Reviving 'white elephants' : a culture-centred approach to the African Ivory Route Tourism Patnership.
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Date
2013
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Abstract
This study explores the relationship between the government, private sector and local
communities (public-private-community), through tourism and a culture-centered approach to
communication for social change. Its focus is on the role of communication processes in
amplifying the voices of the subaltern and how power relations affect this resonance in
public-private-community tourism partnerships. Grounded in a pragmatic cultural studies
approach which is self-reflexive, this study seeks to explore the connection between forms of
power and lived experiences.
The study is informed by Critical Social Science, which advocates a radical ethics concerned
with power and oppression. It encourages the researcher to act as a bricoleur by taking up
moral projects which serve to weave collaboration, agency and transformation. Case studies
of two tourist camps in the African Ivory Route, which are government-funded, communityowned,
and privately-operated, provide the ‘hunting ground’ for exposing the existing
communicative processes between the partners and manifestations of power. The relationship
between the government, community and private partner will be examined through Lauren
Dyll-Myklebust’s (2011) schematic Public-Private-Community Partnership model, which
was developed to account for the multiple dimensions of the type of development
communication strategies employed in inaugurating operations in a public-privatecommunity
partnership tourism initiative. This, together with my own reflexive analysis, will
elucidate the kinds of communicative processes that exist in the partnership. An objective of
the study is to identify ways in which communication in tourism development partnerships
can facilitate subaltern agency. Tourism has often been criticised for its inability to function as a positive vehicle for
development. This study aims to show that by listening to the voices of the subaltern,
fostering dialogue and encouraging collaboration, tourism development initiatives can
empower communities.
Description
M.A. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2013.
Keywords
Public-private sector cooperation., Culture and tourism., Tourist camps, hostels, etc., Theses--Culture, communication and media studies.