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Tourism – an earthly business For us the tourist and tourism imaginationing is about the social, cultural and geographical context of tourism, but within the triad’s geographical focus, the Earth itself emerges. The important role that non-humans, like boulders, aeroplanes, landscapes and cars, play in tourism clearly implies that tourism is something that takes place on planet Earth. That the Earth becomes an explicit plane of reference on which tourism takes place may well sound like a self-evident and trivial truism. Yet, an earthly take does not only mean that tourism is very much about being and experiencing something somewhere, but also has consequences for tourism theory. One of these is that it puts a question mark around onesided theorizations of tourism as a social phenomenon that occurs only in society. Tourism conceived of as an earthly business means that even such seemingly more “immaterial” things as tourist images are ultimately about relations and processes that re-, and de-territorialize the Earth. Indeed, in our understanding tourism is in essence all about the de/re-territorialization of the Earth for tourist and tourism purposes (Gren and Huijbens, under review). Although we obviously do speak and write as geographers, we would also argue that there is now a pressing need in tourism studies to more explicitly address the Earth in both tourism theory and in tourism research. By now there is an established discourse around tourism in the context of sustainable development, but there is a rising political focus on global climate change. Regardless of the scientific basis, for example whether or not we are witnessing a warming that is due to human impacts or weather events that are due to climate change or not (for debate see: Lomborg 2007), it poses a host of real and difficult challenges for how to address earthly environmental issues in tourism practices (Davos Declaration 2007). The real destination of climate change is very much the Earth itself rather than a SPA, or one of the too numerous to mention shopping malls or cultural heritage tourism sites that can be found “in society”. In the time of writing there is an upcoming climate change summit to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009, and the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) is “making a strong commitment to ensure tourism stakeholders support the ‘Seal the Deal!’ campaign and lobby for a fair, balanced and effective agreement” which will “power green growth and help protect our planet”. 6 6 http://www.unwto.org/media/news/en/press_det.php?id=4781&idioma=E (retrieved 2009-09-30). 8
For tourism studies this means that future research will need to move beyond the paradigm of sustainable development and investigate relationships between tourism and climate change in terms of both adaption and mitigation (Simpson, Gössling, Scott, Hall and Gladin 2008). For example, what does a low carbon society imply for tourism mobilities? How might the discourse on climate change effect tourism imaginationings and trajectories of sustainability for tourism on the ground? Outline The report consists of five chapters. In the next chapter (2) we will introduce and explore in more detail two of the central concepts to be found in tourism studies: image and destination. In the chapter that follows (3), we will more formally address tourism theory and move towards issues of imaginationings. After that comes a chapter (4) were we will place tourism and tourists in both the social world and on the Earth. The final chapter (5) consists of a summing up in the form of some suggestive steps towards an earthly research agenda. As geographers we are simply bound to appreciate maps, especially because a map can provide a comprehensive spatial overview of the terrain one is about to travel through. An alternative, and admittedly a more complicated outline of the report in the form of a map thus looks like this: 7 7 The map is inspired by Olsson’s (2007, pp. 225-235) Kantian Island of Truth, but here we in no way pretend to be approaching the truth of tourism. In accordance with our understanding of tourism and tourist imaginationings we believe that the capacity to imagine, to talk and reason about things that are not present, is a characteristic of human beings. Those humans we find on the Island of tourism and tourist imaginationings are thus also what Olsson describes as “a bastardous blend of semiotic and political animals, ironic creatures who after long practice have learned to live with the tensions between identity and difference without going crazy” (Olsson 2007, p. 225). 9
Page 2 and 3: © Icelandic Tourism Research Centr
Page 4 and 5: Table of Contents 1. Introduction .
Page 6 and 7: esearch but also “education and c
Page 8 and 9: Tourism images have had a longstand
Page 10 and 11: gradually expanded and become more
Page 14 and 15: Image 1.3: The Island of tourism &
Page 17 and 18: 2. Image & destination The actual a
Page 19 and 20: variety of sources could be used in
Page 21 and 22: consequences for how she or he will
Page 23 and 24: either the textual or the visual, a
Page 25 and 26: Composed of numerous small encounte
Page 27 and 28: materiality. Yet, you are able to r
Page 29 and 30: demand it is mediated by investment
Page 31 and 32: tourism reflects broader social and
Page 33: signification, not the least in tou
Page 36 and 37: usiness and market to potential cus
Page 38 and 39: ound to cross traditional disciplin
Page 40 and 41: sightseeing and whatever activities
Page 42 and 43: Social science research is carried
Page 44 and 45: environment. If they had, they were
Page 46 and 47: Our argument is that it is importan
Page 48 and 49: able to cross the minds of many tho
Page 50 and 51: Eight on my list is the heritage of
Page 52 and 53: The cartography of tourism imaginat
Page 54 and 55: Images of Iceland as a tourist dest
Page 56 and 57: Whatever the specifics and forms of
Page 58 and 59: Are you dressed in the road map of
Page 60 and 61: Summing up It has often been lament
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A challenge for tourism theory and
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carved in stone, they are not given
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some of the things that signalled t
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Tourist was in fact that “we are
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globalisation gets attributed excep
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do so on the basis of its own speci
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Arguing for or against the idea of
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pushed many economies towards crisi
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Whatever new ideologies of tourism
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The IPCC Reports are based on reach
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As evidenced by the Davos Declarati
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supports the position that signific
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“voluntary compensation is still
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terms of both adaption and mitigati
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Pratt and Watts 2000, p. 840). What
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co-creator of tourist spaces” (Ek
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can researchers use photography and
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latter, in order to set the scene f
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Even though the Earth is mentioned
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[M]ost significant phenomena that t
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social science when it presents its
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They further argue that “[t]ouris
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meaning and matter. The research ag
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REFERENCES Aramberri, J. (2009). Th
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Franklin, A. (2004). Tourism as ord
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Jóhannesson, G.Þ. and Huijbens. E
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Shaw, G. and Williams, A. (2004). T
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