A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China (Studies on Ethnic Groups in China)
Jenny T. Chio
Open-access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295805061
While the number of domestic leisure travelers has increased dramatically in reform-era China, the persistent gap between urban and rural living standards attests to ongoing social, economic, and political inequalities. The state has widely touted tourism for its potential to bring wealth and modernity to rural ethnic minority communities, but the policies underlying the development of tourism obscure some complicated realities. In tourism, after all, one person’s leisure is another person’s labor.
A Landscape of Travel investigates the contested meanings and unintended consequences of tourism for those people whose lives and livelihoods are most at stake in China’s rural ethnic tourism industry: the residents of village destinations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Ping’an (a Zhuang village in Guangxi) and Upper Jidao (a Miao village in Guizhou), Jenny Chio analyzes the myriad challenges and possibilities confronted by villagers who are called upon to do the work of tourism. She addresses the shifting significance of migration and rural mobility, the visual politics of tourist photography, and the effects of touristic desires for “exotic difference” on village social relations. In this way, Chio illuminates the contemporary regimes of labor and leisure and the changing imagination of what it means to be rural, ethnic, and modern in China today.
More about the author: http://www.jennychio.com/
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About Jenny T. Chio
Reviews for A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China (Studies on Ethnic Groups in China)
Heleni Porfyriou
Journal of Cultural Heritage
"A Landscape of Travel is a valuable contribution to the study of tourism and ethnic minorities in contemporary China. . . . It provides an updated account of dynamics detailed in the work of scholars such as Tim Oakes, Margaret Swain, and Louisa Schein, and it stands out among more recent but less rounded ethnographic books on tourism in China."
Travis Klingberg
Pacific Affairs
"Chio skillfully unpacks the complexities of ethnic-tourism development in rural China. . . . She lays bare the regimes of mobility and visuality that turn one person’s leisure into another person’s labor. . . . A Landscape of Travel is a beautifully written, accessible, and engaging ethnographic monograph."
Noel B. Salazar
Anthropological Quarterly
"[A] vivid ethnography. . . . A Landscape of Travel is well-organized, theoretically innovative, and ethnographically rich."
Xiaoshun Zeng
The China Review
"A fresh look at the impact of tourism on the ethnicity and identity of villagers and interrelation between leisure and labor of rural tourism in China. . . . Chio’s work is theoretically dense and empirically rich. . . . A Landscape of Travel makes a fine addition to the existing anthropological literature on tourism. . . . A valuable resource for a range of educational purposes."
Yujie Zhu
American Anthropologist
"A Landscape of Travel makes a fine addition to the existing anthropological literature on tourism. The book moves beyond theoretical abstractions to the complexity and richness of reality. The monograph is a valuable resource for a range of educational purposes, including in undergraduate classes on the anthropology of tourism and for perusal by postgraduates who are researching tourism in China."
American Anthropologist