A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic

A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China (Studies on Ethnic Groups in China)

While the number of domestic leisure travelers has increased dramatically in reform-era China, the persistent gap between urban and rural living standards attests to ongoing social, economic, and political inequalities. The state has widely touted tourism for its potential to bring wealth and modernity to rural ethnic minority communities, but the policies underlying the development of tourism obscure some complicated realities. In tourism, after all, one personâ€™s leisure is another personâ€™s labor.

A Landscape of Travel investigates the contested meanings and unintended consequences of tourism for those people whose lives and livelihoods are most at stake in Chinaâ€™s rural ethnic tourism industry: the residents of village destinations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Pingâ€™an (a Zhuang village in Guangxi) and Upper Jidao (a Miao village in Guizhou), Jenny Chio analyzes the myriad challenges and possibilities confronted by villagers who are called upon to do the work of tourism. She addresses the shifting significance of migration and rural mobility, the visual politics of tourist photography, and the effects of touristic desires for â€œexotic differenceâ€ on village social relations. In this way, Chio illuminates the contemporary regimes of labor and leisure and the changing imagination of what it means to be rural, ethnic, and modern in China today.
Country USA
Brand University of Washington Press
Manufacturer University of Washington Press
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780295993669
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780295993669
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Brand	University of Washington Press
Manufacturer	University of Washington Press
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780295993669
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780295993669
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China (Studies on Ethnic Groups in China)

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