Empowerment for Sustainable Tourism Development

Trevor H.B Sofield

Aiming to explore theoretical advances in tourism studies, this book explores the triadic relationship between tourism, sustainable development and empowerment. While tourism has begun to focus on community consultations, the process has tended to follow the path of development for communities rather than development by communities. In many cases the result has been disempowerment rather than empowerment.

This study goes beyond a focus on the impacts of tourism to explore the relevance of a body of political, economic, sociological, anthropological and development theory to formulate a synthesized construct of empowerment which provides a useful standpoint to consider the community/tourism development relationship.