Tourism and Prosperity in Miao Land

Power and Inequality in Rural Ethnic China

By (author) Xianghong Feng

Publication date:

01 May 2017

Length of book:

210 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498509954

In Tourism and Prosperity in Miao Land, Xianghong Feng focuses on the intersection of tourism, power, and inequality in the southern interior of China. In this region, capital-intensive and elite-directed tourism has reshaped the social and cultural patterns of the ethnic Miao and other local residents. Using ethnographic fieldwork conducted over the course of a decade, Feng examines the cultural reconstructions of space, ethnicity, gender, and morality within changing power structures. This book is recommended for scholars of anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, Asian studies, and tourism studies.

For more information, check out A Conversation with Xianghong Feng.

Part I: Tourism's "Great Leap Forward"
Chapter 1The Place: The Mountain, The River, The People
Chapter 2"Scaling Up": The McDonaldizing Village Tours
Part II: Living with Tourism
Chapter 3Spatial Transformations: Constructing Tourism Sites
Chapter 4From Tourism Marketplace to Village Homes: Gendered Work among the Local Miao
Chapter 5 Prosperity for Whom?: Tourism and the Poverty of Resources
Part III: One Village
Chapter 6Before and After the Merger: Everyday Resistance in Village Life
Chapter 7Competition and (In)equality: The Rise and Fall of Village Family Restaurants
Conclusion"Small" as a Solution

As a case study of tourism and power in rural ethnic China, this book is a helpful contribution to the growing literature in the anthropology of tourism and contemporary China studies through its ethnographic attention to social relations, gender, and rural economies. . . . the book will be of use to scholars already working on these issues, and individual chapters could be effectively integrated into relevant university courses and seminars on minority China, tourism anthropology and rural development.