When Tourism Becomes Uncertainty: Uncovering the Paradox of Community Development in the Mount Semeru Hiking Trail Area
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26418/8tyxes31Keywords:
community development, tourism uncertainty paradox, Mount Semeru, volcanic tourism, resilience, adaptive governanceAbstract
This study examines how hiking tourism in the Mount Semeru area produces a paradox of community development in an active volcanic landscape. Moving beyond celebratory accounts of community-based tourism, this article positions uncertainty as an analytical lens for understanding how ecological instability, access policies, tourism disruption, and livelihood dependence shape local development trajectories. Using a critical qualitative design with an instrumental case study approach, the research draws on in-depth interviews, field observations, and secondary documentation involving guides, porters, traders, homestay owners, transportation providers, village officials, tourism communities, and area managers in Ranupani. The findings reveal four interrelated dynamics. First, volcanic activity and changing safety status are translated into livelihood uncertainty through route closures and fluctuating tourist access. Second, tourism benefits and vulnerabilities are unevenly distributed, with informal and daily-income actors more exposed to disruption than those with stronger assets and networks. Third, community resilience is differentiated, shaped by savings, alternative work, social support, and position within the tourism economy. Fourth, access governance functions as an arena of risk distribution because decisions on opening and closing trails determine who can work, benefit, or absorb losses. The study contributes the concept of the tourism uncertainty paradox, showing that tourism can simultaneously enable empowerment and generate structural vulnerability when livelihood dependence is not balanced by equitable governance, transparent risk communication, and livelihood diversification. This article enriches debates on community-based tourism, risk society, resilience, and sustainable tourism governance in ecologically fragile destinations.
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