Abstract
The field location of this study is the Fengtian Community in Hualien County. Through long term fieldwork, the issues of community empowerment and tourism development are linked together. Three problems are investigated regarding the development of cultural property and industrial developments, specifically the Japanese immigrant village, Fengtian jade, organic farming, and leisure farming. These problems involve the manner in which community empowerment influences the farming community, determining how tourism development can guide community development from a community empowerment perspective, and approaches to sustainable community development. These problems also happen to be anthropological research issues on social change, and the discussion of these issues allows us to examine the proactive response strategies of farming communities in the face of socio-cultural change.In this article, we first examine the community guided tour developed by the community empowerment team under the community empowerment framework. When this framework encountered the issues of public participation and profit sharing, other organizations began exploring alternative statements and reutilization models outside of the community empowerment framework from the community empowerment team; specifically, the development of cultural property tourism and industry tourism in areas where the conservation of cultural material and its associated memories and crafts still exist in the culture of the residents. In this article, the concepts of regional cultural property and small scale tourism industry are used as the integrated starting point of community empowerment, tourism development, and sustainable development. This is also used as a platform for communication among various organizations, thereby enabling sustainable tourism principles, such as small scale, low impact, local resident involvement, and benefit feedback to community, to form a tourism-oriented sustainable development for the community.Regarding community orientation, the concept of communitarianism has been applied to resolve competing interests within a community through consensus and identification. Social exchange theory is employed to simplify resident involvement issues into the resistance of parties within the community. Additionally, negative aspects, such as utilitarian involvement and private interests over public interests, are examined. However, this resolution overlooks the fact that, through continuous profit-seeking economic models regarding the limited resources of its surroundings, the history of the Fengtian community shows a characteristic shift towards sustainable development. In this study, we propose a capital theory viewpoint. The motives and meanings of public involvement are reevaluated by observing daily life practices and community developmental characteristics. It is also asserted that from a community empowerment perspective that community organizations, that receive governmental subsidies, should not be considered as equal to the community itself. Without avoiding competition and cooperation within the community, a different level of diverse integration is sought. Under the precondition of sustainable community development, units recognized as conducive toward community empowerment is expanded. The efforts of individuals and organizations within the community are included. These layers of community empowerment involved in this inclusion more closely resembles the intention of empowerment.Regarding tourism orientation, the analytical framework proposed by Crick (1994) on the tourism phenomenon is improved by increasing investigations on tourism resources and tourism types. This increase in investigations provides a tourism anthropology analysis that is clearer and closer to the local developmental context when investigating tourism in a certain location. At the same time, this also forces a review of the theoretical vista of tourism reflexivity from a tourist gaze. Tourism reflexivity must be examined within the scope of local tourism development and local characteristics. The actual influence on globalization and internationalization must also be evaluated not only to signify the influences of globalization and internationalization, but also to show the local efforts on sustainable tourism development.