Tourism Geographies in Motion: Critical Cartographies of Place, Politics, and Representation - Celebrating Geography Awareness Week 2023
Tourism and geography can make an odd coupling. As a bone of contention in the sub-field, this arrangement has driven tourism-focused geographers' efforts to move the field's reputation beyond conceptualizations of vocational management to critically engaged and consequential research (Cheer, 2024; Wilson and Müller, 2024). Müller (2019) and Wilson (2012) query the heritage of tourism geographies and muse whether the subfield makes valuable contributions to geographic knowledge. As the Founding Editor of Tourism Geographies, Alan Lew (2018, p. 31) quips: "With tourism becoming recognized as a key element in regional and global economies, identities, and experiences, so too does the status of our field seem to be gaining some increased recognition." Tourism Geographers have long demonstrated how place representations shape geographical imaginaries and how, in turn, geographical imaginaries shape politics, society, and the environment (Chronis, 2012; Gregory, 1995; Linke, 2012; Oh, 2022; Salazar, 2012). Situated at the nexus of human geography and tourism studies, maps, and other locating technologies profoundly influence spatial and global awareness with wide-ranging geopolitical implications (Rowen, 2016; Szadziewski et al., 2022). Understanding the role of tourism in shaping geographical imaginaries is significant as ongoing threats of environmental catastrophe and war loom large. The historical evolution of geographic representations of place, ranging from those of early explorers to contemporary smartphone apps that trace tourist routes in real-time, has long played a pivotal role in tourism (Joliveau, 2009). While mapping technologies are instrumental in tourism, they are also irrevocably political in their selective representations of place. They can disenfranchise communities through territorial claims and demarcate violently protected borders, or they can be appropriated to challenge hegemonic cartographies of place. We celebrate the 2023 Geography Awareness Week by emphasizing the critical contributions of tourism geographers to demonstrations of the interconnectedness of place, politics, and representation in tourism. Reflecting these valuable contributions, Tourism Geographies is currently ranked 1st in Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management, and 2nd in Geography, Planning and Development (Cite Score 26.3). This ranking is remarkable for a journal established in 1999 that occupies a specialized niche. This nods to Müller's (2018, p. 172) appeal to tourism geographers to examine tourism as an “agent and outcome” of socio-environmental change. Today, tourism geographers contribute broadly to disciplinary discussions on geographical imaginaries and earth-writing endeavors (Springer, 2017). The papers in this collection showcase seminal and representative texts in tourism geography that engage with the interconnected role of place, politics, and representation in tourism.