#ethnotourism

The oh so charming fellow on the right is named R. Gordon Wasson. His name pops up on this blog pretty frequently, and there’s a good reason for it. As an author and an amateur ethnomycologist from the United States, he was able to make a bit of a name for himself back in the late 50s with his field research on hallucinogenic mushrooms - one such type being the so-called ‘Magic Mushroom’ - found in the Oaxaca region and used by the Mazatec people in ritualistic mushroom ceremonies. 

Although he took care to anonymize the subjects and location of his research by changing their names, photographs and a little digging made it easy to uncover the secret location of the mushrooms and the Mazatec. This resulted in an onslaught of hippie tourists seeking a high, leading to the desecration of the sacred mushroom for the sake of their own pleasure-seeking adventures. This, in turn, largely disrupted the local indigenous communities and exacerbated tensions in their already colonial climate and caused a great deal of social trauma for the Mazatec people. 

Our increasing demand for adventure is pushing back the frontiers of tourism, but is it also posing a threat to tribal people? John Vidal investigates

This is what I just posted about in regards to taking pictures when travelling! 

This sentence captures the irony of ethnotourism and ecotourism to a T: "Barefoot, which already has an Andamans resort on Havelock Island, plans to bring in thousands of tourists a year from Europe to scuba dive and to explore the remote islands now becoming popular as one of Asia's least visited beach destinations."