Reflections on a critically-applied anthropology of conservation and tourism field school in Honduras’ Bay Islands

Abstract

This article examines the inception, goals, and impacts of an ethnographic field school in conservation, culture, and environmental change, established in collaboration with small conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Honduras’ Bay Islands. It traces the author's journey from decades of critical and activist ethnography on rhetorical erasure and territorial dispossession of African and Indigenous descendants by conservation and tourism development towards the surprising turn (to the author) to establish a study abroad program that combined conservation research tourism and ethnographic fieldwork. The article provides an overview of the central themes explored during the program: neocolonialism, racialized dispossession, and displacement-in-place in Caribbean tourism; neoliberal conservation and the transformation of landscapes through land privatization; and the impacts of climate change, ecological grief, and community resiliency in the face of environmental change. Student feedback, community benefits, and goals for the program's future are detailed.