Tourism and Aldo Leopold's “cultural harvest”: creating virtuous tourists as agents of sustainability

Abstract

Sustainable tourism aims to achieve a balance between the needs of tourists, the environment, local people, and businesses-a situation complicated by the numerous ethical issues at play. In this paper we present an original account of the ethics of Aldo Leopold, as it unfolds in his classic work, A Sand County Almanac. We argue that prior interpretations failed to incorporate Leopold's lynchpin cultural harvest idea into his larger 'land ethic', and that a proper understanding of the cultural harvest reveals how tourism and other recreational activities can drive a person's ethical development. Ultimately, the land ethic helps us protect and nurture the most precious sustainability resource: human beings that value and respect the environment.

Environmental ethics for tourism- the state of the art

“…To support ideals of environmental virtue and citizenship of a land community, there is a requirement for phenomenological research to evaluate the sentiments and feelings of tourists generated through contact with nature, including the extent of emotional attachment with sentient and non-sentient beings. The importance of environmental virtue in guiding our actions towards nature has already been discussed, and the need for research into how tourism can be used to develop this has been recognised by Breakey and Breakey (2015). To slightly paraphrase Breakey and Breakey (2015, p. 87), they ask: "how can tourism make us more sustainable"?…”

“…To slightly paraphrase Breakey and Breakey (2015, p. 87), they ask: "how can tourism make us more sustainable"? The theme of how individual's value nature is further developed by Breakey and Breakey (2015) in their comprehensive critique of the land-ethic's application to tourism. Focussing particularly on the "cultural harvest" component of Leopold's (1949) land ethic, they emphasise tourism's capacity to act as a driver for individual ethical development and create a virtuous human character who embraces nature.…”

Street foods: contemporary preference of tourists and its role as a destination attraction in India

“…Notwithstanding the acknowledgement that food (gastronomy) is a significant determinant in the inclusive perception of destination by travellers, the studies deliberating upon the attributes of resident cuisine from a visitor perspective is somewhat inadequate (Ab Karim and Chi, 2010). Moreover, the prevailing research studies (Breakey and Breakey, 2015;Keeble et al, 2015) on food preferences have fixated their attention towards the Western countries with researches on tourists' street-food preferences in India being scarce and very limited. This constitutes a research gap and this study purposes at exploring the street-food preferences of the foreign tourists in India.…”

“…Several researchers have established that the tourists are progressively attracted towards looking for new engrossment and involvements that are resultant from realising the values and food ethnicities of a specific destination (Breakey and Breakey, 2015;Kivela and Crotts, 2006;McKercher et al, 2004). Moreover, pleasure in travelling has been linked with outside dining and selecting new foods (McKercher et al, 2004).…”

Cycle Tourism as a Driver for the Sustainable Development of Little-Known or Remote Territories: The Experience of the Apennine Regions of Northern Italy

“…Tourists are looking for a complex and profound experience to better appreciate the elements of local identities and the unique landscapes of a precise territory [6,7]. They travel for a unique tourism experience that differs significantly from mass tourism experiences [8], looking for traditional characteristics of territories based on tangible and intangible elements [9,10], and stakeholders relationships [11] in a multi-purpose perspective [12][13][14].…”