Title: Tourism ethnography: insider and outsider encounters on Pitcairn Island

Authors: Maria Amoamo

Addresses: Department of Management, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, 9054, New Zealand

Abstract: Tourism might be understood as a multi-faceted and multi-experiential subject defined by its structural-system characteristics or its agency-related features. This raises the question to what extent, the agency or the structure dominates in the formation of ethnographical tourism landscape. In a case study of Pitcairn Island, this paper focuses on the experientially-based understanding of place through insider/outsider encounters across a range of contexts including tourism, Pitcairn's relationship with its UK administrator and performance of rituals. Results reveal the complex and nuanced intersection of people's encounters with places and the over-lapping and distinctive modes of experience constituted by human agency.

Keywords: ethnography; insider; outsider; island tourism; place experience; encounters.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTA.2018.092048

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2018 Vol.6 No.2, pp.87 - 107

Received: 17 Jan 2017
Accepted: 05 Sep 2017
Published online: 30 May 2018 *

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