Social Network Analysis of Community Tourism in Pamilacan Island, the Philippines
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Connectivity and Interdependence: Social Network Analysis of Community Tourism in Pamilacan Island, the Philippines by BULILAN Carl Milos Ruchina DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Development GRADUATE SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT NAGOYA UNIVERSITY Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Sanae ITO (Chairperson) Takeshi HIGASHIMURA Wataru KUSAKA Approved by the GSID Committee: March 7, 2016 Acknowledgements I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to my main supervisor, Prof. Sanae Ito and my sub- supervisors, Prof. Wataru Kusaka and Prof. Takeshi Higashimura; to my family and friends; to my confreres in the Society of the Divine Word (SVD); and to Prof. David Mayer, for their guidance and support. Finally, I owe a tremendous debt to the people of Pamilacan Island for letting me share their story to the world; and most of all, to the Triune Almighty, the perfect model of connectivity and interdependence. To them, I humbly dedicate this dissertation. Contents Illustrations vi Chapter 1. Introduction 1 1.1. Background of the Problem 1 1.2. Objectives of the Study 4 1.3. Research Questions and Propositions 6 1.4. Relevance of the Study 8 1.5. Research Methods 10 1.5.1. Sampling and Gathering Relational Data for SNA 11 1.5.2. Ethnographic Methods and Ethical Considerations 13 Participant Observation and In-depth interviews Informants Reflexivity and Ethical Considerations 1.6. Scope and Limitations 16 1.7. Structure of the Dissertation 20 Chapter 2. Understanding Community Organizing Activities and Community Tourism: Conceptual and Empirical Review 22 2.1. Community Approach to Tourism Development 23 2.1.1. Goals of Community-Based Tourism 23 2.1.2. Evaluating Conditions for the “Success” of Community Tourism 28 2.1.3. Problems of Heterogeneity and Limited Local Resources 30 Heterogeneity of Communities Lack of Local Resources 2.2. Network Approach to Understanding Organizing Activities: An Alternative Perspective to Analyzing Community Tourism 36 2.2.1. Basic Assumptions 37 2.2.2. Network Properties 41 Structural Characteristics Centrality 2.3. Conceptual Categories in Understanding Organizing Activities among Villagers 45 Moral Economy Perspective Political Economy Perspective Ostrom’s Self-Organizing Villagers 2.4. Earlier Network Analyses in Tourism Studies 51 Conclusions 53 Chapter 3. Physical and Social Contexts of Pamilacan Community Tourism 56 3.1. Overview of the Island Community 57 3.1.1. The Island Habitat 57 3.1.2. The Community and Its Culture 61 3.1.3. Hunting Livelihood System 63 3.1.4. Other Forms of Livelihood and Support System 69 ii 3.1.5. Pamilacan Neighbors 71 3.2. Banning and Abandoning of the Traditional Hunting Livelihood 73 3.3. Organizing Tourism and the Local People’s Attitudes 79 3.3.1. Initial Organizing and Community Resistance 79 3.3.2. Reorganizing CBT 84 Conclusions 88 Chapter 4. Analyzing Formal Organizing Structures 90 4.1. Network Actors Involved in Pamilacan Tourism 91 4.2. Centralized Tourism Network 98 4.2.1. Government -NGO-sponsored Formal Organizing Structure 98 Men’s Group Women’s Group 4.2.2. Network Properties 105 Structural Characteristics Centralities 4.3. Decentralizing Tourism Network 109 4.3.1. Conflicts and the Rise of Internal Competition 109 4.3.2. Network Properties 117 Structural Characteristics Centralities Conclusions 122 iii Chapter 5. Analyzing the Collapse of Formal Structures and the Emergence of Informal Transactions 125 5.1. Increasing Competing External Actors 126 5.2. Vanishing Ties and Diverging Connections 132 5.3. Emerging Informal Touristic Transactions 137 5.3.1. Network Properties: Wider-Level Network 138 Structural Characteristics Centralities 5.3.2. Network Properties: Informal Transactions among Tour Agencies and Local Service Providers 145 Structural Characteristics Centralities 5.3.3. Network Properties: Bottom-level Informal Network among Remaining PIDWWO Members, Local Non-Members, and Clients 151 Structural Characteristics Centralities Conclusions 157 Chapter 6. Analyzing the Emergent Organizing Network and Its Wider Implications 159 6.1. Characteristics of the Emergent Organizing Activities 160 6.2. Benefits from Emerging Networks 163 6.2.1. Integration 163 6.2.2. Additional Income 165 6.2.3. Revitalized Support System 167 iv 6.3. Forms of Networks Maintaining Community Tourism 169 6.3.1. Enabling Network 170 6.3.2. Business and Marketing Networks 173 6.3.3. Mutual Support System 177 6.4. Rethinking the Problems of Heterogeneity and Limited Local Resources 180 6.5. Theoretical Implications of Pamilacan Community Tourism 186 6.6. Towards a Network Approach to Analyzing Community Tourism Organizing Activities 191 Conclusions 198 Chapter 7. Summary and Conclusions 201 Bibliography 214 Appendix A Pamilacan Community Tourism Timeline 239 B Interview Transcripts 240 v Illustrations Figures 1 A sample network (sociograph) of six (6) actors 44 2 Map showing the location of Pamilacan Island and the hunting sites A, B, C, D, and E 58 3 Primary fishing tools used in whale shark hunting in the Bohol Sea: (A) gaff hook; (B and C) hand spear/harpoon 65 4 A file photo of islanders in Pamilacan slicing whale shark meat before the banning of the hunting livelihood 74 5 The Spanish watchtower (left) and the old wooden cross inside the community chapel (right) located in the “tourist village” 81 6 Community livelihood cycle in Pamilacan with tourism 85 7 (A) Visitor arrivals to Bohol Province: Foreign and domestic (2010 - 2014); (B) Bohol visitor arrivals by city/municipality (2014) 96 8 Pamilacan Island Dolphin and Whale Watching Organization (PIDWWO) formal organizational structure 99 9 Tourism network during the period of formal organization 106 10 Touristic cottages for rent owned by competing islanders 116 11 Tourism network during the period of internal competition 118 12 Wider-level tourism network after the collapse of formal organizing structures 139 13 Direct ties between tour agencies and service providers 146 14 Bottom-level transactions involving remaining PIDWWO members, non-member villagers, and clients 152 15 A sample touristic marketing brochure highlighting Pamilacan 174 vi Tables 1 Network properties employed in this study 43 2 Local actors in the Pamilacan tourism network 93 3 External actors involved in the Pamilacan tourism network 97 4 Centrality measures during the period of formal organization 106 5 Overlapping touristic services in Pamilacan 112 6 Centrality measures during the period of internal competition 118 7 Centrality measures for the wider-level tourism network 140 8 Tour agencies’ ties with competing service providers 147 9 Centrality measures at the bottom-level informal transactions 153 10 T-A-P-E tool for analyzing social networks in community tourism 197 vii Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1.Background of the Problem In the last half century, tourism has become “one of the most important industries in the world in terms of employment creation and generation of foreign revenues,” according to the United Nations Steering Committee on Tourism for Development (2011: 3). It is now one of the biggest industries of the world, and is a major component of the global economy (Hunter & Green, 1995: 4; UNWTO, 2015b: 2). The UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO, 2015a: 11) reports that 1, 135 million tourists travelled around the world in 2014, a 4.5% increase over the previous year. In 2013, South-East Asian countries became the fastest growing number of tourist arrivals, the Philippines with a reported growth of 10% (UNWTO, 2014: 7). Improvements in transportation and communication systems, the lowering cost of air travel, and increased income in industrialized countries, facilitate this rapid growth of tourism in Third World destinations (Eadington & Smith, 1992; Hitchcock et al., 1993; Holden, 2008). Tourism has become a crucial contributor to the global economic growth. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO, 2015b: 3) estimates tourism’s contribution to the global gross domestic product (GDP) at some 9%. It records that 1 in 11 jobs in the world are tourism related. The potential of tourism for contributing to economic development makes the industry attractive to governments and development agencies, especially in developing countries.1 In the case of the Philippines, the government has invested in tourism in the past decades by improving basic facilities and offering financial assistance to various tourism enterprises. In 2014, the Philippine Statistics Authority (2015) recorded 7.8% contribution of tourism to the country’s economy amounting PhP 982.4 billion, higher by 14% in the previous year. 2 However, tourism is not only an economic, but is also a social phenomenon.3 In spite of the economic potential, big-scale tourism activities have had a negative impact on local communities (e.g., Allen et al., 2010; Barker, 1982; Cohen, 1978). These led people to reconsider more community-friendly touristic strategies that could bring in active local participation in the industry. Governments and development agencies started to adopt community-based tourism (CBT) as an alternative approach to tourism development which aims to involve villagers in order for these people to share direct benefits from touristic 1 Relying on natural resources and requiring no vast capital for infrastructures, many developing countries venture into tourism industry as a “quick” and “simple” solution to the problem of underdevelopment (Crick, 1989: 315; Long, 1992: 135). Through increased foreign-exchange, employment opportunities, increased income, and enlarged tax collections, these countries look up to tourism as a means to eliminate the widening gap between developed and developing societies and to contribute substantially to social development and general progress (Jud & Krause, 2010: 304; Vanhove, 1997: 60). International donor agencies and NGOs also share the same hope considering how tourism could reduce poverty (Holden, 2008: 128). It is in this regard that the first academic representations on tourism were purely economic, seeing the industry largely as a positive force in economic development in the 1960s (Crick, 1989: 314).