[Past] 14 Protected Areas: Tourism and Local Development - Spring 2017
CLASS NUMBER:
760-31
INSTRUCTOR:
TIME:
Tuesdays, 6:15-9:00 pm
LOCATION:
TBD
DESCRIPTION:
How do we protect important species, ecosystems and cultural sites when local populations, often desperately poor, compete for the same resources? Is our own role as tourists helpful or destructive? What is “ecotourism” and has it been successful in its goal of achieving multiple objectives? This course integrates several disciplines to study tourism motivation and tourism policy, design and management of protected areas, “gateway communities,” resource governance, sustainable agriculture and forestry, community development, and cultural production and handicrafts. It considers tourism both as a possible source of negative impacts on protected areas and as a potential source of local economic development.
The course will introduce learners to three important bodies of theory--management of natural resources, tourism, and local economic development. It will include literature representative of each field and case studies from both developed and developing countries, covering locations from the tropics to the polar regions. It will also bring in ideas from history, anthropology and literature.
The course will be taught as a seminar. Participants will be required to read one or two books and about two dozen articles. Course requirements:a two-page reading reaction, due each class session; class participation; Sakai discussion board; a 10-12-page research paper on a topic of their choosing; and class presentation of a paper proposal. The instructor has many potential topics to suggest.
Economics, Environmental Studies, Sociology