| Popis: |
Informed by actor-network theory (ANT), this research aims at improving understanding of the nature of tourism destinations in Thailand and their development by investigating through three main notions: ordering, materiality and multiplicity. These notions enabled to study how tourism destinations in Thailand develop: how they are ordered and constructed, as well as how they hold their agency as tourism destinations through processes of re-negotiation and re-enactment. By employing ANT and its ontological perspective, tourism destinations are seen as fractionally coherent, or as ordering effects, which develop through, in and by heterogeneous networks. Consequently, tourism destinations are not set in stone. They are multiple things at once, and their configurations and development patterns cannot be foretold. By employing ANT, this study challenged the conventional approach to tourism destination development by underlining complexity rather than viewing these destinations as being static. Instead of aiming to provide general design principles or recommendations, this thesis provides an insight on tourism destination development in Thailand by studying three destinations: Pai, Pattaya, and the floating markets of Damnernsaduak, Thaka, Ampawa, Pattaya and Bang Numpheung. |
