Fire and Smoke: Savouring Ethnographic Encounters with Sustainability in Cyprus’ Rural Tourism Spaces

Cyprus, a Mediterranean island and a popular sun-and-sea destination for over half a century, has, in recent years, been desperate to diversify its tourist product and attract ‘quality tourism’. The requirements of unsustainable seasonal and party tourism have exploited the natural resources of the island and have left rural areas under economic and cultural ruin. Actions backed by EU funding have seen Agrotourism emerge as a development opportunity for year-round rural tourism for international audiences. This paper uses ethnographic evidence collected over the course of a year, and analysed through anthropological theory on tourism, to interrogate claims of rural authenticity and sustainability that emerge within Agrotourist spaces. With a focus on fire, it understands Agrotourism as an occasion for negotiation between sets of dichotomies such as tradition and modernity, past and present. Agrotourist spaces hence become battlefields where rural heritage narratives fight for legitimization.