Abstract
As more people volunteer in the name of 'conservation,' a careful analysis of 'conservation' and the actors' underlying ideologies becomes pressing. Volunteers work on the seemingly similar goal of 'conservation,' but differences in interpretations can have on-the-ground impacts. In this paper, I use interviews and participant interactions to: (1) analyse how volunteers, reserve managers, and volunteer coordinators at an Ecuadorian reserve articulated 'conservation' in their discourse; and (2) examine how different conservation ideologies affected interactions among actors and with the environment. Using political ecology and a modified version of ideological and cluster criticism to analyse discourse, I found actors interpreted 'conservation' differently. I identified three ideologies presented by volunteers: Type I (preservation-oriented), Type-II (mixed), and Type-III (sustainable use-oriented); managers and coordinators held similar views as each other. Different 'conservation' ideologies among actors affected the project (e.g., acceptability of sustainable logging), interactions, perceptions of locals, and general attitudes towards conservation work.
Highlights
The above quotes by international volunteer tourists and an Ecuadorian conservation project manager all reference ‘conservation,’ but close examination reveals unexpected differences and similarities
To discuss the gaps in conservation volunteer tourism research, I use a case study to: (1) systematically explore how ‘conservation’ is articulated by multiple actors, and the resulting on-the-ground ramifications of this discourse; and (2) demonstrate how a political ecology framework can contribute to understanding sociocultural impacts of conservation volunteer tourism projects
Whereas eight T-I and T-II volunteers interchanged ‘conservation’ and ‘preservation’ or defined ‘conservation’ with ‘preservation,’ VF10, a T-III volunteer, exemplified the sustainable-use ideology when discussing wood harvesting: Conservation work is protecting future generations, and if you have to take the resource from the land to protect them, it’s okay, because it’s still done in a sustainable fashion
Summary
The above quotes by international volunteer tourists and an Ecuadorian conservation project manager all reference ‘conservation,’ but close examination reveals unexpected differences and similarities. Given that discourse is “a constructed system of arguments, ideologies and interpretations that shapes social practices, affecting the way we see things and talk about them” (Hay 2000: 187), differences and similarities in how actors discursively articulate ‘conservation’ can have material, on-the-ground impacts on conservation volunteer tourism projects.
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