Seductions and Subjectivities: geographical encounters of travel and
leisure.
A joint four-module session sponsored by the SCGRG and the GLTRG
Convenors: David Crouch, Luke Desforges, Lynda Johnstone.
This Session will focus around subjectivities in their material and
discursive forms, in the connections between subjectivities and the
material and imaginative encounters between people, landscapes etc in the
field of leisure and tourism. It develops from the Seductions session at
the AAG New York 2001.
In recent years some of the dominant ways in which we conceptualise
encounters between people and leisure/travel spaces/landscapes have
undergone something of a transformation. The emphasis on the visual
suggested by metaphors of the gaze has been critiqued in favour of a more
fully rounded and multi-sensual, perhaps more human-centered encounter with
the world. This has had a number of consequences. Firstly there is a
renewed emphasis on the neglected geographies of the body in leisure and
travel. Secondly the passing of the gaze as an essential component of
encounters with space leads to a more fragmented sense of what happens in
the sphere of leisure and travel, opening the way to neglected
leisure/tourism spheres. The contingency of space, time and human dynamics
in encounters, as well as their continuities, has become important.
Thirdly, there has been a search for new metaphors to construct creative
spaces for writing on leisure and tourism. Consequent temporal landscapes
emerge from negotiations of practice and contextual prefiguration. The
metaphor of performance has become particularly well established, although
it may remains undertheorised in tourism and leisure geographies.
In `seductions` we highlight issues of agency, a term heavily used in
consumption studies when consumers were thought to be seduced by
advertising and glitz. Here we ask what sort of agencies are being
conceptualised within leisure/tourism geography, and what this makes of the
`gaze`? `Seductions` suggests something of the bodily encounters, the ways
in which fleeting touches, glances and flirtations point towards and
intimate microgeographies of encounters with place. `Seductions` also
highlights the construction of desire in the sphere of leisure/tourism.
Further information and abstracts of 150-200 words by May 25 to:
David Crouch (University of Derby): [log in to unmask]
Luke Desforges (University of Wales Aberystwyth): [log in to unmask]
Lynda Johnston (University of Edinburgh): [log in to unmask]
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