ATLAS – II SIG meeting Space, Place, Mobilities in Tourism

June 3rd, 2019 - Buxton, United Kingdom

Spaces of nature, places of Nature: Exploring tourism encounters with nature

At the request of many, the deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to April 30^th 2019

The seminal work by Massey (2005) highlighted how thinking about space matters. It affects, for instance, the way we think and approach our encounter with nature; the spatial embodied practices and relations we give rise to and the places we inhabit. Crouch (2000, p.63; 2010) points out “places are one pervasive component of leisure and tourism. Leisure and tourism include encounters with place. Encounters with other people and material things, imagination and memory occur in places”. A number of tourism scholars have concentrated on exploring the complex social relationships loosely inscribed under the umbrella term of the ‘tourism encounter’ with nature and natural environments (Ingold, 2000; Franklin, 2002; Little and Leyshon, 2003; Abram and Lien, 2011; Pearce et al, 2017). Yet despite increasing attempts at investigating it, today this topic still remains of significant importance and little explored (Holden, 2009). As Azara et al (2018) highlight: “issues such as increased scarcity of resources, unfair wealth distribution across the world, deteriorating environmental landscapes, loss of important ecosystems and the emergence of new illnesses” forcefully demand scholarly attention. These issues, we argue, are both relevant to and cut across the focus of interest of tourist researchers, environmentalists, conservationists, developers, economists and sociologists; anthropologists and cultural geographers.

This II ATLAS SIG ‘Space Place Mobilities’ international seminar invites contributions which explore the multiple ways of encountering, sensing, practicing, performing, embodying and representing tourism spaces and places of nature and in so doing ultimately contributing to a better understanding of how our relationships with nature come into being, and how this is changing.

Key Themes:

•          Embodied tourism encounters with nature

•          Nature and tourism performativity

•          Representations of Wilderness; narratives of nature

•          Relational ontologies of nature; doing and being with nature

•          Politics of nature; nature vs culture dichotomy; protected areas; AOB

•          Discourses of nature and wilderness and tourism

•          Enactments of nature

•          Sensing, encountering nature and natural landscapes

•          Landscapes of nature

•          Nature vs development

•          Nature-connectedness; pathways to nature

•          Wellbeing and wellness of humans and non-humans

Abstract submission:

All abstracts will be subject to double-blind review by members of the scientific committee. Acceptance of a submission will be based on: theoretical and empirical significance; methodological soundness; relevance to the theme of the conference and logical clarity. The official language of the conference is English.

Abstracts should indicate background, theoretical/practical implications, methods and/or data sources and indicative findings of the paper. Abstracts should be between 350-500 words. The title should be no more than 12 words. Authors should also indicate which conference topic their proposed paper relates to.

For more information and to submit your abstract please visit: http://www.atlas-euro.org/Default.aspx?TabID=318