A Visual Autoethnographic Study on gendered livelihoods in Touris,

This paper explores the gendered dynamics of informal tourism work through a visual autoethnographic lens, grounded in the authors’ embodied experiences in Thailand’s floating markets. Reflecting on the everyday rhythms of these spaces, it examines encounters with women entrepreneurs—referred to by visitors as “canoe women”—who navigate a landscape shaped by cultural exoticisation, tourism demands and gendered expectations. Blending visual and sensory methods with a critical feminist perspective, the study offers a reflexive, autobiographical account of gendered labour, performance and place. The authors’ roles as both researchers and participants are interwoven with the narratives of 25 women, revealing the precarious, affective and performative nature of their work in tourism settings where their contributions are vital yet frequently overlooked. Using the concept of subalternity, the paper critically examines how these women are positioned within a racialised and gendered tourist gaze that reinforces colonial hierarchies and constrains agency. Visual autoethnography is presented not only as a method but as a way of knowing that captures the power-laden, embodied realities of informal tourism economies. This research contributes to sustainable tourism and gender studies, offering a transferable methodological framework for examining the entanglements of power, performance and positionality in tourism research.