Ecotourism: Nature, Culture, and Ethnocentrism

Abstract

Before considering Ecuadorian ecoturismo from an ethnohistorical perspective in its national and regional context, it is important to understand it as a local form of the transnational praxis of ecotourism and a regional incarnation of the sustainability branch of the global development project. It is also important to consider its structural and ideological relationship to the issues of alterity and ecoprimitiv-ism. With that consideration in mind, this chapter provides the back-ground necessary for understanding the inception and critiques of ecotourism, the relationship between ecotourism and ethnographic tourism (e.g., the production ofhybrids such as ecoturismo), and serves as a prolegomenon to chapter 3, which focuses on the ethnohistorical realities of ecoturismo emerging as a force in Ecuadorian indigenous ecopolitics and cultural politics.