Geography Reference
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of personal safety (S.J.Smith 1987; G.Valentine 1989), which has important implications
within an urban environment in relation to the use of public leisure resources such as
open space and urban parks. In fact, the concern with such issues may be traced to the
changes in the discipline of geography 'and transformative developments both resulting
from, and contributing to, a number of new and competing philosophies with the social
sciences' (Aitchison 1999:20). In relation to leisure and recreation geography, this
transformation effect can be related to the concern with gender relations and theoretical
perspectives associated with the new cultural geography as a mechanism to conceptualise
and theorise leisure space. One of the central tenets of this approach is embodied in
Green et al.'s (1990:311) comment where 'A significant aspect of the social control of
women's leisure is the regulation of their access to public places, and their behaviour in
such places'. These critical perspectives have only recently begun to emerge in tourism
geography (see Crouch 2000), where empirical, logical-positivist approaches to personal
safety have paid little attention to gender and public places.
In conceptual terms, the analysis of the geography of fear, particularly the implications
for gender, is a good illustration of the participation issues for particular groups of
women. The application of this perspective to recreational and leisure spaces in the city
reveals the male domination of public leisure space (Aitchison 1999). The new cultural
geographies have seen leisure and recreational geographers move away, albeit slowly,
from a positivist paradigm and the model building era as new perspectives were
conceptualised and theorised. The rise of feminist perspectives in leisure studies by
geographers is a notable development, with the impetus provided by landmark studies by
feminist leisure studies (e.g. Talbot 1979; Deem 1986; Green et al. 1987).
One of the principal problems with the emergence of a new cultural geography is
epitomised in Shurmer-Smith and Hannam's (1994:13) comments: 'Place is a deceptively
simple concept in geographical thought. We want to make it difficult, uneasy'. Herein
lies many of the criticisms of the new cultural geography: one must have a sound
grounding in social theory, cultural studies and a knowledge of the new terms
underpinning the debates. One consequence is that
the new cultural geography as it has been referred to since the early 1990s
demonstrates that space, place and landscape—including landscapes of
leisure and tourism—are not fixed but are in a constant state of transition
as a result of continuous, dialectical struggles of power and resistance
among and between the diversity of landscape providers, users and
mediators.
(Aitchison 1999:29)
This means that the focus is on agency rather than structure, criticising earlier
geographical studies of leisure and recreation which did not problematise space or
recognise the human element in the landscape. This perspective, and one has to recognise
it is only one perspective in geographical research, emphasises the diversity, differences
and nuances in cultural phenomena which is the antithesis of logical positivist
geographical thought which searches for certainty, coherence and generalisations in
relation to patterns, forms and processes of spatial phenomena. As a consequence the new
interest in leisure and tourism as cultural phenomena in the
