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pushed many economies towards crisis. A deregulated banking sector had acted too much outside the boundaries of safe and trustworthy operations, resulting in a collapse of confidence in economic institutions not seen since the 1930s. Economic breakdowns and crises in many countries generated dramatic social and economic problems, adding in some cases to existing poverty, hunger and inequality. A brute reminder of the fact that behind the notion of free-markets there is also an uneven geography on a global level: One of the tenets of neo-liberalism is that poor countries should concentrate on producing a few special goods for export in order to obtain foreign exchange, and should import most other commodities (Capra 2002, p. 128). Image 4.3: Free trade. 31 In the aftermath of the real estate, banking and financial crisis in 2008, which very much started in the United States, the ideology of neoliberalism has been hotly debated and questioned, as those living in a country like Iceland know all too well. Some commentators drew the conclusion that the confidence in “self-regulating markets” had evaporated and that new regulations by the state were necessary and inevitable: In the wake of the crisis in financial markets of 2008, the state has made something of a comeback. The period of freewheeling deregulation is over (Giddens 2009, p. 15). Yet, although all states have been drawn into the orbit of providing means of financial restructuring, there is still little evidence that the slogan “Neoliberalism – so long, we hardly knew ya’“ (Keil 2009, p. 231) is true. Maybe some of the doors into “freewheeling” have been closed, but it 31 http://urbanhabitat.org/files/images/14-1_Page_08_Image_0001_color.jpg (retrieved 2009-09-13) 72
seems unlikely that neo-liberalism has come to an end, not least because the dominant institutional framework is still very much neo-liberal. It is also on this social landscape that the success story of tourism becoming one of the biggest industries ever, must be placed. It is rare to find a national or regional tourism plan, a book or article about tourism that does not include references to the substantial growth of tourism and that presents it as one of the most remarkable economic and social phenomena of the past century. The size and number of tourists and tourist destinations has continued to grow exponentially. This further suggests that for the time being tourism is likely to continue to have both capitalism and neo-liberalism as two of its nearest neighbours. For those countries that are dependent on tourism as a source to obtain foreign currency, the road is paved for investing high hopes in tourism as a money-making rescuer (see e.g. Jóhannesson & Huijbens, forthcoming). Conceived of as an ideology, a “tour-ism”, it fits often rather well with capitalism and neo-liberalism in that both feed upon and privilege mobility and consumption. In the past these ideological affinities have meant an orientation of tourism research towards topics like product innovation and development, public and private partnerships, how to commodify and maximise the potential of regional assets such as landscape and environment, local culture and identity, service diversification, marketing, growth and productivity in order to help tourism destinations and operators enhance their businesses, competitiveness and being able to better face capitalist competition. What the future has in store is not easy to tell. It seems however quite unlikely that trans- and multinational corporations and those with an economic or political interest in promoting capitalism across the globe will be the first to acknowledge that selling places through “tour-ism” may also involve: actual social risks. The transformation of a place into a commodity requires symbolic erasure of the untidy, the uneventful and the plain – and directly precedes other more violent types of cultural and historical revisions (Hunter 2008, p. 364, see also Huijbens forthcoming). 73
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© Icelandic Tourism Research Centr
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Table of Contents 1. Introduction .
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esearch but also “education and c
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Tourism images have had a longstand
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gradually expanded and become more
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Tourism - an earthly business For u
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Image 1.3: The Island of tourism &
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2. Image & destination The actual a
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variety of sources could be used in
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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
Page 62 and 63: A challenge for tourism theory and
Page 64 and 65: carved in stone, they are not given
Page 66 and 67: some of the things that signalled t
Page 68 and 69: Tourist was in fact that “we are
Page 70 and 71: globalisation gets attributed excep
Page 72 and 73: do so on the basis of its own speci
Page 74 and 75: Arguing for or against the idea of
Page 78 and 79: Whatever new ideologies of tourism
Page 80 and 81: The IPCC Reports are based on reach
Page 82 and 83: As evidenced by the Davos Declarati
Page 84 and 85: supports the position that signific
Page 86 and 87: “voluntary compensation is still
Page 88 and 89: terms of both adaption and mitigati
Page 90 and 91: Pratt and Watts 2000, p. 840). What
Page 92 and 93: co-creator of tourist spaces” (Ek
Page 94 and 95: can researchers use photography and
Page 96 and 97: latter, in order to set the scene f
Page 98 and 99: Even though the Earth is mentioned
Page 100 and 101: [M]ost significant phenomena that t
Page 102 and 103: social science when it presents its
Page 104 and 105: They further argue that “[t]ouris
Page 106 and 107: meaning and matter. The research ag
Page 108 and 109: REFERENCES Aramberri, J. (2009). Th
Page 110 and 111: Franklin, A. (2004). Tourism as ord
Page 112 and 113: Jóhannesson, G.Þ. and Huijbens. E
Page 114 and 115: Shaw, G. and Williams, A. (2004). T
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