Action Anthropology: Methodological Innovations in Tourism Research

Abstract

Anthropologists have made a significant contribution to the study of tourism. Action anthropology steers a deliberate path between applied anthropology and interpretative anthropology (Johansen 1992). It can provide the means by which people within a community represent themselves and identify the nature and solution to their problems (Gardener and Lewis 1996). As part of a long-term study of tourism development in Eastern Indonesia, this case study provides a practitioner's view of field methods. Focus groups were used to discuss issues about tourism, for both practical and theoretical ends. Using focus groups enabled the learning to be a two way process. The applied anthropologist in this case helped to make tourism processes intelligible to the villagers while attempting to gain an emic view on tourism and its development in two villages, Ngadha and Flores in Indonesia.