EVErEST TOUriSM: Forging links to sustainable mountain development. A critical discourse on politics of places and peoples

This paper explores the relationships between tourism interventions and the changes in socioeconomic power relations of stakeholders of Everest tourism. The consequences of tourism intervention have been analyzed and interpreted through dialectical phenomenology. Political ecology framework is used as an analytical model for inductive logic generation from the observations of social interactions on Everest tourism. Impacts of tourism interventions on local environment, culture, livelihood of the indigenous people and overall socioeconomic power relations of the people in this region have been interpreted and discussed with the theoretical perspectives of political economy and bio-environmental relationships. Through critical realism on political ecology it is concluded that the interventions of Everest tourism cannot assure the sustainability of the indigenous society, environment and economy of the region. The findings are interpreted in the line of rhetoric on Ecological Modernization Theory.