Ecotourism and Cultural Production ― An Anthropology of Indigenous Spaces in Ecuador

Ecotourism is a unique facet of globalization, promising the possibility of reconciling the juggernaut of neoliberal development with ecological and cultural conservation. This book offers an analysis of ecotourism using a case study of indigenous lowland Kichwa people of Ecuador and their interactions with global systems of valuation and exchange. The production of Kichwa culture takes place in a transnational social field, inhabited by tourists and international NGOs as much as by forest-dwelling Kichwa, in a process that is not limited to small communities on Amazonian riverbanks, but is truly global in scope. Through the lens of ecotourism, Davidov explores the interplay between global fantasies of authenticity and alterity and the environmental and cultural dimensions of indigenous modernities in Ecuador.

Veronica Davidov is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Monmouth University, USA. She is the co-editor of The Ecotourism-Extraction Nexus: Political Economies and Rural Realities of (un)Comfortable Bedfellows (2013).