Connecting Landscapes of Extraction: Sustainable Educational Tourism and Experiential Learning in the Yucatán

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-28-2025

Department

Department of Social Sciences

Abstract

Critical scholars often draw connections between the boom and bust of large-scale extractive industries such as mining and agriculture with the equally extractive tourism industries which often replace them in the name of economic development. Labor exploitation, volatile markets, and the risk of a singular economic base too often accompany large-scale shifts toward tourism. From the perspective of a former school of mines and a university context situated deep within a deindustrialized landscape-turned tourist destination, we seek to understand how best to implement sustainable and experiential programs from which our students can externalize many of the ongoing concerns of our community. Using the Yucatán Peninsula and a 10-day study abroad as our case study, we explore the potential for students to draw connections between the Keweenaw and Yucatán Peninsulas as both former and transformed landscapes of industrial extraction (copper and henequen, respectively). Building upon Houston and Lange’s “Global/Local” community-engaged framework for experiential learning, we aim to similarly trouble not only the notion of “the classroom” but of development as an assumed force of positive change within many community-engaged experiences. Furthermore, this framework is structured around the context of our home institution, the former Michigan School of Mines, with the goal of speaking towards other educators working critically within technological institutions. Combining the self-exploration of educational tourism with intersectional landscapes of industrial, cultural, and ecological heritage, we utilize student surveys, landscape analysis, and autoethnography to illustrate the potential praxis of sustainable educational tourism and its challenges.

Publication Title

Experiential Learning in Geography: The World as Our Classroom

ISBN

[9783031825750, 9783031825743]

Link to Full Text

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