Tourist Studies: An International Journal

Córdoba Azcárate, Matilde

2010 Tourist Studies: An International Journal

doi: 10.1177/1468797611403033

Tourism mobilities, conservation, and development planning are central social processes in the restructuring of places. This paper will argue that this is especially manifest in Biosphere Reserves where global agendas are spatially articulated through the creation of ‘contentious hotspots’ or ‘heated spots’, that is, sites within the local in which global mobilities are condensed and constantly at play through the performance of disruptive practices. The paper draws evidence from the ethnographical account of two disputes at the Biosphere Reserve Ria Celestun (Yucatan, Mexico) where tourism mobilities and conservation planning have established the ria and the beach as those contentious hotspots where mobilities are concentrated, space and resources are appropriated, and locals and institutions fight to stay still.

Cohen, Scott A.

2010 Tourist Studies: An International Journal

doi: 10.1177/1468797611403040

This paper problematizes the concept of searching for self in the context of lifestyle travellers — individuals for whom extended leisure travel is a preferred lifestyle that they return to repeatedly. Qualitative findings on the search for self from in-depth semi-structured interviews with lifestyle travellers in northern India and southern Thailand are considered in light of opposing academic perspectives on self. The study reveals a theoretical tension that exists between lifestyle travellers who may seek a unified sense of self, underpinned by the essentialist position that one’s ‘true self’ exists, and contrasting widely held academic viewpoints that instead conceptualize embodied selves as relational and open to multiple performances.

Cook, Peta S.

2010 Tourist Studies: An International Journal

doi: 10.1177/1468797611403048

Using the concepts of constructivist authenticity and existential authenticity, I will analyse how claims to, and experiences and understandings of authenticity, are central to medical tourism. This is achieved by examining the interplay of places, spaces, objects, practices and bodies that create this cultural phenomenon. This includes a concern with how medical tourism is constructed around and performed through the perceptions of bodies, and the experiences of being a body. It is these complexities and their interdependencies that provide medical tourism its dynamism. This theorizing of medical tourism goes beyond existing studies that primarily seek to define it or restrict it to typologies, by analysing the practices and experiences that actually constitute this significant social phenomenon.

Degen, Monica; Wainwright, Emma

2010 Tourist Studies: An International Journal

doi: 10.1177/1468797611403056

Cities are socio-cultural constructions in which physical spaces stand in a symbiotic relationship with their representations. In this context, city guides play a crucial role in framing how urban spaces are mediated and engaged with. In spite of critical readings of such guides, a gender analysis is lacking. In 2006 the first Wallpaper* city guide series was launched, advertising themselves as design-conscious handbooks. In this article we incorporate gender into the making of a particular urban aesthetic as articulated in the Wallpaper* city guides. Based on autoethnographic snapshots and critical textual and material analyses, we examine how these guides simultaneously reinforce, subvert and expand binary gendered thinking through the tensions between representations and experiences of urban place. In particular, the paper points to how these guides create a gendered geography of the city within specific aesthetic boundaries and practices.

Casey, Mark E.

2010 Tourist Studies: An International Journal

doi: 10.1177/1468797611403061

This paper presents a small sample of passenger’s experiences of low cost air travel (LCAT) and the opinions of principle tourism professionals. The paper draws from research undertaken in Newcastle upon Tyne in the north-east of England. The paper initially discusses the limited amount of focus given to social class by those academics concerned with tourism and travel. In particular the paper suggests that a new emphasis is needed on the role and impact of social class on individual’s abilities to partake in low cost air travel and the inclusions and exclusions social class can underpin within touristic experiences. Literature on low cost airlines is then addressed, identifying an overemphasis on the financial success stories of LCAT, suggesting a need for a clearer focus on the social and cultural impacts of LCAT. The paper then draws from 12 interviews and 38 questionnaire responses from the travelling public and travel professionals. In so doing the paper suggests that experiences offered of LCAT highlight the role of financial, social and cultural capital in an individual’s abilities to partake in the LCAT boom — where the middle class or those already mobile may be those who primarily benefit from the arrival of LCAT.