What's political ecology got to do with tourism?

This paper provides an overview of the conceptual framework of political ecology, with an emphasis on theoretical constructs stemming from poststructuralism and Marxism. I argue that the resulting power structures produced and reproduced in the context of sustainable tourism and tourism more broadly are largely a product of people's nuanced material and conceptual understandings of nature and society. As such, this paper provides a brief review of two seminal theoretical lenses within political ecology – the social construction of nature and the production of nature – that take the broader political, economic, social, and ecological context into consideration. Taking a contextual approach rooted in political ecology, I argue that an analysis of people's material and discursive productions of nature provides a situated method for unpacking the problems and potentials of sustainable tourism in the context of people, nature, and power.