Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
behaviour and the overall personal, spatial and temporal mobilities on individuals and
families. The identification of a desirable second home environment tends to be related to
an environmental search process of which travel is a key component. Holidaymaking
provides the opportunities to identify potential second home locations, while second
homes may also be part of a wider lifestyle strategy that utilises second home purchase as
a precursor to more permanent retirement or lifestyle migration. Indeed, recent renewed
interest by geographers in second homes and their relationship to domestic and
international migration suggests that second home tourism needs to be increasingly seen
within a broader framework of human mobility over the human lifecourse (A.M.Warnes
1992; T.Warnes 1994; King et al. 1998, 2000; A.M.Williams and Hall 2000;
A.M.Warnes 2001; Hall and Williams 2002; Hall and Müller 2004; Hall 2005a).
RURAL TOURISM: SPATIAL ANALYTICAL APPROACHES
In the literature on rural tourism (e.g. Sharpley 1993; Page and Getz 1997; Sharpley and
Sharpley 1997; Butler et al. 1998), there are few comparatively explicit spatial analytical
approaches which make the geographer's perspective stand out above other social science
contributions. Probably the nearest synthesis one finds is the occasional section on
tourism in rural geography texts (e.g. G.M. Robinson 1990) and a limited number of
geography of tourism texts (e.g. Shaw and Williams 1994).
IMPACT OF RURAL TOURISM
The literature on tourism impacts has long since assumed a central position within the
emergence of tourism research, as early reviews by geographers confirm (e.g. Mathieson
and Wall 1982). However, in a rural context, impact research has not been at the forefront
of methodological and theoretical developments. One particular problem, as already
noted, is the tendency for researchers to adopt well-established theoretical constructs and
concepts from their own disciplinary perspective and apply them to the analysis of rural
tourism issues. Within the social and cultural dimensions of rural tourism, the influence
of rural sociology in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g. Bracey 1970) dominated sociological
research while V.L.Smith's (1977) influential collection of anthropological studies of
tourism highlighted the approaches adopted by anthropologists. Probably the most
influential statement on the social and cultural impacts is Bouquet and Winter's (1987a)
diverse anthology of studies of the conflict and political debates associated with rural
tourism. For example, Bouquet and Winter (1987b) consider the relationship between
tourism, politics and the issue of policies to control and direct tourism (and recreation) in
the countryside in the post-war period. Geographers have largely remained absent from
this area of study as Hall and Jenkins (1998) and Jenkins et al. (1998) indicate. Even so,
non-spatial studies, such as Winter's (1987) study of farming and tourism in the English
and Welsh uplands, argue for circumspection in advocating farm tourism as a solution to
the socioeconomic development problems of 'less favoured areas', a conclusion which is
widely endorsed by subsequent studies (e.g. Jenkins et al. 1998). Sociological studies
