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A Case Study on Coastal Costa Rica Thuy-Linh Pham

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Florida State University Libraries 2016 Cultural, Social, and Environmental Effects of Tourism: A Case Study on Coastal Costa Rica Thuy-Linh Pham Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Cultural, Social, and Environmental Effects of Tourism: A Case Study on Coastal Costa Rica By THUY-LINH PHAM A Thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major Degree Awarded: Fall, 2016 Pham 2 The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Thuy-Linh Pham defended on November 28, 2016. ______________________________ Dr. Kristin Dowell Co-Thesis Director ______________________________ Dr. Joseph Hellweg Co-Thesis Director Outside Committee Member ______________________________ Dr. Rochelle A. Marrinan Committee Member Pham 3 Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank Florida State University’s Social Science Scholar Program for providing me with the funds to travel throughout Costa Rica to collect data, especially Dr.Mayo and Dr. Taylor who assisted me in determining the best process. I would also like to Dr. Romanchuk for pushing me to conduct my own research after working on his projects for the last couple years. Lastly, I would like to thank Dr. Dowell, Dr. Hellweg, and Dr. Marrinan for serving on my thesis committee. I know that the process has been less than ideal with timing, but I appreciate all the time and effort they have put into this project, which has been a dream of mine since I was a child. Pham 4 Table of Contents Chapter I: Introduction ................................................................................................................5 Significance ...................................................................................................................................6 Chapter II: Background ...............................................................................................................9 Overview of Costa Rica .............................................................................................................14 Theory.........................................................................................................................................10 Contact Zones.........................................................................................................................10 Commodification and Tourism...............................................................................................12 Surfing.................................................................................................................................... 16 Chapter III: Methodology ..........................................................................................................17 Data Collection ..........................................................................................................................18 Sample Population......................................................................................................................19 Chapter IV: Ethnographic Data….............................................................................................23 Global and Local Tourism Industry: How “Eco” is Ecotourism? .............................................23 Surfing: The Creation of a Subculture........................................................................................27 Identity and Belonging: Mas Tico que Gallo Pinto ...................................................................31 Chapter V: Conclusion................................................................................................................36 Appendix A: Interview Questions.................................................................................................37 Appendix B: A Brief History of Costa Rica..................................................................................38 Appendix C: A Brief History of Surfing.......................................................................................42 Appendix D: Epilogue...................................................................................................................46 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................47 Pham 5 Introduction If I could define Costa Rica with one phrase, I would say “Pura Vida!” From the rural coastal town of Uvita, to the tourist metropolis of Jaco, to the small mountain town of Monteverde, many locals I conversed with used this motto. The phrase was one of the first in Spanish that I heard when I landed in the small, lush, and tropical Central American country. Pura Vida means “pure life” in English, but it means much more to a Costa Rican local or resident. The phrase can function as a greeting such as “hello” or “goodbye,” or a response to myriad questions such as “how are you” or “what are you doing.” But to locals, the true meaning of the phrase transcends these mundane usages. Pura Vida epitomizes the general, optimistic, casual, and tranquil Costa Rican lifestyle built upon relationships between people and the relationships between people and the environment. It was the intersection between complex local-tourist relationships and the environment that inspired the focus of my research. The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss these complex local-tourist interactions. Surfing is a major constituent of the tourism industry. This paper will delineate how surfers, local and foreign, create a subculture. This paper will also analyze how these local-tourist interactions shape the environment within what Mary-Louise Pratt (1991) calls “contact zones” through the process of commodification. Especially in coastal Costa Rica, the global and local tourist industries struggle with local residents to determine who has claims on the place. Whoever holds legitimate claim has the power to determine how that space is defined and used. The claiming of a space within a contact zone can be done through the strategic use of resources as language, capital, knowledge and the understanding and manipulation of the physical environment. Pham 6 First, I will describe Mary-Louise Pratt’s (1991) concept of “contact zones”. Next, I will discuss the scholarly discourse on tourism especially that of ecotourism, cultural tourism and recreational tourism and their merits with regard to sustainability. Then, I will provide a brief history of surfing in Costa Rica and its importance to the tourism industry. Finally, I will provide an analysis of my ethnographic data that illustrate the complexities of local-tourist interactions and their implications on the environment. In particular, I will show how local-tourist interactions in Costa Rica and their cultural, environmental, economic, and political implications challenge popular and scholarly assumptions that locals universally rebuke the degradation of the environment and local culture that result from tourism. In fact, in Costa Rica, such degradation is encouraged by local practices as well as the global tourism industry. Significance At the 1980 World Tourism Conference, the World Tourism Organization declared that tourism was “an activity essential to the life of nations because of its direct effects on the social, cultural, educational, and economic sectors of national societies and on their international relations” (UNWTO 1980:1). The growing number of nations fostering tourism as one of their largest and fastest growing economic sectors leads to a drastic increase in voluntary mass migration for tourism and permanent relocation. Mass movements of people result in the increase of unique contact zones as visiting tourist cultures encounter other cultures in the host country. Ecotourism, cultural tourism, and recreational tourism are several of Costa Rica’s most attractive demographic pull factors. Recent scholarly discourse focuses on the “social, economic, and environmental merits” of ecotourism and its relation to cultural and recreational tourism by questioning its eco-friendliness and sustainability (Stronza 2001:263). Pham 7 Amanda Stronza (2001) criticizes recent anthropological research on tourism for resulting in a partial analysis, either by primarily focusing on the impact of tourism on locals or on factors spurring tourism through an examination of tourists themselves. She posits that new anthropological research should seek to answer questions such as these: “On the host end, what are some of the factors that can explain particular kinds of local involvement in tourism? On the guest end, what are the differential effects of certain kinds of tourism on guests’ attitudes and behaviors, both in the midst of their tour and once they have returned home?” This thesis contributes to this new research by focusing on the interactions between locals and tourists in “contact zones” and how interactions cause social, cultural, economic, and environmental change. My research will provide insight into and support for a critique on the sustainability of ecotourism and cultural tourism within “contact zones.” Pham 8 Figure 1: Map of Costa Rica Public Domain Source: WPClipart Pham 9 Background Overview of Costa Rica Costa Rica comprises only one percent of the world’s landmass, yet holds over five percent of its biodiversity (World Factbook 2016), which makes ecotourism a particularly important
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