From global tourism visibility to conditional inclusion: culturally embedded governance in Indonesian community-based tourism
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Rammang-Rammang, a karst landscape in Maros, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, has become widely known. It lies within the Maros-Pangkep UNESCO Global Geopark, circulates on social media, and attracts visitors, government programmes, and institutional partners. This article uses the term global tourism visibility for this kind of external attention and recognition. The term is deliberately narrower than global tourism development, which implies investment and structural change: a destination can become well known while the distribution of tourism income remains largely unchanged. Drawing on four months of fieldwork and 38 informants, including residents outside the main tourism economy, the study asks how such visibility is converted into local income, authority, and voice. The answer is a pattern the article calls conditional inclusion. Residents are rarely excluded outright, but their access depends on informal filters: whom they are already known to, where they live in relation to visitor routes, whether their work is recognised as tourism labour rather than household support, and who mediates contact with outside organisations. A fifth filter is moral. Bugis-Makassar values, particularly siri’ na pacce , sustain trust and restrain open conflict, but they also raise the social cost of publicly questioning unequal benefit sharing. Comparison with community-based tourism in Thailand, Iran, and Spain indicates that these mechanisms are not specific to Indonesia, although the axis along which they operate varies. The study argues that external recognition strengthens community-based tourism only when informal allocation rules are made visible and contestable.
Source: Research in Globalization
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,760
OpenAlex ID: W7214487487