Decolonizing tourism research: a critical ethnographic contribution from the global South
本文通过厄瓜多尔玻利瓦尔教区的案例，用批判民族志方法揭示旅游如何作为资本主义渗透工具，在全球南方复制不平等，同时当地居民通过非正式和社区旅游实践展现能动性。
This article examines tourism development in Bolívar Parish, a historically marginalized rural territory in Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador, to investigate how tourism operates as a vehicle of capitalist penetration in the Global South. Drawing on a critical ethnographic approach, the study combines world-systems theory, the enclave tourism model, and the concept of coloniality of power to analyze how global capitalism reshapes local economies, land relations, and social hierarchies in post-hacienda contexts. Methodologically, it contributes to tourism studies by adopting a reflexive and situated ethnography that foregrounds the researcher’s positionality and the co-production of knowledge with local actors, challenging extractive and neutral research paradigms. Empirical findings reveal that tourism in Bolívar—driven by lifestyle migrants and transnational capital—reproduces structural inequalities through land speculation, racialized labor divisions, and state-supported enclave models. At the same time, local residents display forms of agency by navigating and contesting these dynamics through informal and community-based tourism practices. The study advances a critical knowledge of tourism as a mechanism of both subordination and resistance within global capitalist systems, offering insights for rethinking tourism development through social justice, territorial sustainability, and epistemic plurality.