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Tsunami, Tourism and Threats to Local Livelihoods: The Case of Indigenous Sea Nomads in Southern Thailand

The Tourism–Disaster–Conflict Nexus

ISBN: 978-1-78743-100-3, eISBN: 978-1-78743-099-0

Publication date: 12 November 2018

Abstract

The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami had a deep and long-term impact on communities along Thailand’s Andaman Coast. In this chapter, the authors examine how three communities of indigenous, formerly seafaring people (chao leh) have been affected by post-tsunami tourism developments. Taking Devine and Ojeda’s (2017) concept of ‘violent tourism geographies’ as a theoretical lens, the authors analyse various practices of dispossession, including enclosure, extraction, erasure, commodification, destructive creation and neo-colonialism. The findings of this chapter suggest that all three communities found themselves subjected to radical transformations of their socioeconomic and cultural environment, yet in distinctive ways and with varying degrees of agency.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by a Faculty of Arts Research Development Fund, The University of Auckland. We are grateful for the support of Kridsada Pollasap in collecting the data. We thank all research participants for the information provided during our multi-sited and long-term fieldwork. We are also grateful for the photos shared by Chumchonthai Foundation and Rawai villagers.

Citation

Neef, A., Attavanich, M., Kongpan, P. and Jongkraichak, M. (2018), "Tsunami, Tourism and Threats to Local Livelihoods: The Case of Indigenous Sea Nomads in Southern Thailand", Neef, A. and Grayman, J.H. (Ed.) The Tourism–Disaster–Conflict Nexus (Community, Environment and Disaster Risk Management, Vol. 19), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 141-164. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2040-726220180000019008

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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