers a quick overview of Levinas’ work and moves then towards exploring Levinas’ and Derrida’s ideas of welcoming as orientation towards
the other. Their description of ethical subjectivity as a continuum222 of host-
ing and guesting calls attention to the interplay between saying welcome to the other, and receiving the welcome of the other (other’s welcome).223 The
chapter weaves together Derrida’s and Levinas’ discussions on unconditional hospitality and Spivak’s postcolonial critique of emancipatory approaches that silence other ways of knowing and being in the world. In the course of the chapter I suggest that the call for openness towards alterity voiced by postcolonial philosophers can help us to rethink host-guest relations in community participation.
The fourth chapter traces the methodological path of the study by ex- plaining the leaps that I make between the theoretical discussions and my empirical context. By leaps I refer here to the different phases of the ethno- graphic research process where, as tourism scholar Outi Rantala224 suggests,
textual, written and physical fields become intertwined. The chapter begins by calling attention to the previous efforts to decolonize research method- ologies and moving towards methodological discussions that acknowledge one’s privilege and positionality. I describe here how my understandings of ethicality and responsibility in conducting academic research continued to change during my three different field visits to Nicaragua. The third part of the chapter explains in detail how I analyse the empirical data: drawing inspiration from hermeneutical phenomenology, I explore how the hosts and guests welcomed each other into the spaces of dialogue – into spaces of participation. Before moving on to actual written representations of my analysis, I finish the chapter by calling attention again to the perils and limitations of speaking for, and speaking about, the other.
Chapter 5 takes the discussions of unconditional and conditional hos- pitality into the Nicaraguan context. The purpose of the chapter is to offer my interpretation of the historical, political and social context in which the contemporary tourism development encounters take place. Hence, I ask how the historical context might be shaping the ongoing negotiations of local 222 See also Rosello 2001, 18, 118.
223 Derrida AEL 1999, 21-9. 224 Rantala 2011b.
participation in tourism. I begin by describing how the pervasive images of foreign interventions, natural catastrophes and poverty in Nicaragua have recently been enriched with touristic imaginaries225 of exotic nature,
volcanoes, pristine beaches and warm Nicaraguan hospitality. The chapter discusses how, and by whom, tourism development has been welcomed, firstly to Nicaragua, secondly to the rural areas of the country, and thirdly to the farming communities of San Ramón. While rural tourism strategies and development officials seem to celebrate warm Nicaraguan hospitality, the early years of tourism development in San Ramón show that com- munities sought to calculate and negotiate the risks and responsibilities of welcoming tourism. Although rural communities are seemingly included in rural tourism development, local hosts’ concerns become easily overlooked. The chapter claims that even participatory tourism strategies tend to take for granted an unconditional welcome on the part of local communities.
The sixth chapter approaches tourism development encounters from the point of view of the local hosts in San Ramón. The focus here is on the local hosts’ experiences of the encounters where the conditions, risks and responsibilities of tourism development have been negotiated, asking how material conditions in particular might keep shaping these negotiations between self and other. Although the local hosts in San Ramón appreciated the help that they received from tourism experts during the early phases of tourism development, the hosts found the continuous demand for mate- rial improvements to be exhausting. I use the example of an international tourism development programme called Moderniza as an extreme example of a tourism project in which the guests defined and evaluated the material requirements needed in successful tourism enterprises. After a decade of tourism development, the local hosts felt that they were nearly silenced in their own homes by their guests. As a result, both sides of Levinasian idea of ethics and hospitality were missing: on the one hand, tourism experts did not welcome the locals in discourse and, on the other, the local hosts decided to make their welcome towards tourism experts more conditional. 225 For a conceptual approach to tourism imaginaries, see Salazar 2010.
The seventh chapter, the last part of the analysis, changes the perspective from dwelling in unwelcoming encounters towards imagining alterna- tive and more welcoming ways of doing togetherness. The purpose of the chapter is, first, to envision what open and hospitable spaces between hosts and guests could be like and, second, to discuss how these kinds of spaces could be created and promoted in future encounters. The data used for the analysis primarily consists of local hosts’ descriptions of positive face-to-face encounters that have taken place in San Ramón. In light of the analysis, and reflecting on my own experiences about open encounters, the chapter focuses on the questions of sharing one’s space, experiences and, above all, one’s time with the other. Drawing on Levinas’ and Derrida’s226 discussions
of hospitality as ‘interrupting self ’, the chapter suggests that the main prerequisite for ethical encounters might be a readiness to question one’s freedom as a spontaneous, individual subject. In sum, the chapter asks how creating more open and ethical spaces between self and other requires a readiness to unlearn one’s pre-conceptions and privileges and learn anew the significance of the word ‘welcome’.
The concluding chapter summarizes how the privileged tourists, devel- opers and academics tend to visit rural communities with expectations of infinite and completely open hospitality on the part of the ‘other’. At the same time, the self ’s responsibility to welcome and receive become neglected. The tendency of taking for granted that the other welcomes self, although the latter does not say ‘welcome’ to the former, can be seen as a sign of a colonized imagination and heightened levels of individualism. Instead of being surprised that the Levinasian utopia of unconditional welcoming does not seem to reflect the lived experiences in tourism development encounters, I consider his approach to responsibility and receptivity as the fundamental structure of subjectivity to be a valuable goal to aspire to – and yet, inevitably, fall short of – when encountering multiple others.227 By tak-
ing the discussions to another level of abstraction, I conclude here that such premises may undermine the search and promises of developing ethically 226 See, for instance, Levinas T&I 1969, 39; Derrida AEL 1999, 51-2.
sound encounters and representations within tourism; that is, they base the debates and practices of participation on self-centred, or solipsist, ontologies which might be more likely to maintain than disrupt the dualistic distinc- tions between self and other.228 An additional ambition of the concluding
chapter is to address the limitations of the research and to discuss the need for further exploration in tourism within the participatory paradigm.