Call For Papers
Session for RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London, 31 August - 2 September 2005
Research Groups: Geography of Leisure and Tourism Research Group
Materialising tourism Geography. Dematerialising tourist places
Convenors: Pau Obrador and Penny Travlou
In tourism materiality matters. Tourists are integrated in heterogeneous
networks of things, technologies and places. Although tourists are
constantly attending the material world, looking, using, buying and even
making things with their hands, yet, materialities are not very significant
in tourism geographies (Franklin, 2003). With few exceptions the material
has been reduced either to inert entities or to mental representations.
There are multiple interdependencies between tourism and different
technologies. Ironically the most enduring interdependences are with
technologies of representation, which have effectively de-materialised
destinations in circulating them as virtual images and inter-textual
references. Things and places are active agents in tourism enabling
connections, experiences and emotions. The object-ness of tourist objects
is often constituted in a process in which dwellings and travelling are
rendered indistinguible (Lury, 1997). Places and objects are made and
remade by a network of mobilities and performances, thus, undermining the
fixity of cultures and places (Sheller and Urry, 2004) The material
fluidity of tourism has gained strength with the spread of informational
technologies and ‘time-space compression’.
This session invites papers addressing the re-materialisation of tourism
geographies. There is a need to explore the multiple forms of engagement
with the material world in tourism, including affective understandings of
tourist places and objects. There is also a need to explore the liquid
materiality of tourism, in particular, the emergence of virtual forms of
travelling and the resulting de-materialisation of tourist places. Papers
exploring the materiality of the beach are particularly welcomed.
Please send abstracts (250 words) to Pau Obrador ([log in to unmask])
by Thursday 20st of January
Contact Details
Pau Obrador
Lecture in Human Geography
University of Exeter
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