Geography Reference
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such as the Association of American Geographers. Third, the increased significance of
tourism and recreation in urban and rural environments in contemporary society has led
to a greater appreciation of the potential significance of the field. In other words, tourism
is now such a significant activity in the cultural landscape that it would be difficult for
other geographies to ignore it for much longer. Finally, tourism and recreation
geographies are now arguing that they have something to contribute to the wider
discipline, particularly in such areas as understanding the service economy,
industrialisation and regional development (e.g. Ioannides 1995, 1996; d'Hauteserre
1996), as well as more traditional resource management concerns and sustainability (e.g.
Zurick 1992; Hall and Lew 1998).
The final factor influencing the standing of the subdiscipline is the extent to which
geographers in the field are increasingly undertaking employment outside geography
departments and in tourism, recreation and leisure studies departments, business schools,
and environmental studies and planning departments. Across most of the western world,
tourism has become recognised as a major employer which, in turn, has placed demands
on educational institutions to produce graduates with qualifications relevant to the area.
Therefore, there has been a substantial growth in the number of universities and colleges
that offer undergraduate and graduate qualifications in tourism, recreation and hospitality
which provide potential employment for tourism and recreation geographers. The
opportunity to develop a career path in tourism and recreation departments which are
undergoing substantial student growth, or in a new department, will clearly be attractive
to individuals whose career path may be slower within long-established geography
departments and who carry the burden of being interested in a subdiscipline often on the
outer edge of mainstream geographic endeavour. As Johnston (1991:281) recognised,
'this reaction to environmental shifts is undertaken by individual scholars, who are
seeking not only to defend and promote their own status and careers within it'.
The massive growth of tourism and recreation studies outside geography also means
that increasingly many geographers publish in tourism and recreation journals rather than
in geography journals. Such publications may be extremely significant for tourism studies
but may carry little weight within geography beyond the subdiscipline (e.g. Butler's
(1980) hugely influential article on the destination life cycle). This has therefore meant
that geographers who work in non-geography departments may find themselves being
drawn into interdisciplinary studies with only weak linkages to geography. The question
that of course arises is: does this really matter? Disciplines change over time, areas of
specialisation come and go depending on intrinsic and extrinsic factors. As Johnston
(1991) observes:
The continuing goal of an academic discipline is the advancement of
knowledge. Each discipline pursues that goal with regard to particular
areas of study.
Its individual members contribute by conducting research and reporting
their findings, by integrating material into the disciplinary corpus, and by
pedagogical activities aimed at informing about, promoting and
reproducing the discipline: in addition, they may argue the discipline's
'relevance' to society at large. But there is no fixed set of disciplines, nor
any one correct division of academic according to subject matter. Those
