RURAL RECREATION AND TOURISM - The Geography of Tourism and Recreation - page 311

study groups of professional bodies such as the Institute of British Geographers (IBG)
and Association of American Geographers (AAG) where these developments have not
been discouraged. Human geography in particular has been less accepting of such fringe
subject areas and a consequence is that even when notable researchers have emerged in
these areas they have not fostered the same stature or influence of the human geographers
of the 1960s and 1970s who cultivated and really established rural recreation and tourism
as a rich area of spatially contingent research. The scope of the studies reviewed and
discussed in this chapter have a common theme associated with some of the problems
associated with rural areas in general, namely peripherality. Yet, ironically, this can also
be a major feature associated with place marketing of rural areas where the peaceful rural
idyll is marketed and commodified around the concept of space and peripherality. The
rural geographer has made some forays into this area of research but, more often than not,
many of the texts on rural geography pay only limited attention to tourism and recreation
despite its growing significance in economic, social and political terms. Indeed, the
outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the United Kingdom in February 2001 served only
to highlight both the critical importance of tourism for the countryside and the absence of
appropriate policy and intellectual frameworks that understand how tourism is embedded
in the production and consumption of rural areas.
QUESTIONS
• How did the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the United Kingdom in 2001 affect
tourism?
• Is rural tourism distinctive?
• To what extent should second homes be regarded as part of the geography of tourism
and recreation in rural areas?
• To what extent is rural recreation and tourism dependent on amenity values?
READING
Useful collections of readings on rural tourism include
Butler, R.W., Hall, C.M. and Jenkins, J. (eds) (1998) Tourism and Recreation in Rural Areas,
Chichester: Wiley.
Mitchell, M. and Hall, D. (eds) (2005) Rural Tourism and Sustainable Business, Clevedon:
Channel View.
The chapter by Jenkins et al. in Butler et al. (1998) provides a valuable overview of
rural restructuring issues.
On second homes see
Hall, C.M. and Müller, D. (2004) Tourism, Mobility or Second Homes: Elite Landscapes or
Common Ground? Clevedon: Channel View.
On tourism in more peripheral rural areas see
Hall, C.M. and Boyd, S. (eds) (2005) Nature-based Tourism in Peripheral Areas: Development or
Disaster, Clevedon: Channel View.
For an overview of rural recreation issues see
Pigram, J.J. and Jenkins, J. (1999) Outdoor Recreation Management, London: Routledge.