Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
literature, it provides a fascinating reconstruction of those elements in western society
which contributed to the discovery of the coast as a leisure resource (i.e. Romanticism)
and the impact on perceptions of the seaside. The publication of Jane Austen's
Sanditon
in 1817, heralded as the first 'seaside' novel, was a parody of coastal tourism as a
fashion-driven experience with health and recuperative benefits. What is significant in
Corbin's (1995) thesis is the discovery of the pleasure qualities of the coast and the
transformation from 'the classical period [which] knew nothing of the attraction of
seaside beaches, the emotion of a bather plunging into the waves, or the pleasures of a
stay at the seaside. A veil of repulsive images prevented the seaside from exercising its
appeal' (Corbin 1995:1). What the period 1750 to 1840 witnessed was a fundamental
reassessment of the ways in which leisure time and places were used with the evolution
of the seaside holiday. Within that evolutionary process the beach was invented as part of
a resort complex. The beach developed as the activity space for recreation and tourism,
with distinct cultural and social forms emerging in relation to fashions, tastes and
innovations in resort form. The development of piers, jetties and promenades as formal
spaces for organised recreational and tourism activities led to new ways of experiencing
the sea. The coastal environment, resort and the beach have been an enduring resource for
tourism and recreation since the 1750s in western consciousness, with its meaning, value
to society and role in leisure time remaining a significant activity space.
Indeed, the beach 'invites watchers to unearth not only the dominant, culturally elite
themes of a period, but its popular sensibilities: a blank piece of real estate on which each
wave of colonizers puts up its own idea of paradise' (Lenĉek and Bosker 1999:xx): in
short the coast represents a liminal landscape in which the juncture of pleasure, recreation
and tourism are epitomised in the post-modern consumption of leisure places (Preston-
Whyte 2002). However, as Preston-Whyte (2004) acknowledged, the discussion on
beaches as liminal spaces needs to be deepened particularly the dominance of a western
perspective that assumes liminality to be associated with heightened sensibilities
associated with the temporary suspension of normal states, and a paucity of empirical
exploration of the nature of the symbolism of these spaces. Preston-Whyte (2004) argued,
two main issues need to be addressed. First, the human actors, with their cultural
discourse and symbols to conceptualize and tame the beach, and the non-human actors
that constitute the material conditions of the beach itself with its attractions and dangers,
must be dealt with on equal terms. Second, dualisms such as nature/culture, that feature
so strongly in socio-spatial analysis (Murdock 1997; Watmore 1998, 2000), need to be
addressed. In doing so, Preston-Whyte (2004) believed that researchers would then be in
a better position to understand the cryptic comment made by Richard in Alex Garland's
influential novel (and subsequent film)
The Beach:
'It doesn't matter why I found it so
easy to assimilate myself into beach life. The question is why the beach life found it so
easy to assimilate me' (Garland 1997:116, quoted in Preston-Whyte 2004:357).
As Edgerton (1979) observed, for some Californian beaches in the 1970s, 400,000
visitors a day was not uncommon. Given the spatial distribution of beaches in California
(Table 8.1; see also Figure 8.1), this is a dominant cultural element of the region's leisure
culture. In fact in 2001, the visits to California's top three state beaches were: Santa
Monica (7.8 million visits), Lighthouse Field (7.3 million visits) and Dockweiler (3.8
million visits). Beach visits generated US$75.4 million in travel and tourism expenditure
for the Californian economy, supporting up to 1 million jobs and generating a further
