Dear Colleagues in the Commission for the Anthropology of Tourism (IUAES)
and readers of the mailbase.

The Latin American Studies Association (LASA) is holding its LASA2000
Conference next year between March 16-18, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in
Miami, Florida. This presents an excellent opportunity for those of us
working on tourism research in Ltin America and the Caribbean to present
our research to other colleagues doing tourism research and to other
researchers. It provides an excellent forum in which to present tourism
research to a broad audience of Latin American researchers. LASA is a
prestigious organisaion and is open to collaboration and cooperation with
other scholarly associations. I have proposed to Professor Anthony Maingot
of LASA that the Commission for the Anthropology of Tourism sponsor one or
two panels, and he has welcomed us to submit panel proposals. These must of
course pass through the regular review process, as must the individual
paper abstracts. I have also contacted Professor Michael Hall of the
International Geogrpahical Union Study Group on the Geography of
Sustainable Tourism, and he has expresswed interest in co-sponsoring or
coopoerating with us on the panels. I have also invited the Tourism
Commission of the International Sociological Association and the Committee
on Tourism and Heritage of the Royal Anthropological Society to co-sponsor
the panels with us.
I have drafted two panel proposals which I am submitting to LASA and which
I attach below. One is on Tourism Communities and Environments, the other
is on Urban Tourism, Cultural Heritage and Social Identities. I sincerely
hope that many of you are interested in one of these panels and that you
will submit an individual paper abstract to be included in one of them. If
so, it is urgent that you send me ([log in to unmask]) a 50-75 word
abstract by April 1st, along with 
information on your affiliation and location, fax #, and e-mail address.
You may access LASA on their Home Page.

Later this week I will also send out news about our new Executive and the
Newsletter. I look forward to hearing from you.
Greg Teal

Proposal 1

TOURISM, COMMUNITIES AND ENVIRONMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Most Latin American and Caribbean countries have increasingly turned to
tourism, or included tourism, as a strategy for national economic
development. Tourism has also been seen as a potential mechanism for
redistributing economic investment regionally and locally within nations
and to disadvantaged or excluded regions, communities, and indigenous
peoples. Many communities, including a growing number of indigenous
communities, also approach tourism as a way of bringing economic
development to their localities. However, the multiple and complex
interests of national governments, actors in the global tourism industry,
and communities mean that there is a diverse range of impacts on
communities and their environments. The objective of this panel is to bring
together empirical studies of the complex relations between tourism,
communities and their environments in ways that contribute to our critical
theoretical understanding of tourism. Communities have somtimes been
projected as passive recipients or vessels of tourism development, and
studies have been framed in terms of the impacts of an apparently external
force on idealized communities and pristine environments. Tourism is often
acknowledged as undermining the local environments that initially
contributed to their becoming tourist attractions. While such processes
occur, there are alternative ways of studying tourism and of analyzing the
relations between tourism, communities and environments, including
examining the roles of communities in local tourism development, social
differentiation associated with tourism development, and changing local
social identities as their environments, and their understandings and uses
of their environments, change. By exploring a diversity of empirical
studies using diverse theoretical approaches, the panel also hopes to
contribute to understanding the challenges facing local communities and
their environments and the range of strategies in the face of such
challenges that they or community actors invoke or employ, and how they
grapple with the often conflicting practices of tourism.

Proposal 2

Urban Tourism, Cultural Heritage, and Social Identities in Latin America

The international tourism industry, international development agencies, and
national governments are seeking to diversify tourism markets to develop
competitive advantage and new sources of investment, development, and
accumulation. In Latin America and the Caribbean this has been reflected
in, though not the sole source of, growing eco tourism and cultural
tourism. There has also been a rapid growth of urban tourism. The
exigencies of the international tourism industry and of tourists pose a
number of fundamental challenges to the urban formations that are becoming
or seeking to become more integrated into the industry. In particular, it
poses challenges to urban infrastructure capacity and development, with the
infrastructure of most cities inadequate to meet the basic needs of the
urban populations. It poses fundamental challenges to local understandings
and management of cultural heritage. For the residents of the historic
urban centers that are being positioned as tourist attractions have
generally been subject to forms of economic, social and political exclusion
and marginalization. Will the revitalization of cultural heritage be
carried out in ways which reinforce forms of exclusion, or will the
residents and disadvantaged communities be active participants? The changes
that international tourism and new or different approaches to cultural
heritage also impact on urban social identities as communities' relations
with their cultural heritage and their social organization is transformed
through the complex interactions with global tourism. By exploring these
and other questions, this panel is designed to offer a state of the art
forum for comparative empirical research and theory on urban tourism,
cultural heritage, and social identities.. 


Dr. Gregory Teal
Senior Lecturer
Department of Management and Marketing
Chair, Commission on the Anthropology of Tourism,  of the
International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences;
Director, Australian Centre for Latin American Studies
University of Western Sydney Macarthur
PO Box 555 Campbelltown NSW 2560
Phone: 61 2 46 203-247
Fax: 61 2 46 203799
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

Phone: intl + 61 2 46 203-247
Fax: intl + 61 2 46 203-799
email: [log in to unmask]


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