Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Crouch, 1999; Gibson, 2008, 2009; Hall, 2005c; Lew, 2001; Sheller and Urry, 2004) in the
context of disciplinary changes visible in geography more generally.
In a review of four leading topics in tourism geography, Lew (2001: 108) concluded
that more could be added from the small, but growing, 'new' cultural and critical geography
literature - a literature that has certainly burgeoned and diversifi ed further since 2001.
Lew also observed a general tendency for research that is well grounded in the literature of
the new cultural geography
not
to be well grounded in the literature of tourism studies
(and - I would argue - nor is this the case vice versa). He maintained that 'this is a common
criticism that is aired by long-time tourism researchers and scholars in other geographical
sub-disciplines who have only recently come to appreciate the richness that the study of
tourism offers' (p. 112). He pointed out with reference to Hall and Page's introduction to
their 2005 book that many tourism researchers draw upon geographical contributions
to tourism literature without recognising their origins (see also Hall and Page,
Chapter 2).
Conversely, he notes, the geography discipline overall has largely failed to recognise
the major contributions that its offspring are making to the rapidly growing fi eld of tourism
research.
Many others working in the tourism geographies fi eld have also emphasised in parallel
(although often with fragmented terminologies) a need to refl ect upon origins and more
recent disciplinary shifts in geography in the context of tourism (for example, the emergent
relationships between the New Mobilities Paradigm (NMP) and Critical Tourism Studies
(CTS) to tourism spaces and places). Moreover, there is an implicit yet widespread call for
further acknowledgement in tourism studies of a spatial turn in poststructuralist social
sciences more generally. The various contributions to this volume needed, for example,
to evaluate how postcolonial, feminist, sensory, performative and queer perspectives have
diversifi ed research in the fi eld. Spatial analysis, time geography, placemaking and landscape
concerns were also considered key, as were issues such as transport, environmental discourses
and development. If the volume's contributions manage to highlight these key areas
for advancing research and mapping out the dimensions of future trajectories in tourism
geographies in different theoretical, thematic and spatial contexts, then we have met our
original goal.
In taking an agenda-setting approach to moving beyond a solely economic imperative for
tourism studies (Franklin and Crang, 2001) I hope that contributions to this volume will be
treated as an illustrative and provocative guide for researchers to consult periodically; consoli-
dating and updating existing material in the fi eld to provide new ways of understanding the
subject. In this way, the volume should allow researchers rapid access to current debates,
controversies and questions in tourism geographies, while accompanying them in the framing,
design and execution of their research. In tune with a primary need for a bespoke combina-
tion of well-known authoritative voices and cutting-edge perspectives from emerging
scholars to be refl ected in the volume, specifi c and tailored contributions were invited from
high-calibre, well-established academics, as well as up-and-coming early-career researchers,
thus increasing the diversity of contributions in terms of gender, experience trajectories and
disciplinary backgrounds.
On this latter point, it should be emphasised that the volume includes various
disciplinary contributions (sociologists, political scientists, economic geographers, cultural
geographers, trained geographers now working outside of geography, anthropologists, urban
and regional studies scholars). I hope we have left enough space for due consideration
of post-disciplinarity questions within an essentially discipline-based fi eld while at the same
time not abandoning important disciplinary traits and traditions (see Butler,
Chapter 3)
.
