Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2
FROM THE GEOGRAPHY
OF TOURISM
Introduction
Geography has as its central concerns a focus on place, space and environment. Geographers
and the various institutions of geography, in the form of academic associations, departments,
journals and other geographical-oriented publishing outlets, have also long contributed to the
study of tourism (Hall and Page, 2006; Lew, 2001), enriched by a long tradition of doctoral
theses in tourism by geographers or supervised by geographers ( Jafari and Aaser, 1988).
However, the impending or semi-retirement of a number of geographers who have
contributed substantially to the study of tourism in recent decades such as Richard Butler
(Western Ontario, Canada; Surrey, UK), Felix Juelg (Vienna, Austria), Peter Murphy
(Victoria, Canada; La Trobe, Australia), John Pigram (University of New England, Australia)
and Geoff Wall (Waterloo, Canada), combined with the emergence of a new generation of
geographers and geographical thought, suggests that a review of the state of the fi eld is
extremely timely for
Tourism Management
as it has been publishing articles by geographers for
nearly 30 years. Given the limited number of reviews published on the fi eld and its contribu-
tion to tourism studies and management (Butler, 2004; Mitchell and Murphy, 1991; Pearce,
1979), a review of recent literature is particularly pertinent to question and debate where the
subject has evolved to, the current debates and issues facing those who work within the
subject and where the subject will evolve in the future.
Much of the interest by geographers in tourism and the wider domain of leisure studies can
be traced or dated to an interest in tourism and recreation by geographers that mirrors the
pre-1945 development of the discipline and the post-war boom in many countries as a subject
of study in universities and other institutes of higher education (Hall and Page, 2006;
McMurray, 1954; Wolfe, 1964). Nevertheless, while the fi eld has some long-established
theoretical and applied interests, a number of substantial new developments and research foci
have emerged in recent years, leading to the notion of tourism geographies, i.e. that there is
more than one paradigmatic approach towards the geography of tourism and tourism
management.
At an institutional level the geography of tourism appears at fi rst glance to be reasonably
healthy, as demonstrated by recent contributions to a
Companion to Tourism
(Lew
et al.
,
2004), published as part of the Blackwell Companions to Geography Series, which are
