ABSTRACT
In the last decade, the notion that tourism growth can contribute considerably to poverty alleviation has been pushed strongly in development circles. This is in stark contrast to the 1970s and 1980s, when social scientists rigorously critiqued the nature and impacts of tourism in the “developing world” (Britton, 1982; Bryden, 1973; Hills & Lundgren, 1974). These studies, focused particularly on small-island economies in the Caribbean and Pacific, employed dependency theory to show how western ownership of the tourism industry – from hotels to operators to airlines – perpetuated and reinforced relations of domination and control between “First” and “Third” world nations. At that time, Fiji was said to provide a textbook example of the “structurally dependent economy” (Britton, 1982, p. 24), which – due to inequalities inherent in theworld economic system – could only assume a subordinate and largely passive role in tourism development.
