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- Andersson Cederholm, Erika, et al.
(author)
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Tourists and Global Environmental Change: A Possible Scenario in Relation to Nature and Authenticity
- 2006
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In: Tourism and Global Environmental Change. - 041536132X ; , s. 293-304
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this chapter is to discuss global environmental change (GEC) through the social construction of nature and notions of authenticity. We will discuss the social construction of nature in a specific context, namely that of different kinds of nature-based tourism. The argument will revolve around what we perceive as a shift in focus from the image of nature as thing to nature as experience, also expressed as a shift from nature as place to nature as globalised locality. We will sketch a development from “traditional” nature tourism practices and rhetoric to the formation of another cultural economy of nature in order to discuss possible effects of GEC on tourist phenomenologies. By structuring our analysis around three aspects of authenticity, we will argue that different nature tourism operators stress the non-essentialist, experiential image of nature, where the destination per se seems to have a secondary role. We further suggest that the non-essentialist and therefore fluid concept of authenticity in tourist experiences might be adaptable to perceptions of change on a global scale. We aim to interpret GEC, although encompassing potentially devastating processes in a great number of ways, as also being able to be incorporated in common discourses of tourist experiences.
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| 2. |
- Hultman, Johan, et al.
(author)
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Nature and the Environment as Trans-Boundary Business Strategies
- 2008
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In: International Business and Tourism: Global Issues, Contemporary Interactions. - 9780415424318
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- From a paradigmatic understanding of tourism, the thing about tourism experiences is that they differ from everyday life. You experience different places, see different people, get to know different ways of doing things, and so on. To do tourism, then, is to experience a series of changes from the ordinary. Several things change in the course of the making and consumption of a tourism product. For instance, everyday structures such as strict school- and work place time regimes or commuter time-tables might be exchanged for structures and orderings that are potentially experienced as liberating and empowering, including journeys, tours and events. During such journeys, tours and events, everyday structures might temporarily be transformed into narratives where myth, history and the future are seductively conflated. Theme parks, for example, transcend borders between reality and fiction, with the result that the distant is conjured right in front of you, while the local becomes an exotic experience. In this way, tourism studies offer the possibility to reflect over the ontological status of categories and concepts whose meaning we often take for granted. What is e.g. ‘nature’, ‘environment’, ‘local’ or ‘global’? How do these concepts relate to each other, to everyday life, to the economy or to the ways in which we understand ourselves in the world? This chapter will highlight and examine such an instance of ontological ambiguity, namely how nature and the environment become disembedded from place-bound contexts and what consequences this might have.
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