Tourism in the Anthropocene Park?New Analytic Possibilities

Dr. Amelia MoorePublished in the International Journal of Tourism Anthropology 2015 Vol.4, No.2, pp.186 - 200

Amelia holds a B.A. in Environmental Biology from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of California Berkeley. She is a sociocultural anthropologist studying environmental politics and the social worlds of field ecology and tourism in the Caribbean with a special focus on The Bahamas. 

As one of the largest industries in the world, tourism is subject to constant reinvention.Anthropological engagements with tourism reflect this multiplicity through an attentionto the dynamics of culture and power within the tourism industry at both global andlocal levels. As tourism scholars we must be on the lookout for trends in travel anddestination dynamics, and we must craft conceptual tools to analyze emergent trends.In this article, I outline a broad theme in travel design and branding— sustainabletourism— and I relate this theme to an emergent framing for global change— theAnthropocene. This concept has moved from the realm of the natural sciences,beginning to gain traction within the humanities and social sciences. In light of thespread of this idea, I utilize concepts from critical studies of nature and design to pointtowards possible new research areas for scholars of tourism.

Keywords: Anthropocene, Sustainable Tourism, InterspeciesEthnography, Socioecologics, Global Assemblages, NatureculturalDesign, Tourist Products, Tourist Markets, Ecotourism, Emergence

Introduction

I have been visiting islands in The Bahamas for over a decade, meeting people in the quiet settlements of the rural Family Islands as well as in the urban congestion of the capital city onNew Providence island. I have always been struck by the challenges of small island life in which most fuel, food, and goods must be imported, storms threaten livelihoods and public safety every hurricane season, and aquifers, wetlands, and coral

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reefs are perpetually under threat of degradation. There are many who argue that these challenges are only becoming more acutein the face of regional and global shifts in climate, declines inthe health of fisheries, and increased conversion of terrestrial and marine ecosystems as a result of human development (Jackson et al. 2001, Balmford 2002, Hamilton 2003, London 2004).

At the same time, I have always been struck by the pervasiveness of the tourism industry in the archipelago. Tourism provides direct and indirect employment for thousands, and it is touted as the reason for the relatively high standard of living enjoyed by Bahamian citizens (Cleare 2007). But again,there are those who warn that the country’s reliance on the large“paradise” resort model of tourism is an unsustainable gamble because it is over-consumptive of fragile resources, insensitive to Bahamian history and culture, and increasingly overshadowed bycompetition from other beach resort destinations around the world(Strachan 2002, Bethel 2008).

The general sense is that life in the islands is precarious,and indeed, Bahamian historians point out that a certain level ofprecariousness has always been an aspect of life in the region (Craton & Saunders 2000). However, it is increasingly evident inthe Bahamian context that the instabilities of small island life and the uncertainties of the tourism industry are linked phenomena. In the face of these realizations, new destination developments have been proposed or initiated while established resorts have altered their practices, all claiming to address thetwin issues of ecological and economic sustainability: a new boutique hotel and second home community is being built on the island of Abaco claiming to utilize local sustainable building materials, energy efficient design, on-site farming, and New Urbanist planning methods; a design team from Harvard University is conducting research in the Exuma islands, hoping to re-conceptualize the unsustainable form of tourist development in that island chain by introducing new ideas for resource use, transportation, and waste disposal while aligning island development with regional climate change predictions; and BreezesResort in the capital city of Nassau has instated a Sustainability Management Team to oversee energy efficient

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infrastructure, the composting of waste, and vegetable gardening (Anonymous 2013).i

This article is not a case study of recent sustainable development in The Bahamas. Instead, I take emergent events in the Bahama Islands as my starting point for a brief conceptual exploration of the shifting face of tourism on a changing planet.As one of the largest industries in the world, tourism enterprises are subject to constant reinvention, adapting to changing times and spreading into ever more diverse locations andsituations. Anthropological engagements with tourism reflect this multiplicity with an attention to the dynamics of culture and power and through analyses of host and guest dynamics, indigeneity and authenticity, the global spread of tourism, conflicts over tourism, and evolving forms of tourist productionsand products (Macleod & Carrier 2010, Stronza 2001, Smith 1989, Grabrun 1983). As scholars of tourism we must be on the lookout for shifting trends in travel and destination dynamics, and we must always be crafting conceptual tools with which to fruitfullyanalyze emergent developments.

In this article, I begin by briefly outlining what I see as an evolving theme in travel design and branding— sustainable tourism— and I relate this theme to an emergent framing for contemporary global change and philosophies of life— the Anthropocene. Throughout the article I use “emergent” to refer to the way larger trends come to be through the combined actions of multiple, localized processes. Emergent events are entangled with dominant and fading trends, such that they are not purely “new” but rather contingent and negotiated sociocultural processes. The events I discuss here are emergent for practitioners, developers, and experts in the global sciences andtourism industries—the domains of thought and action that shape the discourse of sustainable tourism and its attendant materializations. I therefore not only describe the evolution ofsustainable tourism but I also discuss how the Anthropocene concept has moved from the realm of the natural sciences, gainingpopularity within the humanities and social sciences as they reflect trends in cultural life. In light of the spread of the Anthropocene idea and the multiple perspectives on global change it represents, I conclude with what I see as promising concepts

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from critical studies of nature and design to point towards new areas of research interest for scholars of sustainable tourism.ii

Tourism and the Anthropocene

The Anthropocene idea espoused by the scientific community is basically this: human activities affect all aspects of planetary systems such that these activities are now the main driver of increasingly rapid planetary change, permanently upsetting the stable Earth systems of the Holocene Epoch (Crutzen 2002; Crutzen& Steffen 2003). “The Anthropocene” is the term Earth scientistshave proposed to demarcate this transformation in the geological record. Climate change is the most well known arena of anthropogenic planetary change, and relatively unchecked carbon emissions are predicted to raise global temperatures in the coming years, resulting in melting glaciers, elevated sea levels,and shifts in climatic patterns around the world (Stern 2006, IPCC 2007). However, the Anthropocene idea points to more than just the human tendency to emit carbon into the atmosphere. Steffen et al. state that,

“Climate change is only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to the carboncycle, humans are (i) significantly altering several other biogeochemical,or element cycles, such as nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur, that arefundamental to life on the Earth; (ii) strongly modifying the terrestrialwater cycle by intercepting river flow from uplands to the sea and,through land-cover change, altering the water vapor flow from the land tothe atmosphere; and (iii) likely driving the sixth major extinction event inEarth history. Taken together, these trends are strong evidence thathumankind, our own species, has become so large and active that it nowrivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioningof the Earth system.” (2011, p. 843).

At present, the Anthropocene idea is still pending formal adoption by the scientific community (Waters & Zalasiewicz 2013).However, there has arguably never been more international attention to anthropogenic change, and this attention has never spanned across so many arenas of thought and action as it does inthis contemporary moment. It is not surprising then, that the

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idea of unprecedented human induced global change, what some callthe “great acceleration” (Gaffney 2011), should become relevant to cultural disciplines as well as industries and economic markets outside the purview of the natural sciences.

As I will explicate below, the Anthropocene idea has inspired a range of critical engagements within the social sciences and humanities, where it is considered representative ofa certain perception of the relation between nature and culture in the early 21st Century. One aspect of scholarly interest in the Anthropocene is the way in which the idea of anthropogenic global change influences the creation of new markets and products. This influence includes the biotechnological cloning of extinct or endangered species, the development of alternative forms of energy and resource-efficient buildings and infrastructure, and the production of locations and landscapes asrepositories of emergent forms of value. It is my observation that this influence also includes the tourism industry.

Stronza has pointed out that the most fascinating cultural questions for the social sciences are relevant to the investigation of tourism as a powerful social practice. Responding to observed trends in 2001, she noted that “the tourism industry has taken major shifts toward goals of economic and ecological sustainability, local participation, and environmental education,” and she argued, “just as the industry has changed, so too should our research objectives” (p. 263). Stronza admonished scholars of tourism to focus their energies onnew forms of tourism, especially ecotourism (considered then as an exemplar of sustainable travel), and the how and why of local host and tourist participation in these relatively new processes.

In the years since Stronza made these observations about thespread of ecotourism, ideas about the shape of sustainable development and the social role of ecology have been in flux.iii Ecotourism has come under fire as an illusory objective that moreoften than not promotes the pursuit of tourist dollars over the desires of local communities and their environments, encouraging the spread of neoliberal practices and concomitant transformations of value (West & Carrier 2004; Fletcher & Neves 2012). This time period also includes the coalescence of the Anthropocene concept within the Earth sciences, and an increase

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in the visibility of arguments about pervasive anthropogenic global change. I argue that these ideas have rippled throughout the tourism industry in various ways, requiring that we adjust our research objectives yet again.

Without going into great detail, the emergence of today’s sustainable tourism can be characterized as an evolution over thelast several decades. In a general sense, tourism and “the quality of the environment” (in terms of natural, cultural, and historical attractiveness) have been linked throughout much of the 20th Century (Dougherty & Manning 1995). Tourism as a form of development has been promoted in the “developing world” since at least the 1980’s in an attempt to couple goals for economic growth and environmental conservation (Mbaiwa & Stronza 2010, Pegas & Stronza 2010, Mbaiwa & Stronza 2011). This coupling intensified around the paradigm of biodiversity conservation and ecotourism in the 1990’s (West 2006), as did critiques of ecotourism and sustainable tourism and research into sustainable tourism (Buckley 2012).

The themes in sustainable tourism that developed over time (and which remain heavily debated) are of tourism’s ability to simultaneously maximize local community benefits and capacities and to protect environmental resources via market incentives, though there is no great agreement over definitions and interpretations of sustainability (Hunter-Jones 1997). These trends have tended to nullify the once prevalent perception of a contradiction between economic growth and protection of the planet, and now partnerships between sustainability organizationsand capitalist enterprise actively reshape nature and society andproduce emergent forms of value, allowing for even more capital expansion and accumulation (Igoe, Neves, & Brockington 2010).iv However, some scholars make the case that there is no such thing as “sustainable tourism” by definition (except when the goal is to sustain the industry itself (Coccossis 1996) and middle class lifestyles based on economic growth (Mowforth & Munt 2003)), and that tourism should only be used as a tool for sustainable development in situations where regional communities can use tourism to achieve their own goals instead of these communities being used by developers in the serial reproduction of basic tourist forms (Wilson 2006, Moscardo 2008).

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Linking the evolution of sustainable tourism to the emergentAnthropocene idea, I note that it is only fairly recently that some tourism scholars have shifted from analyzing localized sustainable development projects towards using the premise of “aggregate human impacts” on planetary systems as a justificationfor sustainable reconceptualization within the tourism industry as a whole and for renewed scholarship on sustainable tourism (Buckley 2012 p.529, Moore 2010). I believe that the lenses of environmental and community benefits, commodification and the spread of capital, and the fetishism of social difference and authenticity that characterize the study of sustainable tourist practices continue to be worthwhile analytic orientations, and yet I argue that these shifts call for further concept work. I am tracking this Anthropocene-oriented shift and the ways the global tourism industry has embraced a broad form of sustainable tourism for the purposes of international branding and legitimacy. I am extending the arguments of Buckley, who stipulated in 2012 that research on industry reactions to “responsibility in light of global change” is a promising area offuture study (p. 537).

What I am starting to think of as “the new ecotourism”, but what is still commonly referred to as “sustainable tourism”, is characterized by tourist ventures that now consciously address some of the contradictions inherent in the industry and the growing preoccupation with global change through destination design or branding (also see Mowforth & Munt 2003). The international tourism industry (admittedly a highly differentiated mass of enterprises at all scales) is beginning torecognize that tourism is a major contributor to global change interms of carbon emissions and resource use related to the movement of millions around the world for the purposes of touristrelated travel (UNWTO 2008, Blue & Green Tomorrow Communications Ltd. 2013). One response to this has been the combination of tourist travel with carbon offsetting schemes (Bumpas & Liverman 2008, Yang 2010), and another has been the adoption of a discourse of carbon neutrality as a destination amenity (Gossling2009, Moore 2010). Science tourism (the travel of students and scientists) and scientifically informed nature tourism are also increasingly promoted in places that exhibit visible evidence of

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social and ecological vulnerability to anthropogenic global change, such as small island regions in the Caribbean and Pacific, the Arctic, Greenland, and tropical forests (West 2008, Lemelin et al. 2010, Norum 2013). In other words, tourism that attempts to address anthropogenic global change (again, what is glossed as today’s sustainable tourism) is now considered a viable brand platform used to market locations at all scales of development. In terms of emergence, I see these trends as perhapsthe next generation of ecotourism in which the “eco” label is less appealing for some because the idea of visiting and conserving “pristine nature” no longer lures in the way it once did.

In sum, I see the Anthropocene idea reflected in contemporary sustainable tourism via new products and processes within the industry as it attempts to expand into new areas and produce new clients. How should we, as scholars of tourism and tourist practices, conceptualize research in a world where the perception of pervasive anthropogenesis is becoming the new normal? Thomas has said that, “given that every habitat in the world is to some extent affected by human activities, we already inhabit an Anthropocene Park, within which every action we take or decide not to take (including the control of greenhouse gas emissions) has consequences” (2011, p. 497). I argue that in order to investigate sustainable tourism in the world as Anthropocene park, we must integrate recent analytic categories stemming from scholars of contemporary relations of nature and culture and design into tourism studies.

The Anthropocene Turn

The social sciences have long been interested in the relation between nature and culture, actively questioning the assumption of their ontological opposition (Strathern 1992, Knorr Cetina 1992, Franklin 2003). However, there has recently been a proliferation of work that goes further, asking what the world looks like if we remove these categorical limitations to our understanding, testing new concepts and analytics that unsettle the distinction between the human and the nonhuman, the artificial and the natural (Raffles 2002, Haraway 2003, 2008,

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Kirksey & Helmreich 2010, Kohn 2013). Within this analytic milieu, the Anthropocene idea has become an opportunity for further conceptual experimentation, sparking what could be seen as an “Anthropocene turn” that links the claims of the Earth sciences about the prevalence of anthropogenesis with the theoretical concerns of the social sciences and humanities.

The fascination with the Anthropocene idea outside of the natural sciences can be summarized by Scranton, who recently saidthat, “the greatest challenge the Anthropocene poses may be to our sense of what it means to be human” (2013, no page number). This is reflected in the work of the postcolonial historian, Chakrabarty, who has questioned the idea of the human as the soleobject of research for humanistic studies, calling instead for new analytic categories that recognize the capacity of humanity as a species and force of nature in par with other biogeochemicalprocesses (2009, 2012). He asks, what might the humanities look like when scholars no longer take the human for granted, assumingit is somehow a distinct entity that can be understood without acknowledging other forms of agency or responsibility?

Other scholars have made their own Anthropocene turns by examining the meaning of anthropogenically-induced invasive species and the shape of invasion in specific contexts and places(Fortwangler 2009, Moore 2012), or by examining transformations in the rationale behind the practice of ecology and conservation in light of the decline of the scientific belief in an untouched “Nature” (Lorimer 2012). The anthropologists, Tsing and Bubandt,have begun a multi-year research project based at Aarhus University in Denmark to investigate anthropogenic landscapes around the world. They write,

“Human projects do not always result in the landscapes of which we dream. Climate change is one example of unintentional design; new zoonotic diseases are another. As these examples suggest, we tend to imagine unintentional design as a danger to human survival. But what if anthropogenic landscapes were sometimes also sites of new designs for living—unplanned but still life-enhancing?” (Bubandt 2014, no page number).

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Finally, Latour has argued that the processes of the natural world are moving from the status of “mere décor for human history” to the role of “principle actor” in contemporary geopolitics (2013a, p. 3). For Latour, the geopolitics of the Anthropocene involve re-inscribing planetary boundaries as political boundaries and reconceiving of humans as “Earthbound”, irreducibly fused to the planet’s living processes.

Not coincidentally, this Anthropocene turn coincides with what some have described as the current “ontological turn” in critical studies (Latour 2013b). Within this ontological turn, ontology now refers to, “the multiplicity of forms of existence enacted in concrete practices, where politics becomes the non-skeptical elicitation of this manifold of potentials for how things could be.” (Holbraad, Pederson & Vivieros de Castro 2014, no page number, their italics). The Anthropocene idea excites scholars precisely because of its transformative potential for moving us well beyond routine studies of human-environmental interaction in which the human and the natural are a priori categories.v Engaging the Anthropocene idea through critical reconceptualization means engaging emergent practices as political and ethical experiments in 21st Century living. Even tourism studies can benefit from creatively and empirically exploring the possibilities stemming from these analytical reorientations.

New Analytic Possibilities

How can scholars of tourism make the most of these interrelated Anthropocene shifts in global science, the tourism industry, and academic theory? The analytic possibilities inspired between tourism studies and the Anthropocene idea are likely extensive and possibly inexhaustible, and I cannot possibly list every possible interesting and useful analytic tool that might stem from the integration of tourism studies and the Anthropocene turn. What follows is instead a brief discussion of a few concept areas that I think might enliven the study of emergent forms of sustainable tourism. The concept areas I have selected are 1) interspecies ethnography, 2) socioecologics, 3) global assemblages, and 4) naturecultural design. My purpose is not to

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investigate whether the Anthropocene is “really happening”, but to begin a creative engagement with the idea as an entry for developing further integrations within studies of sustainable tourism and the field of tourism studies in general.

1) “Interspecies ethnography” is a label given to research that actively investigates relations between human and nonhuman beings in order to bring to light crucial connections that are otherwise taken for granted in the examination of human society.vi Tsing (2012, following Haraway 2008) argues that interspecies connections can be found in our surroundings and within our own bodies, and that an attention to these connectionscan provide alternative explanations or justifications for the course of human events and the forms of dependency and love that motivate human behavior. What are the interspecies connections that animate tourist enterprises in today’s era of global change?Tourism scholars must explore tourist ventures designed around specific species and non-human others (such as farms, fisheries, zoos, nature parks, protected areas, endangered species encounters, and the creation of flagship species for tourist attractions) in order to elucidate the evolving ways interspeciesrelations are actively crafted to promote sustainable goals, sustainable branding, and to uphold travel-based livelihoods.

For example, in The Bahamas, I have been following the sale of invasive lionfish (a well-known Anthropocene event) by restaurants that cater to tourists. These restaurants market the species as both a local and sustainable delicacy. In this case, the tourism industry is making its relationship to a specific non-human other explicitly visible in order to mold a product forthe Anthropocene era. And in addition to the intentional creation of interspecies networks, we must also focus on the lessvisible living systems and nonhuman keystones that hold tourist ventures together on an everyday basis such as the connections that allow for the viable drinking water, food, energy, or ecological attractions that make a destination possible in the first place (Moore 2012, Lowe 2006, Hayden 2003). What can we learn about agency and responsibility within tourist enterprises from an expanded understanding of who and what constitutes those enterprises?

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2) “Socioecologics” is a term I use to refer to emergent forms of reason that underpin scientific arguments about the management of social and ecological processes. Scientific conclusions about the relationship between human activities and environmental impacts or expert assessments of the linkages between economic and ecological systems across scales (for examples see Holling 2001, Anderies et al. 2004) have become an ever more important frame for sustainable tourist enterprises in the form of science-based planning and design. In other words, socioecologics set the terms and narratives that count as relevant knowledge used for decision making in many contexts. Socioecologics are also becoming increasingly available as the language through which some people mold distinct social identities and individual subject positions.

In my own work I trace the way Bahamian environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) utilize scientific arguments about anthropogenic global change in their outreach to the government, the tourism industry, and the public in an effort to reshape the ground for destination development and to “green” thevision of paradise many Bahamians have grown up recognizing as their national patrimony and primary product (Strachan 2002). This is one major avenue in which forms of the Anthropocene idea have been introduced in the realm of Bahamian politics. As scholars of tourism, we need to track the authoritative rationales used to explain the relation between social and ecological forms that uphold contemporary sustainable tourist ventures. How are these logics evolving in the face of perceivedglobal change? How do they affect host and guest desires and dynamics? What anxieties do they provoke within the tourist industry (Robbins & Moore 2013)? What were the contingencies necessary for the production of these forms of reason and their application to tourist enterprise (Rabinow 2003)? And what do these logics make possible or preclude?

3) “Global assemblages” is a term stemming from scholarship on contemporary globalization, and it refers to the “ensembles ofheterogeneous elements” (material, collective, and discursive) that constitute contemporary sites of anthropological problem formation (Ong & Collier 2005, p. 4). Rather than inspiring onlylocalized studies, investigations of these heterogeneous

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assemblages must follow processes and problems that are multi-sited and that cross scales and boundaries. Tourism scholars already focus on the international networks that influence the form and stakes of tourism development as an anthropological problem in diverse locales. However, in the context of a world redefined through anthropogenesis, we must expand our focus to identify the technical, political and ethical contours of the global assemblages that produce today’s rapidly evolving sustainable tourism. Ogden et al. explain that, “Global assemblages are socioecological ‘constellations’ that include multinational corporations, development initiatives, political treaties and other forms of governance, lending organizations, and non-governmental organizations” and they argue that these assemblages are “new, transnational forms of socioecological governance” (2013, p. 342).

In addition to the socioecological arguments made by ENGOs (mentioned above), I am also interested in international hotel certification programs such as Green Globe and LEED that shape infrastructure, systems management, and building decisions beyondthe scope of existing national policy in The Bahamas. We must investigate the shape of the global socioecological assemblages that push the self-conscious greening of the tourism industry in the Anthropocene era. We must make sure that our analyses of these assemblages include an attention to the markets and brand strategies that sell sustainable tourist ventures along with our attention to material processes of energy and resource exploitation and the socioecologics that frame these events. Within these assemblages, we must also attempt to highlight the less visible or acknowledged linkages between extractive industries and tourism (Davidov 2012), new forms of consumption and tourism (Buscher & Igoe 2013), and we must be capable of recognizing when sustainable tourism designed in the name of the Anthropocene is more accurately understood as form of reterritorialization or “green grabbing” (Fairhead, Leach & Scoones 2012).

4) Finally, what I think of as “naturecultural design and technology” is an underexplored aspect of the assemblages of sustainable tourism. A heightened attention to design and engineering is central to the practice of reimagining life

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through the lens of the Anthropocene idea. This is visible within designs for the built environment of human habitation as well as within large-scale plans for the management of integratedearth systems (Allenby 2008).

For example, I am keenly interested in the rise of endangered coral restoration projects as part of the sustainable branding of large hotels and destination design in The Bahamas. Over the next few years I will be following the ways in which living corals are enrolled in artfully designed marine landscapesfor “sustainable” tourist consumption and appreciation. These projects are designed to provide a spectacular visual experience,nurture threatened coral species, and relieve “natural” reefs of undue dive and snorkel pressure. This design focus leads me to ask, what tools, materials, or techniques are imagined as practical for new tourist development in the context of global change? What possible transformations of space and place will result from these developments? What cares and concerns are drawntogether within designs for new destination development (Latour 2008)? And what models and aesthetics circulate as ideals withinthe design worlds of sustainable tourism (Roy 2011)? We must continue to keep in mind that all this design for living is occurring in the context of ever-evolving global “tourist products” and the international competition for tourist arrivals,and those considerations matter as much as ever (Jefferson & Lickorish 1991).

Ellis et al. have argued that, “like the Anthropocene itself, building scientific understanding of the human role in shaping the biosphere requires both sustained effort and leveraging the most powerful social systems and technologies everdeveloped on this planet” (2013, p. 1). I contend that this effort is already spilling over into other areas affected by the assemblages of knowledge and power concerned with the global environment. The tourism industry, which has the great capacity to adapt its products according to the significance of the day, cannot be omitted from our understanding of these events and processes.

The four loose concept areas that I have casually introducedhere are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. It is not likelythat they could be studied in isolation in many instances. And

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of course, as scholars of tourism, we must integrate these emergent concept areas with our ongoing attention to power, culture, and host/guest dynamics. Just as the conceptual windowsopened by the Anthropocene idea broaden the possibilities for what counts as anthropology and social science, so to do they broaden the possibilities for what we can study when we set out to examine contemporary tourism.

Conclusion

I would like to conclude by offering a bit of a caveat about the arguments I have briefly presented here. I don’t want to over-determine what can count as an integrated analytic tool kit for the investigation of sustainable tourism in the Anthropocene, nordo I want to overly delineate what the “right” kind of examples might be in this context. I have conceived of this article as a concept piece, and I want to leave as much room for the creative application of these ideas in as many appropriate instances as possible, encouraging the generation of more concepts and research areas.

This has not been a case study piece, however, I find the research implications highly relevant for my own work in The Bahamas and within small island and coastal regions generally. These are areas that have been identified as especially vulnerable to global change and increasingly dependent on the tourist industry. Further, the concepts I outline here will be relevant to case study research on sustainable tourism in any location where arguments about pervasive anthropogenic change inspire reinvention of the industry. I see transformations in tourist ventures as forms of active experimentation in what it means to live on an unstable and precarious planet. Learning to live this way is, for some, our biggest challenge. Learning how to think and conduct research differently is a large part of thischallenge.

Tourist ventures evolve with the changing times, bringing with them the developmental aspirations of tourism dependent nations, and inspiring ever more experimentation. The shape of new tourist ventures matters because these ventures are the manifestation of political choices and meaning-filled arguments

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about the shape of the world. Whatever future enterprises followthese developments will be in direct response to the successes and failures of the current international preoccupation with anthropogenesis, and we must begin to trace the implications of this event. The expanding scope of tourist engagements with the idea of planetary anthropogenesis will continue to inspire conceptual innovation within tourism studies, but through it all we must attend to the ironies of expanding tourism to new marketsin a world that many argue can no longer sustain the fantasy of constant economic growth, market expansion, and accelerated travel. To what extent do emergent ventures green wash their involvement in global assemblages of socioecological exploitation? To what extent do they address those ironies head on or exist as model designs for living, claiming to subvert these paradigms?

Finally, as I mentioned above, other “vulnerable” locations in the face of the Anthropocene idea will also be subject to similar productions and strategies and deserve our attention as tourism scholars. Beyond small island regions, sustainable tourist ventures designed around global change and anthropogenesis exist in the Arctic, in glaciated mountains, in regions undergoing water scarcity, and in areas of forest degradation. They also exist in diverse sites of ecological restoration and socioecological invention. If ecotourism was an emergent trend of the late 20th Century, developments in sustainable tourism and green rebranding now center more squarelyon acceptable forms of anthropogenesis while reimagining designs for living and traveling in an anthropogenic age. It is my contention that these shifting trends, and the analytic categories we cultivate to study them, will eventually become mainstream.

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Notes

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i In 2011 The Bahamas was elected to the Advisory Council of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Tourism (Bahamas Ministry of Tourism 2011). ii It might be possible to argue that the idea of “the environment” isno longer the locus of the activism and energy of environmentalism, such as it is, in the early 21st Century. However, for my purposes I will attempt a blunt characterization of the changes within environmental politics, writ large, of the last sixty years. The environmental movement of the second half of the 20th Century left itsmark on international politics, generating a whole cadre of policies and organizations designed around protecting local environments from anthropogenic degradation while shoring up asymmetrical relations between the global north and south that can be felt to this day (Haq & Paul 2012). As it evolved along with the fields of ecology and economics, environmentalism became a global institution and industry in itself, branching into biodiversity conservation, ecotourism, and sustainable development among other areas (Worster 2008). And in thelast thirty to forty years, the scientific and political assemblages built around documenting and ameliorating climate change have become one of the most well known components of contemporary environmentalism (Dalmedico & Guillmot 2009). It is only within the last fourteen years that another wrinkle has fully manifested in the face of international environmentalism: the Anthropocene idea. iii Arguably, the social role of ecology is in flux as ecologists themselves increasingly advocate for a vision of humanity and nature as co-evolving systems, rejecting the notion that these are distinct realms. What ecological research and responsibility looks like within this reframing has been debated for the last few decades. iv Several scholars have argued that the ways in which tourism is actually consumptive (in terms of people, landscapes, nature, and experiences) are now obfuscated in the process of developing markets for sustainable tourism especially ecotourism (Meletis & Campbell 2007, Igoe, Neves, & Brockington 2010). v But see Crist (2013) for an alternative interpretation. vi Often considered interchangeably, multispecies and interspecies ethnography both ask scholars to consider the role of the non-human in our investigations of life and living. However, I think that Tsing’s “interspecies” (2012) refers more directly to understanding the complex relationships between forms of life whereas Kirksey & Helmreich’s “multispecies” (2010) is more of an umbrella term that refers to symmetrical studies of the human and non-human in general.