TOURISM AND RURAL SETTLEMENTS Nepal's ... - ResearchGate

SANJAY NEPAL 857
ined from both functional and humanist perspectives. While the former
offer explanations to how settlements evolve, expand, and take
certain spatial and morphological forms (Cowie 1983), the latter enhance
the understanding of complex social, political, and economic
processes which influence the emergence and development of settlements
(Spencer 1995). This study is about such processes, which are
analyzed and explained through a combination of the functional
and humanist perspectives, but in the context of tourism development.
In particular, this study examines the processes of growth and distribution
of accommodation lodges; the relationship between tourism infrastructure
and settlement development patterns; the progression
toward a hierarchical development and classification; and the historical
and social factors in tourism-induced rural settlement development
patterns.
PERSPECTIVES TO RURAL SETTLEMENTS
Counterurbanization studies have progressed from their traditional
functional view (forms, patterns, and shapes) to humanist interpretations
of historical, political, social, and cultural factors that shape the
arrangement and rearrangement of rural settlements systems. The
functional perspectives have included the analysis of deconcentration
of people and houses in bucolic areas, increase in number of dwellings,
dispersal patterns of dwellings, areal differentiation, and hierarchical
structures. The humanist perspectives have provided critical explanations
as to why these patterns have emerged and in what ways people’s
attitudes, decisionmaking behaviors, historical precedents, and political
and social factors influence settlement patterns. The following
review of the functional and humanist perspectives in counterurbanization
studies attempts to illustrate their application to the processes of
changes brought about by international tourism.
Functional Perspectives
While settlements have also been conceived as a product of adaptation
to environmental conditions (Allen 1997), early research has focused
on their role as central places, or as nodes of retail
distribution. The classic spatial location theories of Christaller, Losch
and Isard analyzed the size, spacing, and distribution of settlements
as a result of their utilization of microeconomic theoretical principles
(Harvey 1969 cited in Cowie 1983). Cowie (1983) argues that original
central place theory has avoided the conceptual problems posed by the
geographic characteristics of rural regions by incorporating these
nodes into its assumptions. The classic models thus offer limited explanations
to assessing the spatial characteristics of the very smallest settlements,
or as what Haggett (1965 cited in Cowie 1983) has referred to as
the lower limb. Similarly, Cowie (1983) argues that studies which have
attempted to apply concepts compatible with classical analysis to