Paper short abstract:

This paper explores anthropology of personhood perspectives on modern archaeological tourism in the shaping of global political-economies of 'risk assessment and management' relating to local communities involvement in planning means to sustain regional biodiversity and tourist economy development.

Paper long abstract:

This paper builds upon my research on the anthropological perspectives on personhood and key themes in current interdisciplinary literature on 'science, citizenship and globalisation' (for instance Leach, Scoones and Wynne eds. 2005). Emphasis in this research has centred on questions about how such perspectives can help with efforts to democratize citizen involvement in "critical scientific debates and decisions that affect their future lives, be they in specific policy issues about genetics, HIV/AIDS, occupational health, biotechnology or GM foods to broader processes of assessing the risks of new technologies" Gaventa 2005). My presentation has three parts. The first concerns the bearing of anthropological approaches to personhood upon several problems stressed in the session abstract, including consequences for archaeological and tourism discourses of prevailing dichotomies of agency-structure, mentalities-materiality, expert competence - public perceptions, global - multi-cultural. The second concerns connections between themes of 'tourism policy and planning' and roles assigned to the social sciences and humanities and institutions and agencies, which are shaping global political-economies of 'risk assessment and management'. The third and main part of my paper illustrates several advantages of anthropology of personhood perspectives on these problems and connections with case studies of local communities' involvement in planning means to sustain regional biodiversity and tourist economy development.