Ecotourism: Socio-economic and socio-cultural contexts

National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine

^* Corresponding author: nikolaienkovl@ukr.net

Abstract

The aim of this article is to identify and analyse the socioeconomic and socio-cultural contexts of ecotourism, which, unlike traditional tourism, which often causes negative changes in the environment, is focused (as officially declared) on protecting and restoring it. The methodology of the study is sociological science, orienting the social sciences to the fact that: 1) everything that happens in society is the result of socially oriented actions of those or other social actors; 2) social actions are the main cause of any social change; 3) the main social change is a change in the existing social structures in society, which, in turn, lead to changes in the consciousness and behaviour of people. The scientific novelty of this paper lies in the clarification of a number of concepts that describe not always explicit, but very effective socio-economic and sociocultural contexts of ecotourism with lasting social consequences. The scientific novelty includes the method of sociological analysis applied by the author, combined with the dialectical method. In conclusion, it should be said that inviromentalism, of which ecotourism is a derivative, is first of all an understanding of: 1) that the world's dominant profit-oriented economic activity is morally obsolete; 2) that the problem of the highly controversial primordial wildness is far from exhausted; 3) that primordial wildness, as a kind of antipode of culture, carried with it many abilities of existence and survival in past ecological systems (sense of smell, hearing, touch, for example) that we have not lost, as is commonly believed, but rather have fallen asleep (suppressed), or are in the process of dying out, which can be the subject of discussion and rewilding. But the main conclusion is that ecotourism, if only because tourists can be involved in the solution of rewilding issues, can become a way out of the artificially formed consumer psychology (exploitative in its essence) on the one hand and the establishment of a real harmony between society, nature and the individual, which, in fact, has never existed ‒ on the other.