Tourism Planning Based on the Actor-Centered Power Perspective in the Ilha Grande State Park, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract

Usually, tourism planning in Brazil follows the normative perspective in its implementation. This study proposes to integrate the actor-centered power perspective with planning in order to elucidate which are the most powerful social actors and what are their interests in tourism development. Such perspective is enabled through the identification of these actors and their relation with coercion, dominant information, and incentives and disincentives, categories derived from the approaches to power developed by Krott. In order to achieve the objective, interviews were conducted by employing the snowball technique. The research hypothesis is that tourism planning in the Ilha Grande State Park (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is directed by the interests of the most powerful social actors. The results confirm such hypothesis and show that there is great conflict of interests between NGOs, Government, and the administration of the Conservation Unit.