Abstract
Research in environmentality has provided an analysis of environmentally friendly subject formation through the influence of conservation governance. Within this research, examination of subject formation from the local community perspective is also gaining attention. However, a gender perspective in environmentality research remains marginal. This study thus contributes to environmentality research by drawing on intersectional feminist political ecology to examine women's engagement with ecotourism in the context of India's Corbett Tiger Reserve. Ecotourism as a form of market-based conservation has been commonly framed as an expression of neoliberal environmentality. Neoliberal environmentality is reflected in market-centred incentives used to promote conservation and support for local people via employment in conservation-based work - a supposedly ‘win-win’ dynamic. Through ethnographic research, I provide insights into different forms of women's engagement with tourism. The analysis reveals that this engagement does not necessarily produce the environmentally friendly subject that environmentality analysis predicts. Rather, women's engagement is shaped by intersecting dynamics of caste and class and motivated by factors including but not limited to monetary benefits. This study thus questions the dominant approach to investigating neoliberal environmentality in particular, that tends to emphasise the influence of monetary incentives in producing environmentally friendly subjects.
Highlights
This study provides a gender perspective to neoliberal environmentality research.
Women's involvement in ecotourism is shaped by caste and class and does not necessarily lead to environmentally friendly subjects.
The implications of women's engagement in ecotourism include factors beyond mere monetary benefits that neoliberal environmentality tends to emphasise.
Introduction
This study examines women's involvement in tourism at the Corbett Tiger Reserve (CTR), India, where ecotourism is promoted as a win-win project for both conservation and local community development. Ecotourism as a form of market-based conservation is commonly framed as an expression of neoliberal environmentality (Fletcher, 2010; Bluwstein, 2017). Neoliberal environmentality is reflected in market-centred incentives used to promote conservation and support for local people via employment in conservation-based work - a supposedly ‘win-win’ dynamic. It is considered a form of multiple environmentalities intended to enrol local stakeholders as subjects in favour of conservation. Environmentality has thus provided a productive lens to understand how conservation governance is promoted and with which local people engage. However, the ways that people understand and negotiate such governance, and as a result how ‘environmental subjectivity’ is constructed, has been relatively less explored (Singh, 2013; Haller et al., 2016; Fletcher, 2017). Previous research has demonstrated how the production of environmental subjects in relation to environmentality is not a straightforward equation and hence the value of a bottom-up perspective in understanding this process (Cepek, 2011; Singh, 2013; Forsyth and Walker, 2014). Within this discussion, however, a focus on gender has, thus far, remained marginal (for a notable exception see Gutiérrez-Zamora 2021).
To address this gap, I draw from feminist political ecology and intersectionality to recognise the multiple identities that emerge as a result of intersecting influences from gender, class and caste (Nightingale, 2011; Resurrección, 2017; Mollett, 2017). I argue that while women's involvement in ecotourism is indeed promoted through an external structure that incentivises involvement in a market, this does not necessarily imply the creation of subjects who are environmentally friendly. Rather, women's intersecting identities shaped by gender, caste and class have a bearing on their decision making, and the implications thereof. This approach thus contributes an additional perspective to environmentality research as it considers the socio-economic positioning that influences women's engagement with ecotourism.
In the following section, I outline the research on environmentality to which this study contributes. I focus on environmentality research involving community dynamics that illuminate agency, local alliances, interests and aspirations. These perspectives highlight the importance of attending to the lived experiences of local community members involved in conservation intervention landscapes, yet a focus on gender and women's experiences in particular has remained marginal in this discussion. To address this deficiency, the focus here remains on women's identities and work engagement with tourism. Following this, I provide contextual findings for my analysis from a village near Corbett Tiger Reserve by examining how differences in engagement with tourism, based on class and caste, contribute to specific forms of agency, life options or changes in women's lives. The forms of agency, mobility or restrictions resulting from tourism work thus continue to be shaped by prevailing caste and class structures that women must manoeuvre. In developing this analysis, the study contributes gender insights in relation to environmentality, and adds to research serving as a “counterpoint” to conventional environmentality approaches (Forsyth and Walker, 2014) in demonstrating that women's involvement in conservation interventions does not necessarily imply the adoption of environmentally friendly behaviour.
Environmentality and environmental subjects
Research concerning environmentality has contributed to our understanding of processes of environmental governance, and people's perspectives and behaviour in relation to these. Environmentality is drawn from Foucault's concept of governmentality which examines governance as a set of techniques used to “conduct the conduct” of people (1991). Following Luke’s (1999) initial examination of environmentality enacted through global environmental governance structures, Agrawal (2005a, 2005b) analysed environmentality as more localised governance influencing subjectivity. He described environmentalities as processes of ‘intimate government’ wherein regulatory frameworks like monitoring or enforcement turn people into ‘environmental subjects’ who ‘care for the environment’ (Agrawal, 2005b: 162, 178).
The regulatory frameworks shaping environmental subjectivity can, however, differ based on the different structures of governance that underpin them. To understand how different forms of environmentalities are operationalised, Fletcher (2010) draws on Foucault’s (2008) late work to describe multiple environmentalities: disciplinary, sovereign, neoliberal, and truth forms, respectively. A sovereign environmentality is reflected in fortress conservation, entailing strict enforcement of protected area boundaries. By contrast, the villagers in Kumaon that Agrawal (2005b) analysed as environmental subjects, function in relation to a “disciplinary” environmentality due to the ethical norms that governance institutions promote (Fletcher, 2010). “Truth” environmentality, on the other hand, is promoted through specific beliefs about what counts as truth in human-environment relations (examples are deep ecology or traditional ecological knowledge) (Fletcher, 2010; Montes, et al., 2020).
Neoliberal environmentality, finally, is focused on creating market-based incentives that encourage people to act in environmentally friendly ways (Fletcher, 2010). Neoliberal environmentality draws from Foucault's analysis of neoliberal governmentality wherein the market economy is predominant in defining governmental action; hence the essence of neoliberalism according to Foucault is that the “exercise of political power can be modelled on the principles of a market economy” (2008:131). Ecotourism framed as neoliberal environmentality implies creation of particular environmental subjects modelled on the homo œconomicus, a man (or woman) of enterprise and production who produces his (or her) own satisfaction (Foucault, 2008). A neoliberal subject, then, becomes someone governable by providing incentives which are defined by engagement in the market economy (Foucault, 2008).
Complexity and nuances of environmental subjectivity
All these forms of governance are related to ways of influencing and incentivising behaviours on the part of external actors. However, how people's behaviour actually manifests is dependent on factors that include, but also go beyond, an external governance structure. A growing body of research has thus explored processes of subject formation and the implications of people's involvement in conservation from the perspective of community-level dynamics. The research has revealed a range of motivating factors in shaping environmentality.
Within this scholarship, production of environmental subjects in relation to conservation governance is examined by highlighting the importance of local socio-cultural realities. This research demonstrates that there are complex outcomes of environmental governance, and consequently complex subject positions formed through the coming together of interests, aspirations and social differences in specific political settings (Asiyanbi et al., 2019). The social dynamics that emerge contribute to transforming existing social systems. For instance, people may develop strategies and systems to be part of an environmental project while excluding women from what was their traditional role and thus changing the system to personal benefit, for example towards men (Faye, 2016). A study by Machaqueiro (2020) shows a different perspective on environment subject formation. The study examines use of local culture and narratives to promote climate change governance through the UNFCCC (Machaqueiro, 2020). Here, ‘environmental subjects’, are not distant from local realities, and, Machaqueiro argues, the process of subjectification is in fact based on local specificities. Subjectification is nuanced, and demands recognition of how people negotiate environmental governance which in itself is not static, but can be in a state of flux and transition (Cullen, 2020).
Following a focus on local dynamics, research draws attention to the role of agency in negotiating environmental governance structures. Singh (2013) analyses how villagers protecting the forest is not simply an outcome of environmental governance. Rather, the embodied and material ways of relating to nature play a vital role in shaping local perceptions, which motivate their protection of the forest. Similarly, agency is dealt with through an emic perspective like ‘constitutionality’, wherein people negotiate and participate in environmental initiatives while forming institutions and collectivising creatively (Haller, et al., 2016). Community-based and agential perspectives illuminate the factors that contribute to the varying relationships with conservation governance, and the implications of this on different individuals and groups. These realities include an individual or group's capacities to critically gauge and engage with non-indigenous or introduced Western scientific techniques in an indigenous community context (Cepek, 2011). Highlighting community dynamics and socio-economic influences on motivations in conservation interventions, research thus complicates understanding of the process of subject formation in relation to environmentality, revealing that actors’ behaviour does not necessarily reflect the eco-friendly subjectivity that interventions like ecotourism seeks to promote (Cepek, 2011; Forsyth and Walker, 2014; Faye 2016).
This study builds on this strand of environmentality research by focusing on women's engagement with tourism. A focus on gender dynamics in environmentality research is limited but growing. Gender is identified as an important element of study; as one aspect of social identity with its particular embodied environmental relationships (Singh, 2013). Faye (2016) examined motivations for conservation as based on power dynamics rather than awareness about the environment, which in turn excludes women previously involved in management. More recently, Gutiérrez-Zamora (2021) has examined gender mainstreaming within community forest management as a technique of biopower, one that reinforces power inequities expressed through dynamics of race, class and gender, while promoting women as entrepreneurs.
Research within feminist political ecology has brought together theoretical contributions combining agential and subjectivity-oriented perspectives (see Truelove, 2011) which provide a productive frame to examine women's motivation in tourism work and its implications on their lives. The following sections attend to feminist theory to draw out women's work, everyday practices and their socio-economic positioning in the context of environment governance.
Embeddedness and subjectivities
Feminist perspectives on subject formation have provided vital insights on the co-constitutive nature of space and identities. Feminist political ecologists in particular have unpacked the politics of resource use to emphasise “embeddedness of local gendered environmental struggles” (Resurrección and Elmhirst, 2008:7) in political economic contexts (see also Harcourt and Escobar, 2002; Rocheleau and Nirmal, 2014). By acknowledging contextual realities, the notion of a subject is expanded to include intersectional aspects including ethnicity, class, and religious factors (Elmhirst, 2011; Resurrección, 2017). Intersectional FPE draws attention to the forms of difference and related subjectivities by recognising class, caste, race, age or ethnicity. This entails understanding the power dynamics emerging from the space, and those emerging from social structures that shape gender relations. Intersectionality allows one to consider aspects of gender relations that matter to people beyond marriage, such as social status, including age-based status, or class position (Elmhirst, 2015).
In understanding local gendered struggles, one strand of research has emphasised the material aspects of gender and environment (Agarwal, 1992, 1994). These include use of and dependence on natural resources for livelihood, survival and socio-cultural factors which determine activities in a community (Agarwal, 1992). Drawing from women's daily practice of firewood and fodder collection from the forest in Kumaon Himalayas, Gururani (2002) points out that women's identities are interrelated with their material work in the forest, and this relationship produces gendered subjects. The forest becomes a space of labour and power dynamics related to coloniality and patriarchy (Gururani, 2002). In a similar vein, identities are bound to space as social relations function within specific social and physical frames, consequently giving meaning to the relationships and the particular setting (Massey, 2005). This dimension of space changes when daily practices and livelihoods change. A feminist lens provides important insights concerning the multiplicity of subjectivities that converge and within which gender is constantly negotiated and articulated in environmental or socio-political contexts, creating complex or shifting subjectivities (Sundberg, 2004; Sultana, 2009; Harris, 2006; Nightingale, 2011). Systems of differentiation based on class, ethnicity or race impact how people's livelihoods are categorised and differentiated between those who are seen to protect and harm nature (Ojeda, 2012). An intersectional FPE approach thus seeks to integrate various focal points of difference and understand varying subjectivities which reveal the heterogeneous and non-static nature of a subject. It is also argued that an intersectional approach has been prevalent in the context of feminist politics in India specifically, as caste and class fundamentally shape a woman's identity in this context, even if analyses are not explicitly labelled in this way (Menon, 2015). Accounting for differences in caste and class in this context thus recognises the different positionalities of women as they experience them.
Intersectional research has focused largely on space and time in relation to identities (Cole, 2017). Subject formation is a result of the intersecting aspects of a social relationship or structure that actors must negotiate in order to exert situated forms of agency (Elmhirst, 2015). Subjectivities may either be reinforced or emerge as contradictory or contesting certain systems of power, thus revealing the momentary or “unstable processes of subject formation” (Sundberg, 2004:47). Sundberg's examination of women's medicinal plant group revealed that the group was formed through external intervention shaped by power dynamics of patriarchy and race. Simultaneously, some women felt that the group provided space for women to participate and challenge gender relations (Sundberg, 2004). This space is co-produced and redefined as multiple power dynamics of race, class, gender intersect (Nightingale, 2011). The influence of the market on shaping identities, its impacts on lived experiences and women's lives is a critical dimension to examine in conservation spaces.
Intersecting identities: women and markets
Research on the relationship between feminist movements and neoliberalism points out that there is increasing focus on recognition rather than redistribution or representation (Fraser, 2009). This entailed increasing focus on issues of lack of women's involvement on platforms or work places, and less on actual redistribution of wealth and income. Contributing to Fraser's historical analysis of feminist movements, Newman (2013) shows the complexities that come with incorporating women in the economy. For instance, women entering a work force even though it may be within a patriarchal structure brings the question of gender into a dynamic from which it may have previously been absent. Newman also challenges the assertion that feminism is necessarily co-opted by neoliberalism by teasing out the relationships between culture, economy and institutional logics which are not always erased with the imposition of neoliberalism. The contribution she offers is the shift towards understanding how the market, culture and existing feminist or activist movements can coexist and contradict one another while creating spaces for expressing agency despite dominant power structures. From this perspective, she argues that new spaces of power and agency can open up for women. As resource management is increasingly becoming market-oriented, mobility in rural areas is also increasing (Elmhirst, 2011), and it is vital to unpack what forms of mobility take place and their implications for women's lives.
Two broad findings of research on the relationship between the market and women thus indicate, paradoxically, that: 1) women have access to more opportunities and power through the market, on the one hand; and on the other, that 2) women entering a market become part of another structure over which they have little or no control (Arora-Jonsson, 2014). This paradox is evident especially in cases where women are involved in tourism. As tourism is based on the social and physical setting of a place, gender dynamics are bound to be integral to unpacking tourism. While some women gain social mobility they largely serve foreign and white tourists, thus reinforcing race, class and nationality-based hierarchy (Johnson, 2018). Gendered relations can be reflected and reproduced in tourism transactions (Swain, 1995). A study on ethnic tourism in Thailand revealed that women are employed to “capitalize on hill tribeness” (Ishii, 2012:306) and women seemed to fulfil that perception, while older men are left unemployed. Identities are interrelated with tourism practice, especially when selling a specific aspect of culture for tourism business, like handicrafts or folk dance. Women perform and sell culture in tourist areas, and that aspect of identity often merges with their daily life (Li, 2003). Identity is also tied to agency and empowerment; in some cases, women have been able to negotiate the local-tourist power dynamics to their favour. In this process they are able to form their identities as entrepreneurs on equal footing with tourists, and not just as serving tourists (Cone, 1995). Mollett (2017) examines Afro-descendent women's experiences of living and working in a tourism dominated space as they navigate historical dispossession that is aggravated by race and gender. Such examples show that intersecting elements of class, age, race, gender or education, working together, can reinforce discrimination (Sultana, 2021).
Other research suggests that tourism has the potential to provide entrepreneurial opportunities to women, and through that offer potential for leadership, political involvement and social mobility (Stronza, 2001; Medina, 2005; Pritchard, 2014). Women's participation in decision making and presence in local governance bodies can also contribute to empowerment (Agarwal, 2010). However, economic opportunities do not necessarily translate to gender equity or justice (Jackson, 1996). The issue of what empowerment entails is complicated, and calls for an understanding of the context, personal agency and social norms and practices (Goldman and Little, 2015). Women may be empowered at the family level through their engagement with tourism, yet their status within the larger village or society could remain unchanged due to conformity to existing gender roles (Swain, 1993). Often, family responsibilities are expected to be prioritised despite the responsibility for expanding tourism business (Morgan and Winkler, 2020). Consequently, empowerment initiatives can end up burdening women more because of their pre-existing responsibilities that maintain priority (Morgan and Winkler, 2020).
The research outlined above indicates that women's involvement in tourism can have diverse outcomes in terms of how and whether they benefit. This difference depends on existing social dynamics and specific forms of intervention. It also shows that there is no singular form of subjectivity which is derived from women's involvement in tourism. Intersecting dimensions of class, caste, race, or ethnicity lead to multiple subjectivities. An emphasis on intersectionality aims to capture these. In the above cases, work through tourism relates to the production of gender norms, as well as challenging them. Feminist research captures such nuance in subjectivity- production and contestation (Sultana, 2009; Nightingale, 2011; Clement, et al., 2019).
In the following analysis, I employ this perspective to examine different women's engagement with tourism. The motivations and implications of their involvement invite us to consider how women's engagement in a neoliberal environmentality does not necessarily produce environmentally friendly behaviour. In my examination of women's association with tourism, the aim is not to romanticise women's struggles, empowerment or agency (Abu-Lughod, 1990; Mollett, 2017). Instead, I aim to examine the multiple factors that lead to specific forms of agency within continued structures of oppression. This, in turn contributes to challenging certain notions of how subject formation proceeds in relation to environmentality. An environmentality framework remains useful for this analysis due to its capacity to illuminate the particular ways in which forms of environmental governance aim to “conduct conduct” in pursuit of specific forms of subjectivity, even if these are not necessarily achieved in practice. Combining this with an intersectional feminist focus on how such efforts to conduct conduct are negotiated by actors embodying particular subject positions thus affords a nuanced understanding of how subject formation actually plays out in environmental governance interventions.
Methodology
This study is based on ethnographic field research conducted between August 2018 and August 2019, using semi-structured interviews and participant observation. I employed an active interview style, using a basic set of questions. Active interviews are similar to everyday conversation and allow for questions to tap into understanding of social reality through factual and emotional accounts (Hathaway and Atkinson, 2003). I was based in one village for the large part of my study period, and this helped to provide a more immersive experience into the lives of women, supporting participant observation. I was able to take part in the daily activities of different women including household chores, fodder collection from the forest, farming, community meetings and social events. While the cases described here are from the specific village I was based in, my research in other villages around CTR also contributed to my general understanding of gender dynamics. I also draw on interviews with men, as well as on my field observations and notes. The duration of interactions with research participants ranged from twenty to ninety minutes. Participants’ consent was sought verbally in order to build a relationship of trust where physical consent forms and formalities created discomfort. Pseudonyms are used to maintain anonymity and privacy. The focus on varied social backgrounds was important to reveal that women experience varying degrees of agency or change in their existing positions as they engage with tourism.
In order to maintain this perspective, I also draw from standpoint theory. Standpoint theory promotes viewing a research context through the perspective of women or marginalised groups so the knowledge formed in interaction between subject and object is embodied in the physical geography and socio-economic contexts (Harding, 1993). My position as a woman contributed to affinity with the often-shifting subjectivities that the women with whom I interacted also embodied. My social position, a woman from a privileged caste and class, and my identity as a researcher made me someone with a different kind of lifestyle and knowledge – important points of difference. Yet, living in the village and participating in the local activities helped build trust which was important for creating a space of open sharing. In my interactions I was equally questioned about my life and how I expect it to be. Such exchanges were important as they allowed for insights into one another's lives, and eventually contributed towards mutual connection and understanding. When in the presence of men, my interaction with the women, and vice versa, tended to be different, as there was then more general discussion about livelihood issues. This revealed the larger power dynamics that were guided by patriarchal values.
Women's work and tourism around Corbett Tiger Reserve
Corbett Tiger Reserve (CTR), established in 1973, is one of the first tiger reserves located in the northern state of Uttarakhand, India. The management of a tiger reserve is based on core and buffer areas (NTCA, 2020). Core areas are inviolate spaces where human habitation is prohibited and specific sections are demarcated for tourism (safaris), while the buffer area is a multiple use zone where human habitation and activities are permitted (WLPA, 2006; NTCA, 2020). Within the buffer zone, conservation-friendly livelihoods are promoted as an explicit means to encourage local residents’ support for conservation, one of the most widespread of which is involvement in ecotourism. Ecotourism in all tiger reserves is promoted as a triple win by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) guidelines (2012:106). The guidelines assert that “ecotourism has the potential to enhance public awareness, education, and wildlife conservation, while providing nature-compatible local livelihoods and greater incomes for a large number of people living around natural ecosystem which can help contribute directly to the protection of wildlife or forest areas, while making the community stakeholders and owners in the process”. The guidelines promote the need for local participation and benefit sharing rather than high end tourism that does not adhere to ecotourism (NTCA, 2020). They envision ecotourism for “incentivizing local people for protecting forests and wildlife” (NTCA, 2020:86). This is significant as the intent is to promote eco-friendly behaviour. Thus, villagers are intended to be enrolled in ecotourism to create environmentally friendly subjects. It is within this context that the following sections focus on the ways the women engage with tourism that challenges certain notions of environmentality.
A majority of the population in villages bordering CTR is dependent on tourism for income. Access to forest resources have been restricted within CTR, and alienation from forest-based livelihood and village displacement from inside the forest goes back to 1936 when it was first designated a Corbett National Park (Lasgorceix and Kothari, 2009). Villages from inside the forest were relocated to forest areas on the periphery of the reserve without any legal land rights. Access to basic resources, education, and opportunities for these villagers continues to be limited and shapes their engagement with tourism even more than those who live on land with secure land rights. Tourism was introduced in this context of a history of dispossession, creating dependencies. Livelihoods in this region have included forest resource use, subsistence agriculture and livestock keeping. State support for these livelihood activities is limited which has also led many to turn to tourism for employment with aspirations towards modernity and upward economic mobility.
Gender roles for livelihood in this region are divided based on resource and agriculture-based work that is primarily carried out by women, and market economy-based work that is carried out by men, (Gururani, 2015). The changes in livelihoods and social aspirations are bringing about gradual changes in this traditional gendered work division with women becoming involved in tourism as well. Their involvement is sometimes hidden and varied, as in many cases, the face of the tourism enterprise is men, while caste and class differences also influence involvement in tourism.
The traditional livelihood practices of women in villages around CTR involve collecting firewood and fodder from forests, agriculture, and domestic work. This practice of women's work involvement on all domestic fronts is rooted in patterns of male outmigration that began in the late 1700s, continuing through colonial times (Gururani, 2015) and in the present to varying extents. Over time, livelihood patterns have changed due to shifting forest management regime. Restrictions in access to the forest and forest use, lack of land rights, in addition to people's desire for modernity through upward economic mobility, have meant that tourism-based livelihoods are now common in villages around CTR. The private tourism industry began to thrive in the early 2000. With no limits to building hotels nor availability of land bought from villagers, hotels mushroomed. The nature and extent of tourism has impacted the physical and social landscape around CTR.
Ecotourism was formally introduced in the 1990s as a part of guide training offered by the Forest Department (FD) at CTR. The trainings were an initiative of the FD as a part of an eco-development program to address human-wildlife conflict, and ecotourism was introduced to redress by offering an income linked to wildlife conservation. According to villagers, part of the reason for introducing ecotourism was also that the FD was short staffed, and villager involvement helped address this issue by also enrolling them as conservationists. Those who trained under this initiative worked as CTR guides at the designated safari gates or with the few private entities–hotels or wildlife enthusiasts-who had regular international tourists as clientele. Having gained experience, many of these guides then set up their own safari and travel agencies. These guides are now themselves entrepreneurs who promote a win-win narrative of ecotourism which was facilitated by their enrolment in the FD training.
Many men have now sought livelihoods in tourism in their own or neighbouring villages as opposed to migrating out of the state to work. Authorities cite the prominent employment avenues for the inclusion of local people as guides, safari jeep drivers, and small shop owners. A large number of local villagers are also involved in jobs such as cleaners, gardeners or watchmen. The ‘local’ in this case is largely exclusive to men as jobs such as guides and drivers are inevitably taken up by them on account of dominant gender norms and expectations. Recently, for the first time in the history of CTR, women have been selected as nature guides (Roy, 2020). Another recent State initiative in this direction is training women to take on roles of safari jeep drivers (Azad, 2021). These initiatives are promoted using narratives of women's empowerment and recognition of their roles as traditional conservationists (Azad, 2021). Women's identity as conservationists is used to enrol them into ecotourism jobs, while also seen to be promoting a progressive agenda shifting stereotypical gender roles that shape tiger reserve management.
Women's self-help groups are formed in villages to enable financial independence through a loan system that is created by funds pooled by group members every month. Other support systems include NGO projects and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs of companies, banks, and resorts which include training in activities such as stitching clothes or beautician courses. While these are also important factors in women's lives in villages around Corbett, they are beyond the scope of this paper. Here, I focus on women's specific engagement with tourism.
Material opportunities through the economy are different for men and women (Rankin, 2003), and accessing market-based work is easier for men than for women due to the structurally-set avenues for men. Women are, however, involved in tourism, often in shop-keeping, standing in for their husbands for temporary periods, or managing the shop completely. Occasionally, some women work in hotels and resorts performing jobs like gardening, cleaning, construction labour, and in the administration or finance department. In homestays, however, women's work is crucial and this signifies a space where traditional family duties and tourism work coincide. In many such households, forest-use continues to varying extents through fodder collection for livestock. Some men support their wives in carrying out work outside of their household duties, and were perceived to be more “modern”. However, the same men suggested that household and societal expectations called for a traditional way of life for women that is hard to break out of. This tension between tradition and the aspiration for economic mobility and modernity is present throughout the Corbett landscape, but it is more prominent for women because of social expectations and patriarchy. Gender expectations and subjectivities are evident in women's everyday practice of care work, as well as in the expected and promoted narratives of shifting from away from rural lifestyle.
Despite their involvement, women's access to tourism and its implications for any change in socio-economic factors in their lives varies based on positions of class and caste. The specific village on which this analysis focuses on comprises of approximately 125 families, most of whom are upper caste. These families own tracts of land for agriculture, and many have been selling or leasing out their land for what have eventually become tourism enterprises. At the time of the study, the village had eight hotels and seven more under construction, all bought or managed by those who are not villagers. One tourist establishment is co-owned and managed by villagers and set up on their own land. Majority of villagers still own land in this village, and so farming continues but with difficulties from wildlife incursions into fields. Families considered lower caste do not own tracts of agricultural land, and those who can, demarcate a small section outside their home to grow vegetables or a small crop. These families work as agriculture labour for higher caste families, or work in the local market.
Carving space
Social positioning and access to tourism work
Firewood and fodder collection from the forest is reducing due to increasing restrictions in forest access; access to and affordability of cooking gas, and families keeping fewer livestock. In a conversation, a man who was explaining the lives of women, claimed that women still want to go to the forest, and sometimes they have to, but that times are changing. He added, “they also go to gossip” and implied that this was why they enjoy the tradition of visiting the forest. I accompanied two women into the forest when they went to collect fodder for the week. They complained about their lives and the drudgery of having to go into the forest They expressed how it was hard work, and it was indeed, to navigate the forest for the best fodder while making sure to avoid elephants, as are commonly found there, and sometimes tigers. After collecting the fodder and tying it up in large heavy bundles, they carry the headloads back to the village. These women recognised their daily work struggles, as they compared my life to theirs, and concluded that even if they wanted to do anything different, they could not, because this is the work that they have always done and known. Both women are conscious of their everyday work defined by their subject position as rural women and expected work. In addition to the functional nature of this activity, for these women this was time away from their homes to catch up on their lives, joke about amusing incidents that happened on their previous visit to the forest, and share troubled domestic experiences. The forest as a physical space and its related everyday activities shape social relations (Gururani, 2002).
Both women are from landless families i.e. do not own farm land and work on others’ land in return for a portion of the harvested crop or income. While not from a low caste, they fall within a lower class as evident in their lack of farmland. They also work in a local tourist camp to earn income. This work, albeit seasonal, allows them to earn extra income even as they keep their household functioning. The nature of women's work, their experiences and feelings towards it, represents the “entangled nature-society relationship” where spaces like the forest meet material needs but also influence “social relations and identities” in the village (Gururani, 2002:240). While forests are used to access resources, they also signify power relations in the gendered practices that take place in the forest space (Gururani, 2002). Men usually do not go to the forest for firewood or fodder collection. While tourism adds to the spaces that women occupy and work in, and presents new avenues for women to earn income, it also represents power relations that are gendered. Subject positions emerging from tourism work and space both reinforce and contest the gender roles and expectations wherein men have been involved in enterprise-based work and women are caretakers.
Women are involved in the tourism work, yet the ownership of enterprises is by men. Men who are local entrepreneurs, guides or jeep drivers, promote the win-win narrative of wildlife tourism. They see their role of guides or wildlife safari operators as vital for protecting the forest, in line with environmentally friendly subjects. One guide operator compared how aware local tourist operators are with villagers who still go into the forest for resources: “They don’t understand that this [forest] needs to be saved for next fifty generations. We have enough awareness that we need to save wildlife.” On the other hand, women get involved with the incentive of the potential to access income, but this does not necessarily reflect environmental subjects.
Tourism has diversified sources of income for a few women. With the need to pay school fees for children, and alcoholism affecting some of their husbands’ ability to maintain stable jobs, women work part time, or seasonally, when needed at tourism establishments. The women explain that going to work there has brought them income that would otherwise be hard to find. For instance, Shayla does not own farmland and works in others’ farms. The death of her husband meant that she had the additional burden of managing her family. While her son now works in the forest department, she continues to earn a livelihood through different means. Shayla is from a low caste and the access to work such as construction labour is most often defined by her class and caste. She also cares for her cow, but like others, with difficulty because of restricted access to fodder from the forest. For Shayla, access to opportunity in tourism has, as for most of her life, been shaped by caste structure. In addition to farming, she has carried out labour work for constructions of hotels. As she related: “I helped build that hotel. I would walk up two and three floors with a load on my head. Today, no one will speak up to say who built that hotel. It was two or three of us women, with some men; we were the labour. I worked in some other hotels for labour work when I was younger, but now I work in only one, for inside work like washing clothes, bedding, cleaning and so on. It is good because it is a safe working space too. We need to earn money, so sometimes we also wash the dishes when asked. The inside work is better than outside work like construction or digging.”
Similarly, Tanu also farms for others as she does not have any farmland of her own. She is the leader of a women's self-help group and has guided this group's earning potential towards tourism. Yet, tourism is also the reason that her other source of livelihood is being threatened as land sales has meant reduction in farm work for her and women like her.
She explains: “There have been a lot of changes in the village over the years; there’s electricity, roads, phones. Tourism has also increased. Since about five years we can see there is more land sold and less farm work for us. Now, the people from cities are running towards the mountains to live there, and people from villages are running to the cities to live there. There will be more and more hotels, and villagers will go away. And this will not be good for us. The villagers have their land, our daily wage often comes from farming on their lands. So, if they have sold their lands, where will we get work from? That’s why we [the self-help group] thought we would get the tent house [large awning]. If there is no other option to work, then we do have to work in tourism.”
Carving out the home space
Among the different tourism enterprises, homestays are a particularly important space to examine gender dynamics. The promotion of homestays, managing tourist interactions and bookings are usually carried out by men. It is the women who are primarily involved in the actual work of running the homestay. This involves cooking, cleaning, and hosting guests. While homestays lead to an increase in sources of income in a household, the housework burden for women, in fact, increases. Taking care of children, cooking, cleaning, and sometimes even farming, remain as the expected responsibilities of many women, even if they are involved in tourism for income. Homestays are marketed as spaces providing insights into local culture and food. This is in turn tied to gender norms. It is the gendered subject positions that women draw on and reinforce, simultaneously gaining space to exercise agency.
Mira is a high caste woman married into a family with agriculture land. She is of the opinion that subsistence farm and livestock work are not worth pursuing because this does not provide adequately and is too strenuous to continue in the face of increasing wildlife incursion in the fields, combined with the labour required for rearing livestock. Mira and her husband Kamal have tried to convince his mother to let go of livestock keeping as she is getting older, and milk access is easy enough from the market. Mira's mother-in law, however, cannot let go of this work as it is part of her tradition; she is attached to it, and it is something she has known all her life. Mira's vision for her own life was to do some “other” work to earn an income. With the help of her husband, they started a homestay. Most of the decision-making concerning dates and times for guest visits, and initial interaction with the guests, is carried out by Kamal. All work required for the homestay is carried out by Mira. When the guests’ schedules and numbers call for extra help in cooking, Kamal helps out if he is able to. The homestay has become fairly successful, and they value the interaction with guests and exposure to new experiences for their daughters. For them, the extra income supports household expenses and contributes to private schooling for their daughters.
Nevertheless, Mira's in-laws, who live with them, expect Mira to carry out all the cooking duties. Expectation of traditional duties fall more heavily on women than men in this region. The homestay becomes a space into which certain traditional burdens are not always carried. In many family traditions here, women who are menstruating are not allowed to enter the kitchen, touch utensils or cook. While Mira and Kamal do not follow this tradition, due to changing views in the younger generations, they must adhere to it as long as they live with his parents who hold strong views about it. Mira cannot enter the kitchen for these days, yet she is comfortable being in the homestay space- one room and a terrace - as she interacts with me. During this time, since she had other guests, she called on a girl from the village to cook meals and paid her. The homestay space provides a specific sense of independence for Mira, even though it is temporary. In her work for the homestay, Mira, reinforces gendered subject positions of care work; simultaneously, within the homestay space, she contests gendered expectations. The temporal aspect, when guests visit the homestay provides a space of decision making and agency, and contributes to shifting subjectivity.
Soni is a young woman in her early twenties, and along with her sister, is the first generation of girls in her family to be educated up to an undergraduate degree. For her, similar to Mira, involvement in tourism represents a choice she made in order to do something different with her life. Soni is from a higher caste and class, and has family land for agriculture. Soni's older sister also completed her higher education and worked in a city for a few years. Their family is open to their daughters working and aspiring for better jobs. Soni states: “I had finished my undergraduate degree, and I was sitting at home without much to do, so I thought I should do something. I got to know, from a relative who worked in the hotel, that they require help. I explored this option and ended up working in the hotel for a year. First, I was there as a trainee, and now I am part of the front office team. I am not a permanent staff yet, but we get our salary on time for most months. My interest in working at the hotel was to earn some money, and the hotel is so close to home. I also feel good when interacting with guests from outside, and seeing how people from elsewhere are.
I was also approached by another hotel to join them with more salary. But right now, I am fine with what I have. I do know though, that I don’t want to continue with this line of work, I want to focus on accounting, which is what my degree is in. My brothers don’t really like it that I work there because of the type of guests we get sometimes and it gets quite late to come back home. They would prefer if I apply for a government job.”
In addition to this job, Soni helps her mother during harvest season and caring for their livestock when needed. Her household responsibilities are significantly lower as her parents’ aspirations for her also align with more modern work and upward economic mobility. Her identity as an educated rural woman display a shift in subjectivity from expectations (of household care and farm work that most women here hold) to her employment in the hotel where she is able to use her education and interest. Soni’s work in the hotel is different from her housework expectations, in that it draws from her educational background. Yet, the mobility derived from her education, does not negate the existence of patriarchy, caste, class and conservation regimes that shape her every day practice.
Intersectionality, multiple and shifting subjectivities
The cases presented above provide insights into different forms of women's engagement with tourism and its implication on their lives. They engage in tourism- based work to supplement income in the household, for lack of options for other work, as well as, also a matter of choice. Caste and class play key roles in these decisions. Both Mira and Soni, two upper caste women, expressed a desire to work in tourism, as a matter of choice. Their subject positions, shaped by their socio-economic identity influenced their involvement in tourism work and shifted their gendered subjectivity spatially and temporally to a form of agency. By contrast, Shayla and Tanu, from lower caste and class positions, respectively, were led into tourism related work out of relatively limited alternative options. The intersecting positions of women in their families and society thus shape how they approach tourism and the difference it makes in their lives, and subjectivities. In the case of Mira and Soni, their caste and class impacted their ability to engage in a specific way with tourism– through a homestay and by working in the administrative team of a hotel, respectively. The homestay work draws from Mira's existing gendered subjectivity of care work. Having a source of income through the homestay contributes to a sense of agency for her. At the same time, the house also represents a space where patriarchal values and gender expectations are expressed and performed on a daily basis. The home space symbolises these different power dynamics, and therefore the space itself is not defined by any one factor. The homestay is an example of a space which holds dual meaning and subjectivity for women.
For Shayla and Tanu, involvement in tourism was an outcome of a direct need for income generation, which arose from replacing one job with another. In both cases, women's pre-existing identities of gender, class and caste played a role in the particular ways they have engaged with tourism. For Shalya, tourism meant an additional form of work, first as construction labour, then as “inside work” that has become part of her work identity. This inside work has provided a welcome sense of safety for her. It also signifies a shift in her class and caste-based subjectivity that previously meant construction labour work.
However, despite marginal mobility, her tourism work this does not significantly change her life. Tanu's engagement in tourism is stemmed primarily from the lack of options. But, as she explained, tourism has also meant reduction of traditional agriculture work for her due to land sales. Shayla and Tanu's engagement with tourism reveals a complex dynamic; it is not a simple equation of gaining agency through tourism. For Shayla, her current tourism work is better in comparison to earlier; for Tanu, tourism has limited one livelihood opportunity, but provided another. An intersectional lens thus makes visible the “co-constitutiveness of power and oppression” (Sultana, 2021:158). In the latter case, despite Tanu's self-help group engagement with tourism, the co-constitutive nature of her class position – materialised in lack of agricultural land- and its disadvantageous power dynamics are reinforced through tourism. Therefore, women's engagement with tourism remains focused on labour, rather than promotion of conservation or the ‘eco’ in such tourism, as their work remains interconnected with their overarching identities and lifeworlds.
Conclusion
Tourism thus represents a form of tightrope that these women walk as they try to tap into a form of agency or better work while balancing the realities of caste, class, patriarchy and conservation governance reflected in tourism establishments set up around CTR. Ecotourism, as an expression of neoliberal environmentality, commonly functions by seeking to change the external structures that motivate an individual to act in a certain way, thus leading to particular forms of subjectification (Foucault, 2008). However, research concerning environmentality also shows that involvement in conservation governance does not necessarily lend to eco-friendly subjectivities. Reinforcing such findings, my analysis demonstrates that women's overarching positioning and subjectivity shapes their decision making and engagement with conservation interventions. Understanding the reasons and forms of engagement with ecotourism through an intersectional lens thus contributes to research from the perspective of environmentality by offering a nuanced view on how subjectivity is negotiated in relation to conservation governance. Adopting an intersectional perspective contributes to research offering a “counter-point” to conventional understandings of subject making in the environmentality literature (Forsyth and Walker, 2014). While a range of factors may influence subject formation in relation to neoliberal environmentality, framing engagement with tourism through an intersectional FPE perspective helps to better capture the overall experience of as well as differences amongst women within such a process. Examining the ways that women navigate their traditional roles as well as different types of engagement with tourism and their implications in terms of their particular caste and class positions reveals that involvement in tourism has implications beyond just monetary benefits and the neoliberal subjectivity such benefits promote.
Indeed, women's involvement in tourism market has more meaning than simply being subject to conservation governance in whatever form. In addition, as previous research on tourism and gender points out, engaging with the market can lead to specific types of benefits, as well as further oppression. Such plurality often gets obscured in the broad glossing of people's behaviour through a frame of neoliberal environmentality. The differences in the nature of women's engagement in tourism-based work, and the difference this makes in their lives, signifies that their involvement also contributes to a repositioning of their social standing to varying extents. Intersecting categories of caste, class and gender merge and can create different subjectivities via the specific forms of agency (Nightingale, 2011, 2018) that women are able to exert as they move incrementally into a different space, socially or economically. At the same time, this form of mobility does not negate the pre-existing structures of caste, patriarchy and conservation governance that also impact these women in other aspects of their lives. An intersectional feminist perspective aims to provide insights from women's efforts to claim agency in engagement with tourism as neoliberal environmentality without discounting the importance of broader structural forces in also shaping these efforts.
Women's interactions with the tourism market in villages around CTR thus illustrates the complex and situational nature of their participation in these market spaces, which are not defined strictly by tradition nor by capitalist values alone. Instead, it is the synergy between culture, market and women's social positions that contributes to their involvement in tourism, and the implications of that involvement for their lives. It is the complex intersection among these factors that motivates their engagement with tourism rather than simply their constitution as eco-friendly subjects. In relation to policy, this study of intersectional dynamics through an FPE lens can also contribute to “making visible the mechanisms by which environmental governance takes place- the daily practices of knowledge production and action, so as to be able to find openings for better environments but also a more just society” (Arora-Jonsson, 2014:306). More research from intersectionality and feminist perspectives concerning environmentalities, ecotourism and environmental governance can offer insights into dynamics of local engagement in such initiatives and their implications for attainment of more just and effective conservation.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway grant (250975) to Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology & the Environment (ATREE) through the ‘Greenmentality’ project.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to all the research participants, especially the women who shared their stories and time with me, and made this study possible. I thank Robert Fletcher, Nitin Rai and Bram Büscher for their feedback and guidance. I also thank the two anonymous reviewers whose feedback and comments helped improve this paper. Thanks to Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology & the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, for institutional support.