Domestic “Eco” 95how Filipino citizens and consumers can see the Park, neither voters nor visitors
of “wondrous nature” are passive recipients of meanings. Rather, their practices
of consumption are integral to the broader cultural productions of nationally
significant meanings. These consumers are active in placing themselves within
nature in ways that are desirable and reproducing places of nature in ways that
they understand as beneficial for certain national environmental and economic
futures—even if these aspirations do not necessarily incorporate the everyday
economic and environmental experiences of many local residents.
Much of the extant work on ecotourism examines how Western-oriented
expectations of culture and environment transform local people and places. By
contrast, this case study speaks to the powerful transformations that occur within
tropical Asian countries through emerging domestic “eco”-branded tourism.
As more Filipinos than ever before visit the Underground River, this place has
become further established in national images as a site of Philippine natural
heritage. In creating, circulating, and consuming Palawan environments, socially
differentiated and spatially distanced Filipinos produce powerful social values
of nature. These practices are embedded within important aspirations of some
citizens for the environmental and economic future of not only Palawan but also
the Philippines more broadly. I have argued, however, that as domestic tourism
has transformed the ways in which a “wondrous nature” can be recognized,
accessed, and made pleasurable, the resulting practices have often reproduced,
rather than challenged, the local disjuncture that ecotourism is embedded within
on central Palawan Island.
Acknowledgments
My thanks for the generous advice and comments from the editors of this volume
and the anonymous reviewer of this chapter. The research from which this case
study is taken would not have been possible without funding from the Wenner-
Gren Foundation through a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. I thank Wolfram
H. Dressler, and Anna Cristina Pertierra, who have provided key guidance in
developing the research that this case study is drawn from. Thanks to Will Smith
for his comments on drafts of this chapter. My heartfelt thanks to those whose
experiences and perspectives are the basis of this study.
Notes
1 A means that is supposedly consistent with supporting the environmental integrity of
these places of nature. Although, as the following case study demonstrates, such an
assertion remains highly contested on Palawan Island.
2 Palawan province includes the large Palawan Island and more than 1,700 small
islands.
3 Furthermore, findings from a 1996 workshop on Ancestral Domain resource plans
attended by indigenous representatives from across Palawan suggest that, at this time,
attendees were adamant they did not want to encourage tourism inside Ancestral
Domains (de Beer and McDermott 1996, pp. 156–57; see also Eder 1987, pp. 173–74).
4 Livelihood household survey (n = 104) conducted and qualified October-December 2011.