Tourism, Value Appropriation, and Ecological Degradation

This article highlights the main characteristics of the rapid development of tourism during recent decades, as well as the limitations of the existing literature concerning this development. An alternative (Marxist) theoretical framework is then developed for the explication of the development of commodified tourism, the role of ecological and cultural (value) appropriation in the determination of capitalist profitability, and its developmental implications. As argued, this value and resource appropriation and the exploitation/appropriation dialectic have adverse socioeconomic and ecological implications, while leading to the rapid growth of tourism against other sectors. On the other hand, the cultural homogenization and ecological degradation brought about especially by mass tourism imply a self-limiting development of tourism itself. Concluding that the current mode of tourism development is ecologically and socially unsustainable, we end with a broad outline of a different perspective of decommodified tourism within a post-capitalist development.