Peasant-entrepreneurs: A Longitudinal Ethnography

Based on a longitudinal ethnographic study of Göreme in Cappadocia, Turkey, this paper addresses destination development and change in a rural peasant society context as well as peasant socio-cultural factors influencing tourism entrepreneurship. The paper discusses how, as the destination continues to evolve, peasant production and social characteristics have an ongoing effect on entrepreneurship and development, which are therefore always in a process of becoming. It is concluded that peasant continuities create contradiction and ambivalence and thereby produce an ongoing hybrid entanglement of a moral and a capitalist economy wherein both cause fissures and tensions in each other. This highlights the usefulness of a critical postcolonial approach when considering tourism destinations in transition.