Multispecies livelihoods

A Posthumanist Approach to Wildlife Ecotourism That Promotes Animal Ethics

Bibliographic Data

ID8091244
AuthorsBastian Thomsen (0000-0001-8064-2967, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, corresponding author), Jennifer Thomsen (0000-0003-1383-3100, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Kellen Copeland (0000-0002-7020-2906, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA), Sarah Coose (Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Emily Arnold (Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Haydn Bryan (0000-0002-3608-2066, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Karl Michael Prokop, Karl Prokop (Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Kaela Cullen (Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Caitlyn Vaughn (Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Brenda Cecilia Padilla Rodríguez (0000-0002-4313-8785), Brenda Rodriguez (Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Rachel Muha (Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Natalie Arnold (0000-0002-0809-8108, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Hannah Winger (Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA), Gabrielle Chalich (Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA)
Year2021
Volume31
Issue5
Pages1195-1213
Publication date2021-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Sustainable Tourism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0966-9582 • E-ISSN: 1747-7646
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09669582.2021.1942893
OpenAlexW3192069088
LanguageEN
Citations received25
References cited86

Research on animal ethics in tourism has gained traction but posthumanist approaches to wildlife (eco)tourism remain sparse. There has never been a more urgent need to redress this paucity in theory and practice. More than 60% of the world’s wildlife has died-off in the last 50 years, 100 million-plus nonhuman animals are used for entertainment in wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs), more than one billion “wildlife” live in captivity, and some scholars argue that earth has entered its sixth mass extinction event known as the Anthropocene. This paper presents a posthumanist multispecies livelihoods framework (MLF) based on an applied ethnographic study of 47 wildlife ecotourism (WE) operators and wildlife researchers in protected area WTAs across four countries. Like any framework, it is a snapshot of the authors’ thinking at a particular time and must be improved upon. The MLF does not purport to solve the negative treatment of nonhumans that can occur in tourism settings, but rather responds to calls in the tourism literature to acknowledge our effects on other species and advocates for equitable human-nonhuman livelihoods. This paper argues that we have a moral responsibility to nonhumans and the environment, and the authors hope to generate reflexive discourse concerning the role tourism can play in redressing the ecological crisis and improving the treatment of individual nonhumans to foster wildlife-human coexistence

Agriculture · Ecotourism · Environmental ethics · Environmental planning · Geography · Livelihood · Political science · Sociology · Tourism · Wildlife · Wildlife tourism · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Human-Animal Interaction Studies · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation · Ecology

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