A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China (Studies on Ethnic Groups in China)

Jenny T. Chio

ISBN 10: 0295993669 / ISBN 13: 9780295993669

Published by University of Washington Press, 2014

About this Item

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, and political inequalities. This book investigates the contested meanings and unintended consequences of tourism for those people whose lives and livelihoods. Series: Studies on Ethnic Groups in China. Num Pages: 304 pages, black & white illustrations, black & white tables, figures. BIC Classification: 1FPC; JFSL3; JHBS; KNSG. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 229 x 161 x 21. Weight in Grams: 468. . 2014. Paperback. . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9780295993669

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China (Studies on Ethnic Groups in China)
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295993669
• ISBN 13: 9780295993669
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

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/

About the Author

Jenny Chio is assistant professor of anthropology and associated faculty in film and media studies and East Asian studies at Emory University. She is also an ethnographic filmmaker, and her documentary on ethnic tourism in China, Nong Jia Le Peasant Family Happiness, is distributed by Berkeley Media. For more information on her work, visit jennychio.com.