Critical tourism studies: new directions for volatile times

Abstract

Key themes in critical tourism geographies are reviewed and future research agendas suggested in light of a growing global sense of ecological and political-economic instability. Three cross-cutting threads in critical tourism studies are proposed as frames to recalibrate existing knowledges. Following theorisation of the Anthropocene as humans exceeding planetary thresholds, each frame encircles a key excess unleashed in the context of tourism that looms large amidst unfurling forces: excess capital and its territorial fixes; excessive mobilities and accompanying socio-material struggles; and biopolitical limits and excesses. Concluding thoughts focus on responsibility and an interlocutory optics required for tourism studies in the Anthropocene: with an eye squarely focussed on a suite of tenacious and oppressive forces – dispossession, displacement, commodification, exclusion, extinction – and another drawn to resistances as well as tourism’s quieter, but perhaps no less significant, possibilities to learn, to address wrongs and to extend empathy that emerge from everyday moments of encounter.

摘要

鉴于生态和政治经济不稳定的全球意识日益增强, 对批判旅游地理研究的主要议题进行了回顾, 并提出了未来的研究议程。本文提出了批判旅游研究中三个相互交叉的线索, 作为框架来重新校准现有的知识。根据人类世理论, 人类超越了地球的极限, 每一个框架都围绕着旅游背景下展现出来的一个关键过剩展开:资本过剩及其区域修复;过度的流动及伴随的社会物质斗争;以及生物政治的限制及过度使用。结论部分的思考强调责任和人类世旅游研究中一个对话性的聚焦:一个方面直接关注一套顽强的、压制性的力量——剥夺,取代,商品化,排斥、灭绝；另一个方面是关注抵抗及在旅游业中存在的、比较平静但或许不太重要的各种可能性, 用来了解错误,解决错误和拓展日常邂逅时刻表现出来的同理心。

Keywords:

• Anthropocene
• climate change
• capitalism
• financialisation
• mobility
• embodiment
• overtourism

关键词:

• 人类世
• 气候变化
• 资本主义
• 金融化
• 移动性
• 具身性
• 过度旅游

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Discourses of impending environmental doom also perform geopolitical and geoeconomic purposes (Norum & Mostafanezhad, 2016, p. 159), among which are the spurring of ‘last chance tourism’ (Piggott-McKellar & McNamara, 2016). Some destinations are thus likely to benefit commercially from climate change (cf. Tervo-Kankare, Kaján, & Saarinen, 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chris Gibson

Chris Gibson is Professor of Human Geography and Executive Director of the inter-disciplinary research programme, Global Challenges, at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He has published widely on the topics of cultural economy, festivals, and critical tourism research. From 2010 to 2013, he was an inaugural Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and in 2013 was international expert contributor to the United Nations Creative Economy Report. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal, Australian Geographer.