Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Several geographers have also addressed issues of coastal and marine tourism, some from a
protected area or ecotourism slant (e.g. Cater and Cater, 2007; Garrod and Wilson, 2003,
2004) and confl ict over resources (Funck, 2006), while others have been interested in the
position of tourism within coastal management strategies and resort development (e.g.
Agarwal and Shaw, 2007; Coles and Shaw, 2006; Shaw and Agarwal,
Chapter 31
of this
volume). Another signifi cant area of research has been the impact of tourism on charismatic
marine megafauna such as whales and dolphins (e.g. Orams, 2002, 2005), while Preston-
Whyte (2002, 2004) has investigated the liminal spaces of the beach from his Durban
waterfront.
Issues of peripherality (see Page, 1994 for a review of the concept's application in tourism)
and the role of tourism as a potential mechanism for economic development in such regions
have been a signifi cant focus for many European geographers with there being a signifi cant
overlap with rural geography and rural studies, as well as nature-based tourism research
(Saarinen, 2003, 2004; Saarinen and Hall, 2004; Garrod and Wilson, 2004), especially with
respect to wilderness areas and national parks (e.g. Mose, 2007; Saarinen, 2005; Saethorsdottir,
2004) and resource management and interpretation (e.g. Ham and Weiler, 2004, 2007).
Because of their own location and national interests, Nordic geographers in particular have
made a very strong contribution to this fi eld (Müller and Jansson, 2007), while both Nordic
and other geographers in 'new world' countries have also written substantially on the rela-
tionship between tourism and indigenous peoples in peripheral areas (e.g. Butler and Hinch,
2007; Pettersson, 2003; Tuulentie, 2006; Viken and Müller, 2006). Such research is impor-
tant as studies of tourism in peripheral regions in the developed world can often be linked to
the contingent marginality of many developing country tourism locations (Hall, 2007c).
Development and its discontents
Development studies, whether regional or thematic, has been an area of interest for tourism
geographers for many years (e.g. d'Hauteserre, 2003; Scheyvens, 2002; Telfer, 2002;
Palomino-Schalscha,
Chapter 24
of this volume) and many of the seminal studies can be
dated to the late 1960s and early 1970s. Several notable regional studies have been produced
(e.g. Arlt, 2006; Duval, 2004b; Rogerson and Visser, 2004; Williams and Balaz, 2000),
although one of the more notable thematic developments has been the focus on tourism-
poverty relationships often described under the term of 'pro-poor tourism' (PPT) (Hall,
2007b; Torres and Momsen, 2004), and particularly in the post-apartheid context of southern
Africa (e.g. Binns and Nel, 2002; Gössling
et al.
, 2004; Kaplan, 2004; Kirsten and Rogerson,
2002; Ndlovu and Rogerson, 2003; Nel and Binns, 2002; Rogerson, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c,
2003a, 2003b, 2004a, 2005, 2006; Visser, 2003b; Visser and Rogerson, 2004). Indeed,
Rogerson (2006: 55) suggests that South Africa 'is a laboratory for the testing and evolution
of new approaches towards tourism and the planning of local economic development'. The
perceived value of this relationship has been stimulated in great part by the policies of devel-
opment institutions such as the World Bank as well as the UNWTO - what is often referred
to as the 'poverty consensus' (Mowforth and Munt, 2003; Scheyvens, 2007a, 2007b).
As Scheyvens (2007a, 2007b) emphasised in her analysis of the fi eld, academic perspectives
on the relationship between poverty and tourism have varied widely since the 1950s. While
in the 1950s tourism was identifi ed as a specialisation strategy that could help newly inde-
pendent developing countries earn foreign exchange, in the 1970s and 1980s many social
scientists argued that poor people in non-Western countries were typically excluded from or
disadvantaged by international tourism development. This is not to deny the importance of
