Rural dreamscapes: Representations of heritage in Hawai`i's agritourism landscapes.

摘要

Agritourism has emerged as a strategy for generating supplemental income for Hawai'i farmers struggling to compete in a global agrofood market. As a place-based strategy to market agricultural experiences alongside agricultural products themselves, these spaces become reorganized as tourist destinations. This transformation ensures that representation and meaning are restructured to make these spaces more attractive to tourists. This thesis analyzes how the narrative discourse of agritourism evokes a return to nature, idealized rural community, and independent agrarian lifestyles. Two of Hawai'i's most popular agritourism sites provide case studies for the presence of an English and American idealized agrarian heritage narrative that has been adapted to the context of the Hawaiian Islands. Since narratives can affect the way people construct meaning about their surroundings, these sites are used to analyze the broader context under which Hawai'i's lands continue to be colonized through the narrative arrangements of agriculture and tourism.