Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
university programmes even in the 1990s. In the new millennium the region has become
integrated into what L.Murphy and Le Heron (1999:15) describe as the '“new regional
geography” which incorporates elements of the earlier regional geography and new
elements from political economy, geography, feminist geography and geographic
information systems'. The development of regional synthesis required topical specialisms
in geography to contribute to the regional paradigm.
Regional concepts continue to play a major role in the geography of tourism and
recreation and underlie five main areas of research and scholarship:
•
Regional tourism geographies
A number of collections of regional material have been
developed by geographers since the late 1980s, in part influenced by the development
of regional economic and political blocs, which serve as frameworks for the
development of baseline studies of contemporary tourism processes. Major regional
reviews of tourism have been undertaken by geographers on western Europe
(A.M.Williams and Shaw 1988), Canada (Wall 1989), eastern Europe (D.R.Hall
1991), Europe (Montanari and Williams 1995), polar regions (C.M.Hall and Johnston
1995), Australia (C.M.Hall 1995, 2003a), China (Lew and Wu 1995), South Africa
(Rogerson and Visser 2004; Visser and Rogerson 2004), the South Pacific (Hall and
Page 1996), the Pacific Rim (Hall et al. 1997) and South and South-East Asia (Hall
and Page 2000).
•
Destination regions
Given the importance of the destination as an analytical concept in
tourism, significant effort has been given to the ways in which destination regions can
be identified, managed, and marketed (see S.L.J. Smith and Brown 1981; Mitchell
1984; S.L.J. Smith 1983a, 1987, 1995; Heath and Wall 1992).
•
Regional planning and development
The delineation of political and administrative
regions provides a focus for administrative and planning research as well as a focus
for the encouragement of development efforts through tourism and recreation. There is
a significant body of research in this area, particularly with reference to Europe and
the overall focus by government on tourism as a tool for economic development (see
e.g. D.G.Pearce 1988a, 1992a, 1995a, 1995b; A.M.Williams and Shaw 1988; D.R.
Hall 1991; Heath and Wall 1992; C.M.Hall et al. 1997; Hall 1999; Hall and Boyd
2005).
•
Synthesis and integration
The importance of synthesis and integration within regions
has proven to be an important component in the development of approaches to
integrated resource management within a regional context (see e.g. Lang 1988; Wight
1993, 1995; Pearce 1995b; Hall 1999).
•
Reviews of progress
In the development of the subdiscipline (e.g. Pearce 1979; Butler
2004) and specific progress reports for individual countries such as the UK (Duffield
1984), Spain (Bote Gomez 1996), Germany (Kreisel 2004), Australasia (D.G.Pearce
and Mings 1984; Pearce 1999a), China (Bao 2002), Japan (Takeuchi 1984), France
(Barbier and Pearce 1984; Iazzarotti 2002), South Africa (Rogerson and Visser 2004;
Visser and Rogerson 2004) and the USA (L.S.Mitchell 1969a, 1979, 1984; R.V.Smith
and Mitchell 1990; Mitchell and Murphy 1991).
Johnston (1991) also charts the development of geography as a discipline, focusing on a
number of other trends which provided a direction for development. These are as follows:
