The Discourse on Tourism Development for Area-Based Development in the Watersheds of Lower East of Southern Region

Abstract

The purposes of this research article are to analyze the tourism development discourse for area-based development in the watersheds of lower east of southern region, gather geo-social data and conduct document analysis on tourism development policies and area-based research reports. The Fairclough's framework (2010) was applied for discourse analysis, and then synthesize and present the findings through interpretation. Explaining based on transdisciplinary approach and dialectical approach, it was found that the discourse on tourism development according to the development ideology was classified as follows: (1) Mainstream development discourse was a reproduction of capitalist ideology for area-based economic development, with a state of oppression, dominance, and expelling other discourses, comprising four models, which were multicultural tourism development zone, model community for sustainable community-based tourism, model city in the “Triangle of Stability, Prosperity and Sustainability” and the southern border economic area; and (2) The secondary development discourse built from ideology to create state security consists of four models: special development zone, development zone of southern border provinces, special administrative region of the southern border provinces and three southernmost provinces. All development discourses are created by government organization that use mechanisms of power, knowledge, and adhere to missions of organization, resulting in overlapping developmental discourse fields. The hidden ingenuity for exploiting the watershed area as a physical field to support the discourse practice according to missions of organization. The lack of integration has caused a process of diversification that results in a deviation from the goal of “security, prosperity and sustainability” of fragmented development. The people are merely units and victims of development discourse to achieve spatial development goals. The tourism development policies thus should adhere to the concept of sufficiency economy as the basis of the national strategy and geo-social and ecological data of the watersheds of lower east of southern region should be applied as a basis for policy design.