Illuminating traces: enactments of responsibility in practices of Arctic river tourists and inhabitants

Abstract

If taken for granted, ideas about nature underpinning nature-based tourism will often obscure or displace human livelihoods existing within a landscape. The result, whether characterised as colonial or ethnocentric, will in the minds of some correspond with injustice, contemporary or historical. In seeking to avoid static and privileging perspectives of 'nature', this article illuminates relational enactments of responsibility in the contrasting practices of tourists and Indigenous inhabitants of a Canadian Arctic riverscape. This intention is informed by first, the relevance of thinking ontologically about nature and, second, the aspects of Emmanuel Levinas' responsibility ethics for identifying relationships amid cultural difference. Empirically, the paper draws on participatory and visual research with guided canoeists and Inuit inhabitants of the Thelon River, illuminating that (a) culturally diverse practices contribute to making and remaking Thelon natures contemporaneously and (b) these practices can be understood as expressions of responsibility to and for others connected to personal and social -cultural identity. In addition to situating river tourists and inhabitants at the centre of responsible tourism debates, the article introduces theoretical, conceptual and methodological spaces for understanding and analysing moral engagements with others in creating culturally sensitive tourism natures and enabling transformation.

Conceptualizing Heritage Responsibility in World Heritage Sites: Insights from Levinas’ Ethics of Responsibility

“…People who have a stronger sense of identification with heritage show greater resilience to the pressure from moral public opinion initiated by authorized heritage discourse. This argument is supported by Grimwood and Doubleday (2013), who discuss the effect of self-identity on individuals' perception of their ethical responsibilities. Thus, given that heritage is generally believed to be a socially constructed concept, selfidentity has an important effect on heritage responsibility.…”

“…Levinas' ethics of responsibility provides a useful philosophical basis for tourism research (Grimwood and Doubleday 2013). This paper has incorporated Levinas' ideas in an attempt to revisit heritage responsibility, and maximize the value of this concept both in theory and practice.…”

“…As mentioned above, both academia and industry struggle to characterize responsibility due to what Fennell (2008, p. 4) identifies as "a lack of sufficient ontology in structuring a way forward". Levinas' ethics of responsibility offers a sound philosophical base for tourism research in at least three ways: a) by positing that being responsible is not an attribute of who we are personally, but rather fundamental to human behavior; b) by emphasizing the ethical importance of difference between Self and Other; and c) by demonstrating how face-to-face encounters are personal and intimate, and thus how this intersubjective responsibility can be observed at a relational scale of lived experience (Grimwood and Doubleday 2013).…”

“…Emmanuel Levinas (1906Levinas ( -1995 was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, known for his teachings on individual responsibility towards the other (Grimwood and Doubleday 2013). One of the greatest ethical thinkers of the 20th century, Levinas reversed the tradition of responsibility "from intentionality to passivity, from the ego to the other, from freedom to 86 Chaozhi Zhang, Peng Chen, and Xiongzhi Wang Since "the moral problem arises from conflicting responsibilities rather than competing rights" (Gilligan 1982, p. 19), authorized heritage discourse overtly stresses the role of responsibility, while de-emphasizing the rights of others in heritage conservation.…”

“…Categories of the latter include ' corporate social responsibility ' ( CSR;Coles et al 2013;Dahlsrud 2008;Elkington 1997;Henderson 2007;Li and Fu 2014), 'responsible tourism/tourist behavior' (RT; Frey and George 2010;Goodwin and Francis 2003;Lee et al 2013;Stanford 2008;Weeden 2013;Han et al 2016) , ' destination social responsibility' ( DSR; Ma et al 2013;Su et al 2016;Su and Swanson 2017;Su and Huang 2012) , and a broader and more general notion of 'responsibility' within the tourism context (Goodwin 2011;Grimwood and Doubleday 2013;Grimwood et al 2015;Hall and Brown 2006). These models have been formulated to cope with the negative impacts of tourism development and to improve sustainability and tourist experiences alike (Goodwin 2011).…”