Tourism Geographies Podcast

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2386269

Abstract

Regenerative tourism argues that addressing the current ecological crisis requires inner transformation, referring to changes in people’s mindsets, values, beliefs, and worldviews. Combined, they influence the systems we create and, as such, represent deep levers for systems change. Yet, an in-depth analysis of the inner dimension in the context of regeneration is missing. It is unclear which qualities foster inner development towards regenerative change. Using the concept of leverage points and through a scoping review and thematic analysis of 309 articles on regenerative approaches, regenerative tourism, and the inner dimension of sustainability, this study proposes the Inner Regenerative Development Framework, a whole-person approach constituting aspects of our inner world that enhance our ability to work regeneratively; conceptualised here as Inner Regenerative Development. The framework brings together cognitive, affective, grounded, and holistic aspects of ourselves, encompassing 12 inner leverage points and 85 inner qualities serving as the basis for interventions, a few of which are proposed as starting points for inner-outer transformation. Collectively, these elements highlight the inner domains, capacities, and practices that can be cultivated to support regenerative tourism from the inside out.

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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2024.2423168

Abstract

Religiously motivated travel, such as pilgrimages, is one of the oldest forms of tourism. Over the past fifty years, religiously motivated tourism has experienced significant growth. Religious tourism has evolved in diverse contexts and locations, and it is increasingly explored by scholars from various fields. Existing literature on religious tourism suggests a growing diversification of visitors, who are driven by the diminishing significance of traditional religious beliefs in contemporary societies. Scholars have indicated a global decline in engagement with organised religions, possibly attributed to modern scientific knowledge, rational thinking, and secularisation. Consequently, there is a growing trend where individuals travel to religious and pilgrimage sites that hold personal significance or meaning for them. In the post-pandemic context, more attention should be given to the wellness aspects of religious tourism, including the mental, physical, and spiritual health benefits. Religious tourism, especially in developing regions and remote areas, has been viewed as part of economic diversification strategies. To provide pathways for how religious tourism can actually benefit the local community and economy in practice, there is a need for more in-depth research and analysis. More critical research can explore how economic development influences or impacts poverty alleviation, sustainability, accessibility, and environmental impacts. For future research, beyond tourists’ perspectives, more attention on the perspectives of communities and local stakeholders is required. Since Western contexts, conceptualisations, methodologies, and interpretations still dominate the field, it is essential to incorporate holistic perspectives and understandings from a broader body of scholars. Encouraging local scholarship is important to foster more balanced discussions within this field of study. Methodologies should expand and become more creative, moving beyond quantitative studies and incorporating more fieldwork. Scholars need to address practical problems related to religious tourism sites by collaborating with policymakers, tourism operators, local communities, and religious associations.

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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2024.2311642

Abstract

This article examines the theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical integration of postcolonial cinema into critical tourism education. These works help viewers understand the influence of film as a primary source of postcolonial gaze, with the goal of decolonizing tourism studies. Postcolonial cinema reconnects geographic inquiry with the impacts of colonialism and postcolonialism on people and places in specific localities and across regions. Critical pragmatism is presented as synthesizing critical theory’s emphasis on listening, reflecting, and deliberating and traditional pragmatism’s emphasis on practice and place, as well as mixed research methods and multiple realities. Critical reflexivity is explored in critical tourism studies as relocated in pragmatist thought and a basis for abductive methodology and pedagogy. Abductive methodology is identified as a basis for addressing complex tourism issues and researcher positioning, while abductive pedagogy creates transformative learning environments where shared dialogue generates new knowledge. Critical pragmatism, enriched with gaze and reflexivity honed through postcolonial cinema, addresses perceived ontological and ‘realist’ deficiencies in critical tourism studies, while offering an alternative philosophical framework for informing and contrasting popular epistemologies and methodologies.

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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2023.2299832Abstract

Although sustainable tourism research is a rich and diverse field, it still suffers from a few important shortcomings. Negligible attention has been given to various possible pathways to sustainable tourism (as opposed to sustainable tourism as a ‘goalpost’) and there is an insufficient understanding of how the interconnections and interdependencies within tourism as a complex system shape the pursuit of sustainability. What is therefore needed is a sharper focus on the actual processes that must unfold for a transition to sustainable tourism to take place, and a better conceptualisation of the tourism industry as a multi-actor and multi-dimensional socio-technical system. We argue here that the sustainability transitions agenda, which has developed over the last two decades at the interface of innovation studies, evolutionary economics, studies of technology and science, and various other fields, offers a promising way forward for the desired pathway towards sustainable tourism to be comprehensively understood and more effectively followed. In order to set the scene for the individual contributions to this collection, we elaborate on this argument by highlighting the key strengths of the sustainability transitions agenda and identifying their potential to help tourism scholars move the work on sustainable tourism in new, unprecedented, and imperative directions. Our overarching aim is to lay the foundations for bridging the gap between (sustainable) tourism research and the sustainability transitions literature to move this combined agenda forward.

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The Spanish Version starts at 35:47https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2021.1965202Abstract

Potential to identify and cultivate forms of post-capitalism in tourism development has yet to be explored in depth in current research. Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, and hence a powerful global political and socio-economic force. Yet numerous problems associated with conventional tourism development have been documented over the years, problems now greatly exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Calls for sustainable tourism development have long sought to address such issues and set the industry on a better course. Yet such calls tend to still promote continued growth as the basis of the tourism industry’s development, while mounting demands for “degrowth” suggest that growth is itself the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed in discussion of sustainability in tourism and elsewhere. This critique asserts that incessant growth is intrinsic to capitalist development, and hence to tourism’s role as one of the main forms of global capitalist expansion. Touristic degrowth would therefore necessitate postcapitalist practices aiming to socialise the tourism industry. While a substantial body of research has explored how tourism functions as an expression of a capitalist political economy, thus far no research has systematically explored what post-capitalist tourism might look like or how to achieve it. Applying Erik Olin Wright’s Citation

2019 innovative typology for conceptualizing different forms of post-capitalism as components of an overarching strategy for “eroding capitalism” to a series of illustrative allows for exploration of their potential to contribute to an analogous strategy to similarly “erode tourism” as a quintessential capitalist industry.

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