Panel 4: Southeast Asia: Ecotourism and Migrancy from Below

Chair: Caroline Hughes, University of Notre Dame

Panelists

Shimon Likhtman, University of Michigan, “Uncertainty, Collapse, and Shifting Futures: An Ethnography of Ecotourism amd Rupture on Boeung Tonlé Sap, Cambodia”

Since Cambodia’s emergence from civil war, a lucrative tourism industry has been a key part of the Cambodian government’s development strategy. Over the last decade, it has come to include an emerging community-based ecotourism industry that has drawn foreign visitors to areas of the country that have historically been left off of tourist itineraries. One of these ecotourism hubs, the Tonlé Sap lake, is the site of a slow-moving environmental and social crisis. Increasing dam construction on the Mekong, climate change, and overfishing have combined to drastically change the unique ecology of the Tonlé Sap and deplete the lake’s one-plentiful fish stocks, making the fishing-based livelihoods of the lake’s floating villages increasingly untenable. The recent shock of the COVID-19 pandemic combined with these existing pressures to create a moment of rupture: acute dislocation exacerbated by processes of slow violence that have left people vulnerable when crisis arrives. This paper aims to investigate the impacts of development and the multiple intersecting crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and environmental degradation on Boeung Tonlé Sap’s ecotourism communities. Key questions include practices of community resilience, the implications of ecotourism as a development strategy in a region that is vulnerable to climate change and where fishing is no longer a reliable way to make a living, how ecotourism reshapes social relations, and the lines of inclusion and exclusion drawn by the state. Utilizing ethnographic methods, this paper uses ecotourism as a lens through which Boeung Tonlé Sap’s crisis becomes visible.

Nancy Ann P. Gonzales, Ifugao State University, “Indigenous Peoples’ Phronetic Leadership in Agri-eco-tourism Contextualized at a State University of the Philippines: A Trailblazing Case Study”
Indigenous Phronetic Leaders inspired and promoted immense developments in communities through collective organizational knowledge creation. The study aimed to identify the problem of farmers, determine how phronetic leadership was practiced by the key informant at Bacut, Santa Marcela, Apayao, Philippines and likewise contextualize phronetic leadership in higher education. Mr. Elorde P. Anniban, an indigenous phronetic leader was the protagonist in the study who, despite being physically disabled, initiated reforms. In-depth interviews and document reviews were applied in this management case study. Results revealed that the main problem was low rice production because there was no water system to irrigate farmlands. Without the knowledge of the key participant, he applied the socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization (SECI) model and encouraged the mining of bright ideas of the people, engaged stakeholders and relentlessly sought government intervention to address the problem of farmers. Through the phronetic leadership of the key informant, the farmers, and the government leaders, an environment-friendly dam, fondly called the Bacut Lake was constructed irrigating farmlands and immensely increasing rice production addressing poverty in Santa Marcela, Apayao. In addition, the province of Apayao has now an astounding agri-eco-tourism site, a national park, rich in biodiversity, and several existing organizations are working together to boost the economy of the farmers and the province. On the other hand, as an offshoot of contextualizing phronetic leadership in higher education, Ifugao State University, a government educational institution in the Philippines, crystallized phronetic leadership frameworks for Administrative Council Members (ADCO), student leaders, and instruction.