Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
tourism are 'beginning to be rendered visible, situated and placed within the rapidly
evolving discourses of post-positivist or post-structuralist geographies' (Aitcheson et al.
2000:1). The recent 'cultural turn' in human geography has substantially influenced
tourism research (Debbage and Ioannides 2004), particularly with respect to issues of
performance, the body, gender, postcolonialism (Hall and Tucker 2004) and power.
Indeed, the terrain of human geography has shifted so much that it is rather debatable
whether the 'radical' geography of Johnston (1991) can really be described as radical any
more.
In many ways Shaw and Williams (1994, 2002, 2004) represent an explicit response to
Britton's (1991) call for a theorisation of geography of tourism and leisure that explicitly
recognises, and unveils, tourism as a predominantly capitalistically organised activity
driven by the inherent and defining social dynamics of that system, with its attendant
production, social and ideological relations. An analysis of how the tourism production
system markets and packages people is a lesson in the political economy of the social
construction of 'reality' and social construction of place, whether from the point of view
of visitors and host communities, tourism capital (and the 'culture industry'), or the
state—with its diverse involvement in the system (Britton 1991:475).
To many students of the geography of tourism and recreation, such a call would not
seem appropriate, as it would be seen to be taking geography too far from its spatial core
interpreting the mapping of decision-making outcomes in space. This should be no
surprise though, as the subdiscipline reflects the wider turmoil in the discipline as a
whole in terms of competition between various frameworks of analysis regarding how
space is conceived. Nevertheless, while conventional spatial science may yield useful
information, it does little to promote an understanding of the processes by which
outcomes at given points of time are actually reached, nor does it do much to connect the
geography of tourism and recreation to wider debates and issues in the social sciences.
One of the great stresses in the geography of tourism and recreation is the extent to
which it connects with other components of the discipline. While it is quite easy to agree
with Matley's (1976:5) observation that 'There is scarcely an aspect of tourism which
does not have some geographical implications and there are few branches of geography
which do not have some contribution to make to the study of the phenomenon of tourism'
(see also Mercer 1970), one must also note that the relative influence of these branches
has proven to be highly variable since the late 1920s.
One of the great difficulties has been that while tourism and recreation geographers
have seen the significance of relationships to other geographical subdisciplines and,
indeed, other disciplines, such relationships are not reciprocal. For example, while
Mercer (1970) recognised the significance of recreation, tourism and leisure for social
geography (see also W.M.Williams 1979), textbooks, such as that by Jackson and Smith
(1984), do not examine such concepts. Similarly, a text such as Whitehead (1993) on
The
Making of the Urban Landscape
failed to note the role of tourism and recreation activities
in urban environments. Tourism is also a notable absentee from textbooks on economic
geography (Debbage and Ioannides 1998). Perhaps the most significant indicator of the
way the geography of tourism and recreation is seen by the wider discipline can be found
in Johnston's (1991) standard work on post-war Anglo-American geography. Here the
terms leisure, recreation and tourism are absent from the index, while the only comment
on the subject is three lines in the environmentalism section of the chapter on applied
