Outdoor Tourism and the Changing Cultural Narratives in Vietnamese Ethnic Minority Communities

Other ways of knowing and being are increasingly lost or homogenised to the world’s majority cultures - worldviews that add richness and diversity to cultural and environmental perceptions and behaviours. This project asks, what are the social and environmental impacts of outdoor tourism on ethnic minority communities in Vietnam and how can a diverse research group of Western, Vietnamese, (Hmong) Animist and (Tày) Polytheistic ethnic minority people best inform each other to co-create more equitable social and environmental cultural relations? The project’s collaborative research team will incorporate three narrative-photovoice projects focused on the influence of outdoor tourism on changing worldviews, narratives, behaviours, skills and health, amongst two ethnic minority groups - the Hmong (pop. 900,000) and the Tày (pop. 1.7 million). This will include three regions in Northern Vietnam to inform tourist companies, NGOs and policy makers and further enable economic and environmental sustainability, self-efficacy and de-colonisation.

Principal Investigator: Dr Jamie Mcphie, University of Cumbria