Meeting wildlife : dynamics, uses and stakes of wildlife recreotourism. : A french-canadian comparative approach between three territories : Bauges, Gaspésie, Nunavut

• Main Author: Chanteloup, Laine
• Other Authors: Grenoble, Université du Québec à Montréal, Gauchon, Christophe, Duval, Mélanie, Herrmann, Martina
• Format: Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Faune sauvage; Récréotourisme; Territoire; Wildlife; Recreotourism; Territory; envir; geo; Canada; Nunavut
• Online Access: http://www.theses.fr/2013GRENAO14/document

Historically, wildlife has always been a resource for mankind by ensuring food safety to local and traditional societies. Wildlife tourism represents an evolution in the use of wildlife and affects livelihoods, culture and the local identities. The aim of this PhD research is to have a better understanding of what is wildlife tourism. This specific tourism causes a requalification of the resource, which has some impacts on human and non-human spaces, on the territorial building processes and on the relationship between men and animals. This research focuses particularly on these issues by studying wildlife viewing tourism and sport hunting tourism. These two kinds of tourism are usually in conflict because wildlife tourism is viewed as a non-consumptive tourism whereas hunting tourism is viewed as a consumptive tourism. Going beyond some common preconceptions on these different tourisms, we question the differences and/or the dialogical relationship between these practices. To conduct this research, we chose to lead a comparative analysis putting into perspective different case studies in France and in Canada. This comparative work allows a better understanding of tourism and territorial stakes linked to wildlife tourism and it allows to reflect on the transferability of processes observed between different fieldworks. From a methodological point of view, we have defined a framework to analyse wildlife tourism. This framework is based on conceptual aspects, analysis of archives, observation methods and discourse analysis. The first part of this work presents the theoretical context and introduces the systemic approach of this research (chapter 1, 2 and 3). These methodological and theoretical presuppositions are used to analyse how wildlife tourism dynamics act, react and retroact on the whole territorial system. The second part questions the socio-spatial organisation of wildlife viewing and hunting tourisms (chapters 4 and 5). These forms of tourisms are studied taking into account the settlement of these ...