Tourism ethnography: Insider and outsider encounters on Pitcairn Island

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.