Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1 9
THE ECONOMY OF TOURISM
SPACES
A multiplicity of 'critical turns'?
Introduction
Two decades ago, Britton (1991) argued eloquently for a political economy approach in
geographic examinations of tourism, stressing that this would reinforce the theoretical under-
pinnings of the geography of tourism. Inspired by this mandate, several geographers have
periodically argued for strengthening tourism's conceptual ties to economic geography (Shaw
and Williams, 1994; Ioannides, 1995a; Milne, 1996; Ioannides and Debbage, 1998a; Agarwal
et al.
, 2000).
What has triggered the recent impressive growth in geographers' attention to the so-called
economic geography of tourism has been the sub-discipline's overall re-orientation toward
the 'critical and cultural turn' in tourism studies. Ateljevic (2000) points out that the afore-
mentioned agenda for strengthening the ties of tourism to economic geography resulted in a
'theoretically embedded new economic geography of tourism' (p. 370) at precisely the time
when the boundaries between economic, cultural and other forms of tourism had begun to
blur. The way forward, according to Ateljevic (2000: 371) was to adopt a 'neo-Gramscian
concept of negotiation between production and consumption processes, as each connected
through reproduction'. Her argument was that a production-oriented or a consumption-
oriented approach in isolation from each other was too limiting (see also Bianchi,
Chapter 5
and Gale,
Chapter 4
of this volume).
This chapter charts the direction the economic geography of tourism has taken since the
late 1990s. Although several useful research directions are incorporated within this overall
theme, because of space limitations we focus on just a handful of the issues that interest
tourism geographers. Our principal argument is that while various 'critical turns' in tourism
strengthen geographers' attention towards tourism from an economic geography standpoint,
a serious downside of much of the 'critical turn' orientation is that the agenda Britton so
vehemently argued for has been watered down. Gibson (2009: 528) argues that the recent
emphasis of tour ism research on social and cultural issues marg inalises issues relating to 'polit-
ical economy, industrial structure or relations of production'.
Throughout the chapter, we emphasise tourism's important role as an instrument of
production and capital accumulation while acknowledging the notion that production and
consumption are infused with culturally symbolic processes that are territorially embedded.
