This thesis explores the governmentalities of ecotourism in South Korea in relation to the specific historical-political experience of accelerated modernisation, focussing on three selected analytical themes of nature, time, and space. It develops a theoretical framework that combines Foucauldian governmentality analysis with concepts and insights related to nature, time and space developed in more-than-human and relational geographies and cognate social sciences. Drawing on three cases of tidal flat tourism, countryside walking, and whale tourism, it first examines the assemblages and technologies of ecotourism governance. It argues that ecotourism in South Korea is characterised by a decentralised mode of governance involving an array of political actors. This mode relies less on sovereign power and more on disciplinary and biopolitical techniques. Second, it examines the ways in which political technologies relating to nature, time, and space are engaged in the governmentalities of South Korean ecotourism. The analysis centres on: understandings of nature enacted through the discourse of saengmyeong [life] and therapeutic experiences; a discourse of slowness enacted through a paradoxical temporal organisation of accelerated slowness; and the multiple spatial relations entangled in the geographical-historical connections of South Korean modernisation. Together, these political technologies are deployed to create an ecotourism subject who cares about the self and the environment, which differs from the prevalent South Korean positions of the disciplined worker and the practical user of nature. This thesis argues that ecotourism in South Korea serves as a new biopolitical intervention to conduct the conduct of its human participants in ways that differ from those established through accelerated modernisation. By offering one of the first social science accounts of ecotourism in South Korea, it provides novel concepts and practices for the analysis of ecotourism. These differ from the mainstream approaches that deploy a political economy framework and focus largely on examples drawn from Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:724982 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Choi, Myung-Ae |
| Contributors | Lorimer, Jamie |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0327cadd-3379-4d27-b22b-46a5cc92c63a |
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