Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Human impacts on the environment can have a global dimension in two ways. First,
'global refers to the spatial scale or functioning of a system' (Turner
et al.
, 1990: 15). Here, the
climate and the oceans have the characteristic of a global system and both infl uence and are
infl uenced by tourism production and consumption. A second kind of GEC occurs if a change
'occurs on a worldwide scale, or represents a signifi cant fraction of the total environmental
phenomenon or global resource' (Turner
et al.
, 1990: 15-16). Tourism is signifi cant for both
types of GEC.
In addition to climate change, fi ve other major aspects of tourism and leisure-related
alteration of the environment at a global scale are usually identifi ed: (1) the change of land
cover and land use as a result of tourism developments, particularly tourism-related urbanisa-
tion; (2) the use of energy and its associated impacts, especially in relation to transport (e.g.
Gössling, 2000; Peeters
et al.
, 2007); (3) the exchange of biota over geographical barriers and
the loss of biodiversity and extinction of wild species (Hall, 2005e, 2006c); (4) the exchange
and dispersal of diseases (Rodway-Dyer and Shaw, 2005); and (5) demands on sometimes
scarce water supplies (Gössling, 2001). However, as review publications by Gössling (2002)
and Gössling and Hall (2006c) indicated, research on these signifi cant topics shows consider-
able variability in coverage, methodology and quality.
Finally, we should note that such stress factors on the global and local environment are
regarded not just as an environmental problem but also one that affects security. In their
review of tourism crisis, safety and security, Hall, Timothy and Duval (2004) suggested that
our understandings of security in tourism needed to expand beyond political security issues
such as terrorism (Hall, 2002) to embrace broader understandings of how tourism is impli-
cated in changes in the global economic, social, political and environmental system as well as
how to manage and solve such change. Yet in spite of these valid contributions to the develop-
ment of tourism knowledge by geographers, within the discipline of geography, a number of
tensions exist in relation to the development of such subject specialisation, many of which are
incumbent upon the perception that tourism studies is an applied and vocational area and not
a mainstream area of study that is theoretically valid to pursue. For this reason, it is pertinent
to consider some of these debates as they have dominated geography since the 1970s and may
contribute to the peripheralisation of the sub-discipline as well as within tourism geographies
itself. Indeed much of the debate hinges upon the increasing recognition that knowledge and
knowledge management (Shaw and Williams, 2009) remains a key area in tourism studies.
Tourism as an 'applied' area of research: problems for the discipline or a valid
contribution to society?
In geography, basic research aims to develop new theory and methods that help explain the
processes through which the spatial dimensions of physical and/or human environments
evolve. In contrast, applied research uses existing geographic theory or techniques to under-
stand and solve specifi c empirical problems (Hall and Page, 2006). While some critics of this
categorisation point to the lack of validity in differentiating between the rationale of research
and its intended use, there is a widely accepted premise within academic geography (see
Johnston, 2000a for more detail) that there are clear divisions between pure and applied
research. This debate is particularly relevant for tourism given the commercial focus of the
subject matter and the debates aired earlier on the lack of embeddedness between the spatial
focus of geographical research and the business and commercial practices of tourism. Pacione
(1999) also developed the argument of 'useful knowledge', which also raises the inevitable
criticisms of what might be non-useful geographical knowledge, and useful for whom?
