Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Perhaps the involvement of non-geographers in a volume on tourism geographies might be
perceived by some as risky, but I defend wholeheartedly the diversity of contributors' academic
backgrounds and moreover believe that this is a primary strength of the topic.
Due to this particular structure and orientation, I hope the volume will also be salient
for those researching tourism beyond the borders of tourism geographies, sociology
and anthropology, as it sets out a clear research agenda with much broader relevance for a
wider community of tourism researchers - important in a supposed era of post-disciplinarity
(see Hall and Page,
Chapter 2;
Gale,
Chapter 4;
and Wilson,
Chapter 32
for more on
post-disciplinarity).
I must also emphasise in this introduction that the volume presented a signifi cant challenge
for its contributing authors (and not to mention a somewhat complex editing task). A limited
word count and a strict brief to map out each topic and set a research agenda within a piece
around half the length of the average journal article is tough by anyone's standards. But I
believe these contributions have more than managed this, representing a further strength
of this volume: concise yet refl exive and comprehensive yet clearly targeted for the task of
mapping and advancing research.
To my knowledge, this is the fi rst volume to bring together such a diverse group of
leading and emergent scholars writing on the overall fi eld of tourism geographies in an
edited book format. Furthermore, in giving contributors an orientation for writing their
chapters, I sought to complement the strengths of previous Routledge research monographs/
textbooks (most notably
The Geography of Tourism and Recreation: Environment, Place and Space
by Hall and Page, as well as the excellent Routledge/Taylor and Francis journal
Tour ism
Geographies
, edited by Alan Lew
et al.
). I also hope that the volume will underpin more
generally the various titles in the Routledge book series 'Contemporary Geographies of
Leisure, Tourism and Mobility' and 'Advances in Tourism', by giving increased coherence to
advances in this topic area.
In terms of the possible limitations of this volume, I would like to emphasise that the
coverage and scope are certainly far from exhaustive (various other tourism contexts might
usefully have been included in
Part IV,
for example), although I hope that between
the urban, rural and coastal realms there is enough wider applicability for researching
related tourism settings. Had more space been available, it may have been pertinent to
include more chapters on specifi c economic sub-sectors within and complementary to
tourism (retailing, for example). In a similar vein, more on associated anthropological and
sociological interests (focusing, for example, on indigenous people) would have been salient
(although Palomino-Schalscha does cover this to an extent in
Chapter 24).
The volume
might also have included a section about research perspectives on 'types' of tourist experience
in relation to space and place, but I did seek to avoid this here to a certain extent, preferring
for example not to privilege the 'urban tourist' over and above 'tourism activity taking
place in the urban domain' (or similarly for 'cultural' tourists, 'eco' tourists, 'active' tourists,
etc.). Arguably all experiences attributable to tourism mobilities have active, cultural and eco
dimensions in varying measures and, as such, no separate section was merited on this
occasion.
Finally, I would underline that this topic is
not
a geographical analysis of tourism (there are
already many excellent books on this topic - see Aitchison
et al.
, 2000; Hall and Page, 2006;
Shaw and Williams, 2004; S. Williams, 2009). Rather, it is a geographical analysis of
research
perspectives
in tourism geographies and should be treated as an in-depth examination of past,
present and future conceptual frameworks, research approaches, methodologies and spatial
contexts in tourism geographies.
