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.
Xianghong Feng ( ) is associate professor of anthropology at Eastern Michigan University.
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
In tourism...culture is rarely independent of the economy. Feng Xianghong's refreshing study of ethnic tourism development engages this point but assesses the tourist economy less as the condition for cultural preservation and more for urgently needed poverty alleviation.... Feng's ethnography offers a finely textured study of how uneven distribution and opportunity drives so much of what takes place in the tourist industry. * The China Journal * 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. * China Quarterly * In tourism...culture is rarely independent of the economy. Feng Xianghong's refreshing study of ethnic tourism development engages this point but assesses the tourist economy less as the condition for cultural preservation and more for urgently needed poverty alleviation.... Feng's ethnography offers a finely textured study of how uneven distribution and opportunity drives so much of what takes place in the tourist industry. * The China Journal * It is a very thoroughly researched ethnography of a widespread form of rural development in contemporary China: the promotion of tourism from urban to rural areas of ethnic and scenic distinctiveness.... The main story of this well-written and convincing book is a devastating indictment of the corruption of the local and regional powers that be. -- Nelson H. Graburn * Mountain Research and Development * Xianghong Feng provides an engaging examination of China's promotion of tourism to bring prosperity to rural areas. Making sense of complex political and economic dynamics in relation to the shifting fortunes of individuals, families, and villages, Feng moves deftly between fine-grained detail and broad strokes. The study is attentive to the potential conflict of interest between large-scale tourism operators and individual entrepreneurs and workers, and makes important contributions to the anthropology of tourism. Tourism and Prosperity in Miao Land captures the precariousness of peasant livelihood, even in the casual description of a bowl of noodle soup. Feng illuminates contemporary dynamics of tourism and urban-rural dynamics in relation to labor, space, gender, ethnicity, competition, and resistance in Miao villages. -- Hjorleifur Jonsson, Arizona State University Xianghong Feng's book illustrates the role of tourism developers in shaping China's underdeveloped regions. Using power in tourism as a conceptual framework, she analyzes the intricacies of host communities responding to tourism development and cultural commodification. Her book adds a rich and meaningful voice to contemporary debates on social and spatial transformation in tourist destinations in China and elsewhere. -- Xiaobo Su, University of Oregon China is where tourism is really growing, in both international and domestic tourism! Xianghong Feng's new book is the most intriguing ethnography published to date that explains what is happening at the local level in tourism. It is a wonderful ride into the cracks and corners of a world rarely seen outside of China. Her book is theoretically interesting, important, and approachable for both the scholar and the new student. -- Tim Wallace, North Carolina State University In Tourism and Prosperity in Miao Land, [Feng] deftly examines the intersection of tourism, power, and inequality on the ground in this poverty-stricken county. * American Journal of Sociology * Xianghong Feng's book packs a sprawling, ethnographically-rich view of a complex tourism landscape in a compact volume.... Tourism and Prosperity in Miao Land is a solid volume that has much to contribute not only towards phenomenological strategies that capture the plurality of voices among the 'toured'... but also adds to our understanding of how to address the reality of tourism in multi-ethnic peripheries that contribute to the 'intensification of the marginality of the powerless' (p. xix). * Journal Of Tourism and Cultural Change *
