Workshop 11‑12 October 2018
ETOUR and the Department of Tourism Studies and Geography at Mid-Sweden University sponsered a workshop in Östersund 11–12 October 2018: Evolutionary and Relational Perspectives in Geography & the Shifting Mosaic of Tourism in the Age of “Sharing”.
Workshop Chair: Dimitri Ioannides, PhD
Programme including abstracts (PDF)
For decades, geographers have contributed significantly to the field of tourism research. However, it is not until quite recently that tourism geography as a sub-discipline of human geography has gained considerable legitimacy. Investigations have shifted from being largely descriptive and case-study based to ones characterized by the growing theoretical developments seen in areas like economic geography, urban geography, labor geography, cultural geography, political economy and so on. One could argue that tourism geography has benefitted by the various “turns” that have inspired geographic research in general (e.g., the cultural turn, the relational turn, the evolutionary turn). Simultaneously, the work of tourism geographers is slowly but surely being embraced by researchers representing several sub-fields of the discipline and the social sciences overall.
This workshop’s aim is to highlight some of the most interesting and thought-provoking recent work that has been inspired by human geographers with ties to the tourism phenomenon. In all, 6 presenters will be involved in the workshop. Four of these are based outside Sweden while two academics from MIUN will also participate. The topics covered relate to evolutionary economic geography, relational perspectives, the cultural economy and labour geography. In addition to sharing ideas, the ambition is to highlight the high quality of scholarship that exists and is emerging in the field and discuss how to further strengthen tourism’s position as a legitimate area of geographic inquiry.