Tourism as an exercise in three-dimensional power: Evidence from Ghana

Abstract

This study uses Lukes' (2005) three-dimensional power to explore the ability of traditional chiefs to influence slavery-based heritage tourism decisions. Traditional chiefs of five former slave communities in Ghana were in-depth interviewed about their efforts to harness community development through tourism and perceived influence in tourism decision-making process. Results indicated that despite being guardians of tourism resources, traditional chiefs perceive themselves to be powerless in affecting management decisions because of governmental control of local community institutions. They, however, exert considerable influence on tourism activities by either avoiding engagement or acting as community vanguards to discredit the interests of other stakeholders. Interview data support the theoretical tenets of Lukes' (2005) three-dimensional view of power, and the need to pursue cooperative tourism planning is discussed.

Place, power, and tourism in value-creation: contesting the plaza in Pisac, Peru

“…As noted at the outset, intersections of power and tourism, at various spatial and analytical scales, continue to be important areas of academic enquiry (Knight & Cottrell, 2016;Nogués-Pedregal, 2019;Yankholmes, 2018). However, in line with this paper's intention to examine a place-specific conception of power, the emphasis in this brief review will initially focus on the intersections of place and power within the context of tourism.…”

“…Power remains a central concern in research on tourism's transformational capacities (Cornelisse, 2020;Nogués-Pedregal, 2019;Yankholmes, 2018) due to tourism's potential to create value (Cannas, 2018) and restructure societies (Duffy, Kline, Mowatt, & Chancellor, 2015). Tourism and power may intersect in multiple ways, with diverse consequences.…”

Tourism Governance in Komodo National Park, Indonesia: Blessing or Curse?

“…Local people are only involved in several occupations. They have never been involved in decision-making and resource management efforts (Prabakharan et al, 2014) both informally and formally (Bello et al, 2018) since tourism is only centralized to the incorporated institutions (Yankholmes, 2018). On Komodo Island, BTNK only provides facilities for two jobs; souvenir merchants and naturalist guides, albeit the fact that these are very limited numbers.…”

Crises Communication vs. United Nation Sustainable Development Goals: The 7S Paradigm as Feasible Solution Facilitator

“…Nevertheless, the targeted resulting paradigm must be feasible and easy to handle -for students, start-up founders, scientists, practitioners, politicians, etc. Therefore, publicly available documents, data from reference cases (e.g., [33], [34], [35], etc., as well as big data (e.g., from private/public Statistics' Administration Offices), sociological/psychological, education, security perception related as well as meta research projects, case studies, concrete crises situation reports, conference proceedings, etc. were explored.…”