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Ecotourism as Life Politics

Jim Butcher

Department of Sport Science, Tourism and Leisure ,

Canterbury Christ Church University , UK
Published online: 30 Jan 2009.

To cite this article: Jim Butcher (2008) Ecotourism as Life Politics, Journal of Sustainable
Tourism, 16:3, 315-326
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669580802154116

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Ecotourism as Life Politics

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Jim Butcher
Department of Sport Science, Tourism and Leisure, Canterbury Christ
Church University, UK
Ethical consumption has been identied by many sociologists as an important nexus
through which people make sense of and attempt to act upon the contemporary world.
As a form of life politics it involves action at the level of everyday life that connects
to a wider social agenda, be it environmentalism, development or human rights. This
paper argues that ecotourism has developed as a conspicuous form of life politics
the growth in demand for ecotourism not only reects a certain sensibility amongst
western tourists, but also an attempt to make a difference to the societies visited.
As such it is closely linked to peoples aspiration to improve the lot of people in
other countries and to promote sustainable development. The paper is exploratory,
but suggests that such an outlook may be both limited and limiting with regard to
human agency.

doi: 10.2167/jost791.0
Keywords: life politics, ethical consumption, ecotourism

Introduction
Seldom can leisure consumption have been so closely associated with ethical
lifestyle than is the case with ecotourism. From travel supplements to academic
texts, it is commonly associated with being better for host communities, better for
the environment and better for the tourists themselves compared to mainstream,
mass tourism (Butcher, 2003). This paper introduces the case for ecotourism to
be regarded as a form of life politics (Giddens, 1991). However, it suggests that
this reects a narrowing of human agency and that the ethical claims made for
ecotourism may be suspect.

Life Politics and the Ethical Consumer

Some years ago, sociologist Anthony Giddens identied a shift from the
traditional politics of emancipation, embodied in collective identities informed
by the politics of Left and Right, towards life politics (1991). Life politics refers
to individuals attempts to reposition themselves culturally in the context of
their own lives and through this try to make a difference to their immediate
environment and also more broadly in the social and political realms. Giddens
(1991) argues that life politics is a reconguration of the relationship of the
individual to their society, through which individual identity becomes a site of
political change.


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Life politics has a strong afnity with ethical consumption what and where
we buy the things we need and desire is not only a part of the process of
negotiating ones own identity, but can also connect with the lives of others
who have produced these same things as well as with other issues such as the
environment. For example, it is argued that consumers can force a more ethical
agenda onto companies through exercising choice in favour of products that are
deemed more sustainable or that involve a fairer outcome for workers (Hertz,
2001; Nichols & Opal, 2005).
It is only in the last 20 years that this thinking has emerged and become established. Back in 1988, The Green Consumer (Elkington & Hailes, 1988) sold 350,000
copies in a single year. It was illustrative of the growth of ethical consumption
as a focus for peoples aspirations for social change (or perhaps more accurately
to slow down change).
Of course, engaging in social action through consumption may be social action only for those who can afford to pay often buying the new, ethical brands
involves paying a premium. However, there is much evidence to suggest that
the ethical consumer agenda has a wide resonance. Numerous surveys show
that large numbers of people view themselves as green consumers, and furthermore, that green, ethical consumption cannot be dismissed as the prerogative
of salaried middle class sentiment. Rather, it is a pervasive agenda (see Jackson,
2006). This agenda was personied by The Body Shop founder and champion of
green tourism, the late Anita Roddick: Dont just grin and bear it. As consumers
we have real power to affect change . . . we can use our ultimate power, voting
with our feet and wallets in buying a product somewhere else, or not buying
it at all (cited in Tourism Concern, 2001).
The growth of ethical consumption and life politics reect important shifts in
the way people relate to society more broadly the issues they prioritise and
the ways in which they may seek to have an impact upon these issues. How and
what we consume has grown in prominence relative to the workplace as the
terrain on which identities are formed and social issues are debated. Baumann
(1992: 49) puts it thus:
. . . in present day society, consumer conduct (consumer freedom geared
to the consumer market) moves steadily into the position of, simultaneously, the cognitive and moral focus of life, the integrative bond of the
society . . . In other words, it moves into the self same position which in
the past during the modern phase of capitalist society was occupied
by work.
Bauman makes the widely argued point that in previous periods the realm
of production, or work, was more central to identity, but that today it is more
as consumers that we develop a sense of ourselves in the world. The growth of
the importance of consumption is often viewed in positive terms (Featherstone,
1991). The world of consumption and identities, personal and political, takes the
appearance of a world of choice and freedom one can break free of traditional
collective identities connected to class, race or gender and develop ones own
identity and experiment in ways not evident in the past (Miller, 1998). In political

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terms too, it has been argued that consumers can generate pressure for change
in a way traditional, discredited political institutions are unable to (Hertz, 2001).
This shift is often regarded as in part due to changes in the economy and
the nature of work. The argument that post-Fordism a shift towards a more
individuated, less collective experience in the workplace contributed to a
decline in traditional collective allegiances relating to work was developed in
the pages of the erstwhile house journal of the Left, Marxism Today, by Stuart
Hall, Charles Leadbetter and others (see, for example, Hall, 1988; Leadbetter,
1988). Post-Fordism was notable in that it marked a shift from the politics of
production (and social class) to consumption (and individual identity) in radical
thinking (the consumption of ecotourism and associated alternative tourisms
being just one example).
However, more profoundly inuencing this shift is the collapse of perceived
alternatives to capitalism. The collapse of communism seemed to conrm that
alternatives to the market do not work (Giddens, 1994; Gorz, 1997; Hearteld,
2002). This is reinforced by the adoption, or at the very least acceptance, of
market forces as positive or ineffaceable, even by capitalisms erstwhile critics
on the Left, as apparently, no one any longer has any alternatives to capitalism
(Giddens, 1998: 43). This has contributed to a lack of questioning of the market,
which has taken on the appearance of an eternal reality in political and social
debates (Furedi, 2005; Hearteld, 2002). Fukuyamas End of History thesis, following soon after the end of the Cold War, presenting a contemporary world in
which all the big ideological issues have been settled, is perhaps emblematic of
a sense of closure of grand politics (Fukuyama, 1992).
The decline of allegiance to big political ideas has contributed to a disconnection between individuals and their governments, and has led to a preoccupation
with re-establishing this connection in some way. However, traditional political
channels increasingly invite cynicism, and many feel alienated from the institutions of government (Furedi, 2005; Giddens, 1998). Other institutions through
which individuals related to their society have also declined church, community and family. All this has strengthened, by default, the more individual forms
of politics life politics within which the politics of ethical consumption is
prominent. Far from the discredited institutions of government, it is as consumers that we are, apparently, free to exercise our choice in pursuit of a better
world, be it through choosing an ethical holiday, or indeed in the light of global
warming, choosing to forego a holiday.
In short, the consumerproducer relationship has grown in prominence as at
the same time, workeremployer relationships, the politics of social class, have
declined in inuence (Beck, 1996). This process, which can only be outlined here,
elevates the importance of the world of consumption in the search for selfhood.
How we see ourselves in relation to others, and in relation to society more
broadly, seems to increasingly take lifestyle as an important point of reference
(Giddens, 1991; Miller, 1998).
The changing character of politics briey outlined here is also pertinent to understanding the changing debates about tourism, and in particular, the growth
of concern with making tourism ethical. This has become a prominent discussion in universities, but is also a prominent issue in wider public consciousness,
expressed through a great deal of media interest, the resonance of campaigns

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such as those of Tourism Concern in the UK and the positioning of new tourism
brands (Mowforth & Munt, 1998; Poon, 1993; www.tourismconcern.org.uk) to
appeal to an ethical consumer. Whilst there are a plethora of such brands and
labels, ecotourism is prominent in the advocacy of ethical tourism.

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Ecotourism as Life Politics

The problematisation of holidaymaking in moral and ethical terms, discussed
in The Moralisation of Tourism (Butcher, 2003), precedes much of the growth of
ecotourism. Notably, Krippendorfs celebrated and oft-cited The Holiday Makers:
The Impacts of Leisure and Travel (1987) reads like a lifestyle manifesto it is lled
with pronouncements on how people should live their lives, how and what they
should consume, in order to counter the corrosive effects of modern society on
both host and guest. Krippendorfs sentiments are central to the advocacy of
ecotourism, and with their intercultural and interpersonal emphasis on tourist
behaviour, read as the original manifesto for ethical tourism.
Ecotourism itself has for some years been identied as a growing niche market.
According to the World Resources Institute, whilst tourism grew by 4% in the
early 1990s, nature travel grew at a rate of between 10 and 30% (cited in UNEP,
2001: 5). World Tourism Organisation estimates show global spending on the
more narrowly dened ecotourism market increasing at a rate of 20% per year,
about ve times the rate for tourism generally (UNEP, 2001). However, more
striking than this growth is the identication of ecotourism by its advocates as
part of an ethical lifestyle as a form of life politics.
The academic literature on ecotourism shares a sense that it can be part of
an enlightened ethical lifestyle on the basis of its capacity to yield progressive
change in the destination (especially by comparison to mass tourism or other
forms of economic development that involve a greater degree of transformation
of environments).
Ziffers (1989) book Ecotourism: The Uneasy Alliance remains an inuential
point of reference, and argues that ecotourism is not only a market niche, but also
a model of development and a philosophy (Ziffer, 1989). The development model
prioritises localism, traditional knowledge and preservation, whilst the attendant philosophy is one that promotes harmony between people and nature on a
localised basis (Butcher, 2007). Hence, ecotourists are more than just consumers
they are engaging in a life political strategy through ethical consumption
choices to promote a favoured development path for the destination.
Since this early agenda setting publication, a great deal of literature has
emerged, much of it adopting an advocacy approach, and either implicitly or
explicitly linking ecotourism with ethical consumption (e.g. Acott et al., 1998;
Fennell, 2003; Wearing & Neil, 1999). For example, Fennells Ecotourism: A Critical
Introduction associates ecotourism with ethical tourism in the face of a destructive
mass tourism industry, and argues it is a positive model for humanenvironment
relations (Fennell, 2003).
Acott et al. (1998) articulate the sense in which individual identity becomes
a site of progressive political change through ecotourism consumption. Deep
ecotourism, they argue, promotes sustainable development on the Ladakh
farm project in rural India. For the consumer this can mean a lot more than a

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leisure activity, possibly even forming part of a broader philosophical reection

relating to the self and nature (Acott et al., 1998: 249). The project in question
seeks to support a sustainable rural way of life, a life close to nature (Acott
et al., 1998), lessons from which can be brought back to inform sustainability at
home.
Often ethical life political tourism is discussed in quite radical terms, echoing
the radical potential claimed for ethical consumption generally by Hertz (2001).
Authors such as campaigner Pleumaron (1994) and NGOs such as Tourism Concern (see Tourism Concern, 2001: 3 and elsewhere) talk up the consumption of
the right type of tourism (normally some variation on ecotourism) as a vanguard against modernity in the form of mass tourism. Pleumaron sees support
for grassroots participatory tourism as part of the construction of an alternative
new world order in which people themselves, rather than outside interests,
determine and control their lives (Pleumaron, 1994: 147). In similar vein, Poon
(1993) suggests that ethical demand for her New Tourism is a means of countering foreign domination through big multinational tourism companies, and
can challenge a stereotyped portrayal of other cultures in brochures advertising
holidays to the third world. Ethical tourists, who think reexively about the
relationship between their lifestyle and issues such as development, can, for
these authors, make a key difference.
However, along with this radical self-perception of alternative tourism types
such as ecotourism, it is important to note that much of the relevant literature
offers critical support for ecotourism as ethical consumption. The criticisms are
signicant and often severe ecotourism may be just greenwash (Mowforth
& Munt, 1998) or ecosell (Wight, 1993). Mowforth and Munt cite numerous
examples of ecotourism projects with high-minded ideals that rarely seem to
yield progress, or that even result in green imperialism (1998: 51). Writers on
biodiversity and conservation frequently make a similar point whilst upholding
the virtues of localised integrated conservation and development projects in
principle (see various chapters in Ghimire & Pimbert, 1997, and McShane &
Wells, 2004). The numerous citations of Wheellers view that ecotourism is
worthy in principle but people lack the principle to put it into operation is
perhaps the best example of (in this case very) critical support for ecotourisms
environmental and cultural goals (e.g. Wheeller, 1992).
Yet in an important sense, the criticisms only serve to reinforce ecotourism as
a normative goal the sentiment expressed is often we may not have reached
it yet, but all the more reason to strive harder for ethical holidays. So, for Ross
and Wall, the problem is that ecotourism theory has not been put into practice
(1999: 674) the ideal remains an ideal, but one fraught with contradictions and
dilemmas. Life political tourism is not without angst.
Environmental NGOs including Conservation International and the World
Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have pioneered ecotourism projects in pursuit of
their goal of locally integrated conservation and development, and have articulated its life political potential. For example, in their 1989 video The Environmental Tourist, the Audubon Society, USAs foremost environmental advocates,
describe ecotourism not as a particular set of practices but as a travel ethic
(cited in Bottrill & Pearce, 1995: 46). This chimes with the notion of tourism
as having a higher moral purpose, rooted in what is essentially an aspect of

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lifestyle. In similar vein, WWF argues that ecotourism is not a product, but
an attitude (cited in Aronsson, 2000: 47). The International Ecotourism Society,
whilst ostensibly a trade body, regard their product as a lifestyle imperative to
assist communities and nature under threat from unethical development (TIES,
n.d.). Their role is not just to network with like-minded tourists with a love of
the natural world, but to advocate the superiority of eco-holidays for both parties: tourists and hosts. The society claim that Ecotravel offers an alternative to
many of the negative effects of mass tourism by helping conserve fragile ecosystems, support endangered species and habitats, preserve indigenous cultures
and develop sustainable local economies (TIES, n.d.). They encourage prospective tourists to travel with a purpose a personal purpose and a global one
(TIES, n.d.).
Most notably, the United Nations International Year of Ecotourism Final Report (UNEP/WTO, 2002) echoes the high ideals of ecotourism in promoting sustainable development, traditional knowledge and participatory development,
hence codifying at the highest level of global governance ecotourisms mission
for green development (see Butcher, 2006).
This sense of mission is a common theme in the marketing of ecotourism ventures. It chimes with Poons New Tourism, set out in her book Tourism, Technology and Competitive Strategy (1993). New Tourists are concerned consumers who
want to break with what they perceive to be the destructive character of mass
tourism, and make a difference to communities and environment through their
holiday purchasing decisions and behaviour. Ecotourism is commonly seen as
exemplary of this New Tourism (Mowforth & Munt, 1998).
These examples are illustrative of the salience of ethical ecotourism to life
politics. We can, according to this view, act upon the world through the adoption
of an ethical lifestyle, as a part of which we make consumption choices that
impact beyond identity into the social realm.
The examples partially illustrate a striking phenomenon put simply, for
many people the prosaic realm of leisure travel is more likely to be the channel
through which they exercise their desire for change than through traditional
party or campaign allegiances rooted in the politics of Left and Right. This
is as true in relation to issues around development as it is of newer issues,
such as the global environment in both cases, where, how and if we take
our holidays has become the subject of lifestyle politics. Indeed, as Meletis
and Campbell argue, in claiming to combine environmental conservation and
solidarity (through development), ecotourism is a notable form of alternative
consumption rarely are the two found in combination (2007: 860). They also
astutely note that as an act of caring, ecotourism is close up and personal rather
than caring at a distance (Meletis & Campbell, 2007), a characteristic that makes
it t well with the personalised, biographical character of life politics (Beck, 1996;
Giddens, 1991).

The Interpersonal Touch

MacCannells sociology has long been an important point of reference for
those interested in tourism. However, whilst most references focus on staged
authenticity in a rather formal manner, perhaps the importance of MacCannells

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sociology lies elsewhere. In his book Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers
(1992), he usefully sets out his stall as being someone wedded to the politics
of social class, but who has seen the prospects of progressive change on this
basis diminish. So whilst he recognises the decline in the possibility for progressive change through the working class, he sees cultural encounters, such
as between host and tourist, as having the potential to lead to the formation
of new subjects (MacCannell, 1992: 3). For MacCannell, we are living in the
most depersonalised epoch in history, an era in which human relations are
denigrated by market relations (MacCannell, 1992). He turns to the cultural
realm, and even the interpersonal realm, looking for ways to make the world a
better, more human and humane place to live. As such, it provides a way in to
understanding tourism as life politics.
MacCannells project seems laudable, and his books remain prominent points
of reference. This is because his view is exemplary of wider trends in social
thought it represents the cultural turn applied to tourism. Leisure travel
becomes an aspect of life imbued with the potential for progressive change
part of the politics of everyday life. The nature of tourism itself involves a direct
cultural encounter between consumers and their hosts, and hence consumers
readily make sense of this industry in intercultural terms through their own
lived experience, rather than through any abstract conception of society. We
can see the outcomes of our actions, and can personally intervene through our
decisions to improve outcomes. Three authors introducing a study of gender and
tourism explain it thus: Tourism is consumed at the point of existence and
involves more than the material; it is cultural (Kinnaird et al., 1994: 13). Central
to life politics is the view that modernity has tended to exclude existential moral
dilemmas, precisely those highlighted in the advocacy of ethical tourism. To
misquote the old feminist slogan, the interpersonal becomes political.
This existential aspect of ecotourism is prominent in its role as lifestyle
politics that you can make a difference on the ground is its attraction in a political climate in which big political projects seem untenable. As such it is its
strength, but it also denes its limitations and weakness as a political or moral
strategy.
Many ecotourism initiatives, commercial and NGO-initiated, appeal to a
desire to go backstage (MacCannell, 1976), emphasising this personalised
approach to issues of development and conservation. For example, Tanzanias
NGO-funded cultural tourism programme offers tourism the People to People
way (my italics) (Fisher, n.d.). The literature says that the tours offer visitors insights into the life traditional and modern of Tanzanians at home and at work,
at play and at rest (MacCannell, 1976). The brochure is lled with pictures of
cultural life predominantly villagers working on the land and taking produce
to be sold, as well as one of a mother feeding her baby. The photographs would
t well alongside an anthropological account of village life in rural Tanzania,
and the programme enables tourists to support people in this way of life.
The rise of the gap year project is perhaps also exemplary of the interpersonal,
people to people focus of life political strategies through ecotourism. For more
than a few young people, keen to act upon their world, the political project
has been replaced by the gap year project. These are often projects with a dual
concern for environmental and community goals in rural areas, and hence are

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comparable to ecotourism. Whereas in the past, an impulse to assist those in

poverty in other countries was more likely to lead to political campaigns, and
solidarity with those struggling for economic and political rights elsewhere,
today some of that basic progressive human impulse fuels the growth of the
gap year boom. In such projects, one can go on an adventure with a purpose
(Trekforce, n.d.) and make a real difference, real in the sense that the gapper can
personally witness the difference that they have made. Is this a part of the new
subjectivity explored by MacCannell?
These examples help to show the sense in which MacCannell expresses the
basis for todays ethical tourism the sense that intercultural and interpersonal
relationships are the terrain of social change. However, the appearance of agency
here may mask the substantial denial of agency elsewhere the emergence of
the cultural subject, able to choose and to act in the realm of lifestyle, has coincided with the narrowing of political contestation of how society is organised.
MacCannells view represents a retreat from the social rather than simply a reconguration of the relationship of people to the social world. The decline of
modernist political projects of the Left and Right, and the failure of new political
identities to emerge, has contributed to a profound cynicism with politics and
a pervasive anti-political mood in society. MacCannells cultural politics rationalises this retreat and tries to draw something positive from it if we cannot
change the world, at least we can change the way we relate to other cultures and
societies. If we have little power in the workplace, we can rehumanise human
relations through how we relate to each other, even as tourists.
Although a lot of ecotourism generally has a self-consciously altruistic and life
political character, volunteer ecotourism is perhaps a good point of reference with
regard to MacCannells analysis summarised earlier. As Gray and Campbell
(2007) argue, volunteer ecotourism has the potential to be what Wearing (2001)
and others see as an ideal that moves beyond commercial exchange to becoming more authentic and less sullied by business interests a decommodied
tourism (Wearing, 2001; Wearing et al., 2005). These authors promote this as
an alternative to what they see as the destructive environmental and cultural
consequences of commodity exchange and the market, one which stems from
the eco-conscious consumer trying to act upon the world in the realm of
consumption.

Changing the World through Ethical Tourism?

Ecotourism and related alternative tourisms can be political in a life politics
sense. They are the focus for attempts to promote an agenda centred on localism
and conservation. This is indicative of trends that are far from progressive.
The decline of big politics is in part a result of the disillusionment with the
traditional, formal political process and parties. Across the world, political allegiances seem to a greater or lesser degree to have crumbled over the last quarter
of a century. Consumer politics stands apart from this process it involves
no allegiance to grand schemas, no association with apparently failed political
projects and eschews collectivity in favour of individualism. This shift in where
one can make a difference, and also its limited horizons, is well expressed in
the following:

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. . . the past decade has witnessed a massive loss of condence in what may
be held to be the bedrock of formal democracy. Faith in government, in
the credibility of politicians, in the power on governments to do anything,
has hit an all time low . . .
Is there really nowhere to go but the shops? (Mort, 1989: 41, cited in Lury,
1996: 254)

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The shops, or perhaps in this case the ethical tour operator, is a place to make
a difference or say something about oneself in the wider world. The author goes
on to make a case for the shops:
What needs saying at this stage is that our conception of politics must
be prised open . . . Todays consumer culture straddles public and private
space, creating blurred areas in between. Privatised car culture, with its
collective red nose days and stickers for lead free petrol; cosmetics as the
quintessential expression of consumer choice now carry anxieties over eco
politics. These are the localised points where consumption meshes with
social demands and aspirations. So the above cannot be about individualism versus collectivism, but about articulating the two in a new relation
that can form the basis for a future common sense. (Mort, 1989)
Whilst Mort claims that ethical consumption is not an individualist agenda
counter to the collectivity of the past, its collectivist credentials are questionable.
Consuming is what we do individually, whilst in production people are more
likely to be part of a collective, dened by place of work or a broader sense
of common interest. Groups of individuals may be similarly motivated to buy
certain types of products, but even if one was to agree with their outlook, their
role as consumers makes challenging the basis on which society produces all but
impossible. Yet it is the latter that informs the problems of poverty and lack of development in the countries and communities that attract ethical lifestyle tourists.
For example, it is the unequal economic relationships between nations, alongside
the large monetary indebtedness of the poorer nations, that result in the net transfer of material wealth from the third world to the developed world. But these
very relationships relationships between nations rather than individuals, based
on the drive for prot, appear beyond the realm of human action due to the dominance of global markets, a perspective unchallenged by the individualised orientation of life politics, at least with regard to ethical travel. So perhaps the global
citizen engaged in ethical travel may be part of a retreat from global politics.
Writing about development volunteers, Mohan makes a point highly pertinent to this retreat (2001). He argues that volunteers rely on contact, on being
there, to make sense of the society they visit and to make a difference. Their understanding may be overly reliant on culture, experienced rst hand, through
individual relationships. Yet these can easily be substituted for broader social
relationships. Solidarity becomes an individual act of charity, rather than a political act.
However, it has been argued that if ethical consumerism is part of a wider
social movement, then it can claim to be more than simply a politics of
consumption it can be truly political, it can be individualised collective action

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(Clark et al., 2007) (my italics). It has been argued that the promotion of ethical
tourism (within which ecotourism and similar types of tourism are prominent),
is part of just such a movement (Botterill, 1991). Whilst this may be overstating
the case somewhat, there is certainly an element of truth in it campaigning
NGOs that seek to inuence travel choice and holiday behaviour have gained
some prominence in the media and in the universities in many major tourismgenerating countries, and can claim to represent genuine concern with the
ethical credentials of the industry. In this schema, the individual act of consumption, whilst important, is not the be all and end all. It is also part of a mobilisation
and articulation of opinion in the public sphere that can have a wider impact
on the political scene rather than a retreat from the social, it can be part of a
genuine reconguration of the relationship between the individual and society.
However, others point out that the growth of ethical consumption has been
parallel to the decline of the social (Hearteld, 2002). In other words, lifestyle
politics represents a narrowing of human subjectivity away from collective solutions towards individual ones; away from broader social relationships towards
those between individuals. As people are less likely to view traditional political
channels as so central to their lives, their beliefs and aspirations, it is conceivable
that a lack of engagement with society through these channels may, by default,
elevate a sense that ones lifestyle is a key arena in which to express ones beliefs
and make a difference.
Giddens, in his book Beyond Left and Right (1994: 5) explains the link between
globalisation and ethical consumption to argue that the latter can engage with
global issues:
Our day to day activities are increasingly inuenced by events happening on the other side of the world. Conversely, local lifestyle habits have
become globally consequential. Thus my decision to buy a certain item of
clothing has implications not only for the international division of labour,
but for the Earths ecosystem.
In this way, globalisation is often invoked to emphasise the interconnected
nature of society we are all bound together through the market, and through a
reexive understanding of the impact of our consumption decisions on people
and places far away, we can make a progressive difference.
Yet whilst we are encouraged to see ourselves as ethical in our role as consumers, the basis on which we consume, the power relationships between nations and between social classes, appear beyond us. Indeed, globalisation is
also often a metaphor for the market is beyond human intervention (Lewis
& Malone, 1996). Ethical consumption hence reects a very limited moral universe, as it is one that shies away from challenging the notion that there is life
and politics beyond the shops.
The following through of the act of consumption to the point of production,
via commodity chains, is an important point of departure for some interested
in the ethical potential of new forms of tourism (e.g. Mosedale, 2006). Yet this
approach treats the power relations between countries and between people
as the sum of its parts. We can readily trace a line of responsibility, via the
commodity chain, and pinpoint the role of a company or a set of consumers.

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What we cannot do following this rationale is examine and challenge the basis
on which consumption and production takes place. This is why the emphasis
on ethical consumption is such a limited take on politics. It is a reection of the
decline of the social in contemporary thought.
In conclusion, it is notable how a discourse about ethical tourism (and by
implication, unethical tourism) has come to inuence discussions about the
prosaic realm of leisure travel. Tourism is all too often the problem (more often
than not mass tourism), but also prospectively part of the solution (most often
ecotourism or similar green brands). This constitutes a discussion about social
and global problems at the level of lifestyle and consumption. Yet perhaps
tourism, in any form, is neither the problem nor the solution to very much at
all. To argue this is not a counsel of despair, nor a slight on people trying to act
upon their beliefs through their lifestyle, but simply an attempt to suggest that
societys ills (however we may conceive of them) cannot be addressed through
lifestyle and consumption.
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Jim Butcher, Department of Sport
Science, Tourism and Leisure, Canterbury Christ Church University, North
Holmes Road, Canterbury, Kent CT1 1QU, UK (jim.butcher@cant.ac.uk).
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