Goal and objectives of the dissertationGoalTo write an ethnographic analysis of the rise and fall of tourism in SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, especially in Asia, between 1993 and 2013.Objectives To analyse:* how and why tourism, as a tool for poverty reduction, was introduced in SNV;* how international and national development debates influenced tourism as a development practice in SNV;* how and why tourism approaches and tools in SNV did change over time;* how SNV's internal organization did change over the years, and how this influenced tourism as a development practice;* how development results in tourism were measured and presented in SNV;* how and why SNV's tourism as a development practice was phased out.MethodologyThis thesis contributes to 'aidnography', an ethnographic approach to study institutions, organizations and people involved in international development. Aidnography often includes notions of the actor-oriented approaches and actor-network theory and is inspired by Mosse (2005).This thesis is first based on observations gained by working for SNV and partly shaping its tourism development practice. Practices and experiences were written down in notebooks, fieldtrip reports, feasibility studies, progress reports, annual plans, etc. Second, I gathered and analysed other documents and reports reflecting the tourism development practice in SNV. Internal and external SNV documents were collected in 2009 and 2010 from SNV's archives. Third, interviews were held with and feedback was collected from SNV staff and others (hired consultants, staff of local NGOs) related to SNV's policies and practices. The informants had distinctive roles in the development process within or around SNV, and were chosen because they were 'information rich' as a result of their positions, and known to be 'insiders' involved in key policy processes and in practice (Bramwell & Meyer, 2007). Finally, three interviewees read the thesis or parts thereof in order to provide feedback on the accuracy of the narratives.ResultsThe results are presented in relation to each of the six research objectives.1) Tourism emerged as a tool for poverty reduction in SNV when the critical and neoliberal development paradigms of the 1970s and 1980s changed into the alternative/sustainable development paradigm in the 1990s, providing possibilities for tourism to be introduced as an element of integrated rural development.2) The development discourses of SNV and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs have always been closely related. Both also reflected and in turn influenced international development debates. In the 1990s, as a quasi-NGO, SNV was directly part of the ministry and its policies. Around 2000, SNV shifted its main development concepts, emphasizing capacity development. In the second half of the 2000s, partnerships for development became more important. The tourism development practice in SNV was enabled by and followed these paradigm shifts.3) In line with the above, the organization also changed its tourism development approaches and tools. In the first years tourism was an element in sustainable rural development projects, especially in relation to local participatory planning. A few years later, the tourism practice focused more on capacity development in organizations and between organizations, using multi-stakeholder approaches. Finally, in the years before phasing out tourism, private sector engagement and support, and value chain analysis and development, became the dominant approaches.4) The way tourism was organized and implemented in the organization was strongly related to the way SNV changed its internal organization over the years. Particular combinations of six different organizational modes of ordering created possibilities for organizational change and consequently influenced the tourism development practice. …
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May 24, 2024
Moritz Becker + 1
