Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
20
Until recently at least, quite a bit of the academic research into tourism, both 'cul-
tural' and 'environmental', inquired into how 'authentic' it really is for the tourists
involved. This is linked to a concern that the 'commodification' of tourist destinations
is transforming them into something quite different to what they appear to be. For
a summary and critique of the way the ideas of 'authenticity' and 'commodification'
have been defined and used in tourism research, see Shepherd's (2002) essay.
21
It's one of a very small number of Australian UNESCO World Heritage sites. Others
include the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock).
22
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/australia/queensland/fraser-island
, accessed 30 June
2012.
23
For this reason, it reopened a national debate about the highly controversial case of
baby Azaria Chamberlain whose parents claimed she was snatched by a dingo near
Uluru (then Ayers Rock) in 1980. Lindy, Azaria's mother, had been imprisoned for
murder/manslaughter, even though she and her husband remained adamant that their
daughter was a much loved and cherished baby. Now divorced, the Chamberlains
were invited by the media to pass comment on the Gage tragedy.
24
Sokal's hoax and book
Fashionable nonsense: postmodern intellectuals' abuse of science
,
co-authored with Jean Bricment (1998), were a key piece of artillery in the so-called
'science wars' that raged in the United States in the late 1990s. I referred briefly to
these wars in
Chapter 3.
25
Tim Mitchell (2002: 45) makes this point nicely in a critique of Karl Marx's well-
known metaphor of the bee and the architect. Even architects, he reminds us, do not
work
purely
in the realms of the imagination, numbers or discourse before their designs
are realised in practice. Prior to drawing and planning, Mitchell notes, all architects
must examine the planned construction site and consider the metals, plastics and
other materials that will 'work' if their design is to be practicable. Nigel Clark, in
his wonderful book
Inhuman nature
(2001), takes this further: the non-human world,
he argues, is often far too powerful to be altered according to a plan or design. Vast
domains of nature, he suggests, are literally beyond our power to 'construct', even
in a weak sense of this term. Clark thus argues that the metaphors of 'construction'
and 'hybridity', which have in their different ways dominated social science thinking
about 'nature' for 25 years, only really make sense when applied to a
small aspect
of
what we call 'nature'. The rest is simply beyond our reach, ours neither to make nor
to 'hook up' with.
26
Rorty is now deceased, while other leading 'neo-pragmatists' (as Rorty's generation
have been called) are now well into retirement. There are many good book intro-
ductions to philosophical pragmatism. My own favourite is Robert Talisse and Scott
Aikin's (2008)
Pragmatism: a guide for the perplexed
.
