Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
through a 'cultural turn' in the 1990s (Barnett, 1998; Wilson, 2009), more recently many
other social science subjects and disciplines can be said to have gone through a 'spatial' or
'mobility' turn (Gale, 2008 and
Chapter 4
of this volume; Hannam
et al.
, 2006; Wilson,
2009). Both of these shifts are discussed in many of the chapters in this volume.
Tourism geographies have, until fairly recently, been dominated by ideas of temporary
mobilities. Yet, as Hall (2005c: 128) points out, 'the surprising thing in examining the geog-
raphy of tourism is arguably not how much has been written but why so little'? Williams and
Zelinsky (1970) noted four decades ago that little attention had been paid to the circulation of
tourists by social scientists. Much more recently, and as Hall (2005c: 128) illustrates, Boyle
et al.
(1998) highlight that 'the importance of temporary movement . . . cannot be underestimated'
but then mention it rarely in their text. Temporary mobility, whilst paradoxically studied in
many disciplines (see Hall, 2005c), seems to have only recently caught the imagination of many
social scientists (see Bell and Ward, 2000; Casado-Diaz,
Chapter 15
of this volume).
This having been said, tourism sits well within ideas of temporary mobility. Hall's (2005c)
fi gures, incorporating time, space and distance, demonstrate how the movement of tourists
can be 'captured' to show touristic travels throughout the life course and can blur the bound-
aries with other forms of (temporary) mobility including migration, travel for work, return
migration and as Hall (2005c) suggests, diasporas (see also Bell and Ward, 2000). Whilst not
unproblematic, Hall's (2005c) fi gures do allow for a broader conceptualisation of tourism that
challenges existing views that tourism occupies only a 'liminal position' within geography
(Gibson, 2008: 418).
Even as it can be suggested that tourism has only recently begun to utilise some of
geography's theoretical mainstays (Hannam, 2008), it is argued that tourism geography's
utilisation of temporary mobility has provided an important point of intersection - between
tourism and geography - that has allowed a broader approach to understanding the meaning
behind a range of mobilities (Coles
et al.
, 2004). In thus adopting an understanding of mobili-
ties, we move away from the somewhat limiting 'temporary' aspect imposed on much tourism
mobilities research by Hall's (2005c) persuasive arguments. Rather than tourism existing as
' just' a temporary form of movement, and in line with Sheller and Urry's (2006: 207) conten-
tion that 'all the world seems to be on the move', tourism geography is at the forefront of
challenging ideas of permanence within migration studies (Hall, 2008a). It must also be
emphasised that tourism, whether seen as temporary mobility, a privileged form of mobility
or as part of the everyday, cannot be separated from larger social, political, economic and
cultural processes (Burns and Novelli, 2008; Hall, 2008a). Thus tourism geographies are
about acknowledging and critiquing the virtual and imaginative, the corporeal, the haptic
and the affective within mobilities at global, local and individual levels, as well as recognising
the disenfranchised, the immobile, and the transience and forced nature of (some) mobility.
Mobilities, globalisation and transnationalism?
Underpinning mobility is globalisation (Gale, 2008; Hall, 2008a). Yet it is not just about how
globalisation has allowed us - i.e. those in the developed world - to live and know a more
mobile everyday; it is also, as Tomlinson (1999) argues, its capacity for place-making. Taking
this one step further, it is about issues of the identity and belonging in, to and with place.
Thus, as Hall (2008a: 15) suggests, it is about moving towards understanding 'the meaning
behind the range of mobilities undertaken by individuals, not tourists'.
As mobility can be understood through globalisation, so too can it be understood through
transnationalism. An increasingly diverse range of people are experiencing some form of
