摘要：Conservation tourism is a rapidly growing subsector of ecotourism that engages payingvolunteers as active participants in conservation projects. Once the preserve of charities, the sector nowhosts a proliferation of private companies seeking to make money by selling international conservationwork to tourists as a commodity. The commodification of conservation depends upon balancing the scientificlegitimacy of projects against the need to offer desirable tourist experiences. Drawing on interviews withUK tour operators and their counterparts in South Africa who run the conservation projects, we explorethe transnational geography of commercial conservation tourism, charting how scientific legitimacy isconstructed and negotiated within the industry. Although conservation tourism makes trade-offs betweenscientific rigor and neoliberal market logic, it is a partial and plural process that resists simple categorization.We conclude by considering the difference that commodification makes to conservation science, and viceversa
关键词：commodification; conservation science; conservation tourism; scientific legitimacy; South;Africa; United Kingdom
