Backpacker Tourism and Local Community Development: An Analysis of Hostels as Drivers of Poverty Reduction in Sri Lanka

Abstract: This thesis is an attempt to understand if hostels, being an essential component of the infrastructural support for backpacker tourism have been instrumental in lifting up local communities in light of socio-economic development. The analysis strives to explore not only the contours of change in the community level but also the changes in the institutions and structures within which the tourism industry operates to understand how the hostel communities create their own structures through exercising power, which is a manifestation of how capitals are accumulated and transformed. Primary fieldwork for this study was carried out in Unawatuna in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka. Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice was used to conceptualize how people start hostels and make a meaningful living out of backpacker tourism. The study is situated on two fundamental arguments that, (1) the non-mainstream tourism in most developing-country context calls for academic research as policy interventions seem to be minimal due to lack of hard data, and (2) with appropriate support from the government, the backpacker subsector of the tourism industry will flourish, which goes without saying that the livelihoods of those who support the subsector could potentially thrive.