Ringer, Greg

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/2063

Greg Ringer, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor

International Studies Program

University of Oregon

Eugene, OR 97403 USA

tel: +1 541 346-5051
fax: +1 541 346-5041

email: gringer@uoregon.edu

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Browsing Ringer, Greg by Subject "Environmental perception"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Geographies of tourism and place in Micronesia: the 'sleeping lady' awakes
    (University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji, 2004-04) Ringer, Greg
    Tourism has grown to become the dominant service industry in the world in the 21st Century and a common prescription for funding sustainable community development throughout the East Asia-Pacific region. Certainly, there can be no denial of tourism’s potential to provide meaningful economic alternatives for indigenous residents. However, the marketing of rural communities and island nations as tourist attractions may also transfigure the dynamic historically and socially-constructed landscapes of the destination through the reformation of local identities and cultural patterns of behaviour. To encourage a proactive approach to tourism, planning must therefore be sensitive to the social morphology of the destination community and the intersect with tourist activities. To encourage such a process, this paper adopts a geographic perspective to examine the qualitative effects of ecotourism on the Micronesian island of Kosrae as it moves from a subsistence-based, conservative, patriarchal society to a tourism destination in the global economy. In this manner, the cognitive perceptions and practised lifestyles of residents and visitors and the recreational space of the destination are distinguished from the inhabited place of local people, and the social structure, meaning, and cohesion of Kosraean culture more meaningfully clarified.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Wilderness images of tourism and community
    (Elsevier, 1996) Ringer, Greg
    International tourism is now the dominant force in the world economy and consequently, is heavily promoted as a source of funding sustainable community development. Developing and marketing communities as tourist destinations rarely comes without human costs, however, including a transfiguration of the inhabitants' social history and the dynamics of their place. As a result, there exists tremendous need for additional research on the long-term effects of tourism on emergent destination communities. In response, this study presents the preliminary findings of research among residents and visitors to the twin Alaska "ghost" towns of Kennicott and McCarthy and the implications for a new direction in tourism studies, one that recognizes a socially-defined landscape often overlooked in the traditional literature of tourism and outdoor recreation in protected areas in Alaska and worldwide.