Name: The soul of tourism: Anthropological perspectives on cultivating true destination stewardship
Start: 2026-11-20T15:00:00.000Z
End: 2026-11-20T15:45:00.000Z

Tourism brings residents, visitors and service workers into social relationships shaped by history, identity, memory and unequal power. This webinar uses anthropological perspectives to examine destination stewardship beyond visitor numbers and conventional economic indicators. It considers place attachment, living heritage, narrative authority and everyday uses of public space. The session will explore how tourism changes the meanings associated with a destination and how the expectations of visitors can influence which local practices, stories and identities become visible or commercially valued.

Panellists will ask who belongs in destination planning, whose knowledge is recognised and how authority is exercised across public institutions, businesses and community organisations. The discussion will examine the tourist gaze, informal cultural labour and the transformation of neighbourhoods into spaces of consumption. It will avoid romanticising communities or treating culture as a fixed commodity. Internal disagreement, social change and differences in access to political influence will be recognised as important elements of any credible account of stewardship.

Participants will gain qualitative methods for listening to different groups and interpreting how people experience tourism development. These methods include ethnographic observation, narrative inquiry, participatory mapping and sustained community dialogue. The webinar will show how such evidence can complement economic and environmental measures without being reduced to a token consultation exercise. Delegates will learn to design governance arrangements that support shared care, public accountability and continuing negotiation over the future of places that are simultaneously homes, workplaces and destinations. This perspective helps ensure that stewardship remains grounded and historically informed in practice.

The soul of tourism: Anthropological perspectives on cultivating true destination stewardship

About this event

Featured speakers