Social and cultural capitals in tourism resource governance: the essential lenses for community focussed co-management

Abstract

This paper investigates the relative importance of social and cultural capitals in (re)shaping a tourism resource governance approach for supporting sustainable livelihood outcomes. We apply a ‘Capitals Co-management for Sustainable Livelihood Framework (CCSLF)’ in a remote case study setting of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. Within this setting, culturally distant communities living within an environment of historical political distrust provide a highly nuanced context to our investigation. Based on data collected through multiple qualitative methods, we found that power structures and politics play the central role in resource allocation, and thereby hindering community involvement in the decision-making processes. As an engagement mechanism, bridging social capital can play a significant role in facilitating the establishment of co-management structures, through which the community can exercise greater say over the deployment of common property or community resources in tourism development. For a tourism destination comprised of diverse social groups and associated cultural capitals, a co-management structure is seen as having its best application at micro- or local community-levels. This investigation challenges destination area planners to explore the various dimensions of social and cultural capitals to support (community) tourism development.