Tourism in the global periphery: A case study from Manang, Nepal Himalaya

Abstract

This study examines the impacts of tourism in a small mountain village in the Nepal Himalayas. During the 1980s, especially, there was a strong global increase in tourism to “remote” places. This increase consequently led to a concomitant increase in writings on tourism and its effects on local places. In this thesis, I aim to engage critically in these theories, adapting some of them to my specific case study. In particular, writings with background in globalization theories are central. My analysis was both descriptive and theoretical. Through analysis of the farming system, I saw that the consequences of tourism are seldom one-sided and not necessarily ruining local culture. Quite the opposite, my analysis indicates that the income from tourism is essential to uphold the farming system and the settlement in Manang, at least in the form we have seen until now. New theories on tourism and local change have emphasized the goal of local cultural control, and have concluded that in light of a globalized world there might exist new ways of organizing global resistance based on local embeddedness; my findings, although supporting the possibility of such a locally based resistance, challenges this optimistic reasoning. Through discussing the findings in my analysis of the farming system combined with a study of the arranging of a local festival I argue that a place always experience a wide array of different influences. A broader understanding of place and the place-culture nexus is therefore necessary.