1st Edition
Tourism Encounters and Controversies Ontological Politics of Tourism Development
The multiplicity of tourism encounters provide some of the best available occasions to observe the social world and its making(s). Focusing on ontological politics of tourism development, this book examines how different versions of tourism are enacted, how encounters between different versions of tourism orderings may result in controversies, but also on how these enactments and encounters are entangled in multiple ways to broader areas of development, conservation, policy and destination management. Throughout the book, encounters and controversies are investigated from a poststructuralist and relational approach as complex and emerging, seeing the roles and characteristics of related actors as co-constituted. Inspired by post-actor-network theory and related research, the studies include the social as well as the material, but also multiplicity and ontological politics when examining controversial matters or events.
Biography
Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson is Associate Professor at the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland. His research interests are in the area of tourism policy, cultural economies and innovation. Carina Ren is Associate professor in culture and innovation at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research interests include tourism encounters, the materiality of tourism and destination and nation branding practices. René van der Duim has a Special Professorship in Tourism and Sustainable Development at Wageningen Uuniversity. His research focuses on the relation between tourism and sustainable development.
’At last a book that takes us beyond simple case studies! This collection re-introduces us to the concept of phronesis or practical wisdom as a means to develop a more sophisticated analysis of tourism encounters as diverse topological relations. The authors develop important insights into the relations of tourism encounters based upon their nuanced conflicts and multiple assemblages.’ Kevin Hannam, Leeds Beckett University, UK ’Instead of asking what tourism is, this ground-breaking book shows what tourism does - with whom and with what. It brings the pedagogics of tourism studies from a mere schooling of the labour force for fixed jobs into a creative platform of relational encounters that engender practical and skilful knowledge and concerns about tourism in the future.’ Soile Veijola, University of Lapland, Finland
