Apologies for cross-posting. We are looking for papers to complete a second session on this theme. Please note that deadline to submit an abstract to the session organisers is tomorrow (19 October).
Final Call for Papers
AAG 2013
April 9-13, Los Angeles
Leisure, Tourism, and Political Ecology
During the last decade there has been something of a surge in texts broadening the scope of tourism and leisure studies through engagements with tourism and political economy (Bianchi 2009, Mosedale 2011, Williams 2004), how exertions of power permeate tourism (MacLeod & Carrier 2010, Church & Coles 2007), and so forth. While these share some common influences with influential Political Ecology texts there has to date still been very few texts striving to engage with issues concerned with tourism and leisure explicitly in relation to this nowadays rather broad field. Though leisurely consumption plays a key role in today’s capitalist economy, and given the strategic and economic value of ecological discourses together with the increasing use of the concept of sustainability, many important issues remain surprisingly under-theorized. With some notable exceptions tourist and leisure scholars have neglected the vantage points that might open up through engagements with Political Ecology. Conversely, scholars working to develop our understanding of political ecologies have during the last decade engaged with issues ranging from forestry in the global south to cutting edge research on molecular biology, but have seldom considered the roles of various leisure activities in shaping socio-ecologies worldwide.
We do not in any way think this represents a tension or unbridgeable gap. Rather we see this as an opportunity to exchange key insights from two, heuristically and loosely defined, research fields to perhaps reach a fuller understanding of the socio-ecologies of leisure and tourism. Therefore we invite theoretically and empirically informed papers which strive to scrutinize aspects of leisure, tourism and political ecology. Examples of possible topics include but are certainly not limited to the following:
• The ways analyzes of the political ecologies of various production processes can inform our understanding of touristic experiences as commodities and vice versa.
• Discursive constructions of Nature, production of socio-natures, and tourism.
• Nature and national identity in tourism planning.
• (Biodiversity) conservation policy and tourism development.
• Land degradation, socio-ecological transformation and the production of leisure landscapes.
• The notion of hybridity in understanding various tourist practices and the political implications of shedding light on non-human nature.
If you are interested in presenting a paper in the session send an abstract of no more than 250 words to Erik Jönsson ([log in to unmask]) and Linda Boukhris ([log in to unmask]) no later than Friday, October 19, 2012.
This session is sponsored by the Recreation, Tourism, and Sport Specialty Group. For additional sessions sponsored by RTS, please visit: http://www.geog.nau.edu/rts/sessions/2013.html
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