Participation of fragile collectives in community-based tourism development in Uganda

Abstract

This thesis focuses on participation of fragile collectives in community-based tourism, taking Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) in Uganda as the context of the study. Using ethnography approaches, 55 fragile collectives living around BINP were purposively selected. These were interviewed to investigate their forms of participation in CBT, the benefits derived from participation, enablers, and barriers to participation, and how the identified barriers to participation in CBT can be solved. The uniqueness of this study lies in its focus on those individuals labelled as 'fragile collectives' in the community. These are the members of the community that are marginalized, vulnerable and minority, and often neglected in community-based tourism research. This might be because these are members of the community that are hard to reach to collect data. The relentless efforts to reach 55 fragile collectives in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda to make the voices heard to the tourism academia and beyond makes this study valuable and important. This study identified three forms of participation, namely direct, indirect and no participation. The benefits derived from the three forms were highlighted. The needs and aspirations of fragile collectives along with enablers of participation to community-based tourism were discussed, barriers to participation and solutions to those barriers elaborated. Vivid explanations in the form of direct quotations from the participants along with the discussions in context helps the reader to hear the voices of those fragile collectives. It is found in this study that, unfortunately, fragile collectives in community-based tourism context are not involved in decision-making in most instances. Although the literature emphasizes the importance of community involvement in decision-making process, the fragile collectives are not involved in this process. This study's important contribution is to identify this problem through the interactions and talks with 55 fragile collectives. This work has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study develops framework to explain fragile collectives' participation in community-based tourism is an important theoretical contribution of this thesis. Focusing on fragile collectives in the community-based tourism context is another valuable contribution of this study. Practically community decision makers and tourism authorities shouldn't neglect this part of the community and should put more effort to be more inclusive.