Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE 'MOBILITIES TURN' AND
Tara Duncan
Introduction
Increasingly tourism is seen as constitutive of everyday life (Edensor, 2007; Franklin, 2003;
Hannam, 2008). However, tourism has not yet escaped from its past and it has been argued
that some geographers have still to take tourism seriously (Hall, 2005c; Gibson, 2008). Yet,
this dismissive, and outdated, approach to tourism geographies only highlights outdated
notions of exoticism within and through tourism. Whilst the history of tourism, and some
(much?) of the tourism industry, may still rely on ideas of the exotic to entice tourists to their
destinations, the notion that tourism, or rather travel, is an exotic act, that it is somehow
different from our everyday life, has become foreign to many. Rather, this distinction of
travel and tourism as the antithesis of the everyday (Graburn, 1989; MacCannell, 1999) illus-
trates why many tourism geographers have taken note of what could be classed the 'mobilities
turn' or the New Mobilities Paradigm (NMP) (Cresswell, 2006; Hannam
et al.
, 2006; see
also Gale, 2008; Wilson, 2009; and Gale in
Chapter 4
of this volume). In adopting the
'mobilities turn' as an approach with which to study, research (and practise) tourism, we can
begin to recognise that being and knowing a mobile lifestyle is now our everyday (Edensor,
2007; Franklin, 2003; Hannam, 2008). As Franklin and Crang (2001: 3) suggest, tourism has
become 'a signifi cant modality through which transnational modern life is organised'. So, as
mobility becomes part of more people's everyday lives (albeit still dominated by those in
developed countries and elites from developing countries (Hall, 2005c), tourism geographers
need to continue to stretch the boundaries around what is seen as tourism research within and
beyond geography.
This chapter aims to demonstrate the growing impact of an emerging understanding of the
mobile nature of wider socio-cultural and spatial processes within and through tourism geo-
graphies. The chapter will utilise examples from independent travel and longer term leisure
mobility (i.e. the 'Gap Year, backpacking, the 'Overseas Experience' (OE) and emerging
work on lifestyle mobility) in order to allow a way in which to fuse or blur conventional
accounts of travel and migration (see Duncan, 2007; Wilson
et al.
, 2009). The chapter will
start by outlining what 'mobility' is and discuss how tourism geographers have moved from
ideas of temporary mobility (Hall, 2005c, 2008a) to what Sheller and Urry (2006) have
defi ned as a 'mobilities paradigm'. In thinking through these changes, the chapter will also
