Aiming to explore theoretical advances in tourism studies, this book explores the triadic relationship between tourism, sustainable development and empowerment. While tourism has begun to focus on community consultations, the process has tended to follow the path of development for communities rather than development by communities. In many cases the result has been disempowerment rather than empowerment. This study goes beyond a focus on the impacts of tourism to explore the relevance of a body of political, economic, sociological, anthropological and development theory to formulate a synthesized construct of empowerment which provides a useful standpoint to consider the community/tourism development relationship. The approach that has been adopted also attempts to combine the emic paradigm with the etic, that is one which relies upon an actor-oriented "inside" view of the meaning of the behaviour under study as well as upon externally constructed models by "outsider" researchers to describe the social situation The theoretical framework of empowerment which is proposed for community based tourism development is explored across three levels through five case studies drawn from th