Relevance: Sociology Paper II
Introduction
Sustainable tourism is a theme of global and local interests, and also a theme that cuts across various disciplines in social science, humanities, arts and culture, and in particular tourism, economics, commerce and development studies.
Meghalaya is acknowledged as one of the states in the North-eastern region of India which attracts visitors. In recent times the number of visitors to the state of Meghalaya has increased tremendously, and particularly to Sohra (earlier known as Cherrapunjee) and Mawlynnong.
Defining Tourism
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO,), ‘Tourism is a social, cultural and economic phenomenon which entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal business and professional purposes. Such persons are called visitors (which may be either tourists or excursionists; residents or non-residents) and tourism has to do with their activities, some of which involve tourism expenditure’. Tourism can be viewed as ‘the movement of people and their stay in space which is both physical and socio-cultural in nature’ (Saarinen & Manwa, 2008). Broadly, one can say that tourism is a temporary and voluntary movement of social actors from their own homes to another place.
‘Tourism provides considerable economic benefits for many countries, regions and communities, its rapid expansion can also be responsible for adverse environmental, as well as socio-cultural impact’ (Neto) but uncontrolled tourism can pose serious threat to environment and tourism itself.
Uncontrolled tourism can pose serious threat to environment and tourism itself. The threats are the intensification of competition for land resources and the increase in the level of pollution of water sources; and the disposal of liquid and solid waste including contamination of waste on the landscape. This shows that tourism is embedded with environment and ecology of the place.
Meanings of Sustainable Tourism
The term sustainable tourism is derived from the concept of sustainable development. Sustainable development is a concept adopted and applied by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development in the year 1999, and subsequently it was adopted in other international conventions and accepted by member countries of United Nations.
Sustainable tourism has four key aspects:
Firstly, Enhancing the well-being of communities; supporting the protection of the natural and cultural environment; quality and tourist satisfaction; and applying adaptive management and monitoring.
Secondly, it seems that sustainable tourism can be achieved by networking; that is, a network of multi-stake holders and collaboration between local communities, local governments, tourism enterprises, local organisations and visitors.
Thirdly, sustainable tourism is a joint venture where every party has specific role and responsibility, mutual and reciprocal support for the benefits of the host state, local communities, the service providers, the satisfaction of visitors, and the sustainability of the environment and ecology.
Fourthly, sustainable tourism is achievable only on the basis of implementing the requisite sustainable tourism framework. It can be said that sustainable tourism is an integration of various elements. Each element has a specific role and link to other parts. This network and integration of parts functioning as one whole determines the process of sustainable tourism.
Meghalaya as a Case of Sustainable Tourism
The state of Meghalaya is known as one of the global bio-diversity hotspots. It has diverse natural beauty and topography, and some of the villages located outside the city of Shillong (i.e., the state capital) are known for their natural tourism sites.
‘sustainable tourism plan for Meghalaya strengthen primary sector (agriculture) and secondary sector (manufacturing and mining) for rapid inputs and raw materials in order to improve overall productivity of the economy’.
holistic growth; effective marketing strategy; quality and attractiveness of tourism experience; promote new opportunities for the future development of tourism; to strengthen the cultural aspects of tourism product in Meghalaya and to actively promote local participation, including community-based tourism; emphasis on training of local youth and tourism stakeholders in the State; and to establish relevant practices in the tourism sector.
key areas to be implemented such as:
basic infrastructure; facilitating private investment; promoting entrepreneurship within the local communities; promoting community participation; ensuring sustainability and conservation of the State’s environment and natural resources, and adhering to minimum standards with regards to environmental performance; ensuring health standards; promoting a clean, healthy and safe environment along with friendly and efficient services; developing a unique brand to attract visitors; and building physical structure that will merge with the surroundings and the natural environment of the area.
Impact of rising Tourism (sociological perspective)
The rise in the number of visitors has also brought out the challenges of managing tourism. This is more so as our tourism is predominantly nature based. It takes many lifetimes to nurture nature and just a single lifetime to destroy it. Hence, sustainability should be at the centre.
The issues related with lack of proper wash rooms and basic facilities on road side, insufficient number of food stalls to cater to the number of tourists; uncontrolled and irresponsible use of the landscape by visitors, the uncontrolled movement of inter-state tourist vehicles and large inflow of visitors in some selected sites, lack of proper waste collection and waste disposal management system in tourist sites.
In recent years the number of hotels, guest houses, and ‘home-stays’ has significantly increased. Similarly, there has been an increase in the number of local food stalls and restaurants. Tourism has provided income generation and employment to local population.
Sohra region has attracted business persons from outside of Sohra, and these business persons have managed to convince some of the traditional authorities to part away with sizable acres of communal land with an understanding that local communities will be given opportunity of employment.
The lack of civic wash rooms has led to visitors travelling to Sohra on the Shillong-Sohra route to relieve themselves in the open. It is undignified and particularly so in the case of women. Public defecation is a threat to health and hygiene.
The ‘book view’ and the ‘field view’ do not correlate with the plan and policy document of the government of Meghalaya. The case of Sohra illustrates the challenges of sustainable tourism.
OTHER DIMENSIONS
Tourism provides the ground for social interactions between the host and he visitor. In this sense, tourism can also be seen from the Weberian view as social action and social relationship;
- social action which includes both failures to act and passive acquiescence, may be oriented to the past, present, or expected future behaviour of others.The “others” may be individual persons, and may be known to the other actor as such, or may constitute an indefinite plurality and maybe entirely unknown individuals’ (Weber). Weber further illustrated the connection between social action and money, ‘Thus, money is a means of exchange, which the actor accepts in payment because he (she) orients his/her action to the expectation that a large but unknown number of individuals he is personally unacquainted with will be ready to accept it in exchange on future occasion’ (ibid).
- According to Weber, social action can be categorised under four types: instrumentally rational; value rational; affectual; and traditional. In the context of tourism, the interaction is between the host and the visitor, in this type of interaction the medium of exchange is money for service, and can be said to be instrumentally rational action.
- Morrison writes, ‘Action is instrumentally rational when the end, the means, and the secondary results are all rationally taken into account and weighed. This involves rational consideration of alternative means to the secondary consequences, and finally of the relative importance of different possible ends.
- In the context of tourism both hosts and visitors are in a process of exchange and both do take into account the ends and means. This kind of social interaction creates the condition of social relationship, and social relationship is meant ‘to denote the behaviour of plurality of actors insofar as, in its meaningful content, the action of each takes into account of that of the others and is oriented in these terms’ (Weber)
8 comments