Romancing the Wild

Robert Fletcher, a cultural anthropologist, is Associate Professor in the Department of Environment and Development at the United Nations–mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. He is the editor of Beyond Resistance: The Future of Freedom.

“Fletcher forensically analyses what it is about getting active in the great outdoors that chimes with the culture of its majority attendees – white middle class westerners.”  (Wanderlust) "Robert Fletcher, an accomplished white-water tour guide, ecotourist, and cultural anthropologist, emerges in this text as one of the rare few whopossesses the skill set needed to gain ethnographic entree into this elusive, fast-moving subculture." - Sally Ann Ness (Current Anthropology) “Although the main topic in this substantially researched title is why people engage in ecotourism, the practical implications of this study are important. . . . The book has serious implications for those who would promote ecotourism as a primary means of saving endangered landscapes, saying it may not be the panacea we had hoped. VERDICT Recommended for academic libraries.” (Library Journal) “Fletcher offers readers a serious review of ecotourism and its evolution over the past several decades…. Altogether, there are few aspects of the human condition as it interacts with nature that the author does not touch on, from politics to psychology to sexuality and literature (Was Don Quixote the original ecotourist?). Any reader looking for a deep understanding of ecotourism should start here.” (Booklist) "This book makes an important contribution to tourism studies. Further, by situating the ecotourist as the quintessential postmodern subject, Fletcher offers an analysis that will be of interest to a much broader audience, linking contemporary work to leisure and contemporary production to consumption." - Laurie Kroshus Medina (American Ethnologist) "In Romancing the Wild, Fletcher ... generally describes the contemporary ecotourist scouring the globe for the next adventure. Because anthropology is famous for getting at the humanity behind the data, works such as Romancing the Wild are particularly important." - Frank Hutchins (American Anthropologist) "[A] comprehensive and well-written discussion of the ways in which adventure seeking activities like whitewater kayaking, mountaineering, and so on, can be used to think about how and why certain kinds of dominant cultural values, norms, and discourses – such as individual autonomy, self-actualization, continual progress, and class privilege – are formulated, communicated, and experienced in identity-shaping ways." - Luis Vivanco (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute)

• Acknowledgments ixIntroduction. Encountering Experience 11. The Ecotourism Experience 292. Becoming an Ecotourist 453. Playing on the Edge 724. Affluence and Its Discontents 915. Call of the Wild 1136. Ecotourism at Large 1307. The Ecotourist Gaze 149Conclusion. The Teachings of Don Quixote 167Notes 191Bibliography 215Index 245