2023 Annual Meeting of the AAG - Sponsored Sessions of the RTS Specialty Group*:
If you would like RTS sponsorship for your panel session or you would like us to advertise your proposed panel on this page, please send the RTS co-chairs, (Elizabeth - [email protected] and Mary - [email protected]) an email with your title and panel abstract and include "AAG-RTS Sponsorship" in the subject line. We look forward to including your panels in the RTS lineup!
*Please contact session organizers to inquire about space availability.
*Please contact session organizers to inquire about space availability.
2023 AAG Panels
1. Postpandemic tourism mobilities and sociospatial transformations
Session organisers: Szilvia Gyimóthy; Dimitri Ioannides
COVID-19 triggered an unprecedented halt of global tourism, forcing stakeholders to find new ways to conduct business, perform leisure activities and maintain relationships over digital platforms. For a brief moment, these experimental endeavors revealed the contours of an alternative future, and urged tourism geographers to contemplate on the economic, cultural, societal, environmental and technological implications of restricted mobility and forced immobility (Special issue of Tourism Geographies on the implications of Covid-19, 2021). The regeneration of places and communities in post-pandemic times take divergent trajectories. Some destinations upscale their commitment to de-growth, while others return to unsustainable paths. Controversial practices are often rooted in vulnerable positions and inherited dependencies and show how tourism activities generate new inequalities for places in both the North and the Global South.
We see the aftermath of the pandemic as a laboratory for the regeneration of tourism, where possible, desirable, and preferable scenarios can be devised. By exploring new patterns and confluences of international and local travel, it can help us to redefine what role tourism mobilities do and should play in preparing societies towards a more equal and resilient future. How have temporary solutions put in motion to alleviate the impact of the pandemic triggered more enduring societal transformations and economic practice? How are they shaping geographical and political relationships between places? How do urban destinations cope with the long-term consequences of absent long-haul mobility, business events and overtourism and how do rural places and natural deal with unexpected crowding? How did the pandemic transform the tourism labour market? How do hotels, restaurants, resorts and airlines absorb the sudden lack of workforce and unavailability of migrant workers? How has it affected people’s travel choices and cross-cultural encounters between hosts and guests? Finally, how have pandemic-induced technological innovations accelerated or upscaled digital encounters, teleworking, platform businesses and sharing cooperatives?
In this paper session, we aim to bring together researchers who address these sociospatial and socioeconomic disruptions and transformations on both micro and macro scales. We welcome multidisciplinary contributions discussing the evolution of post-pandemic tourism mobilities, its opportunities and challenges from any of the following perspectives:
Please sent your abstract or expressions of interest of no more than 250 words to Szilvia Gyimóthy ([email protected]) and Dimitri Ioannides ([email protected]) by October 1st 2021.
Session organisers: Szilvia Gyimóthy; Dimitri Ioannides
COVID-19 triggered an unprecedented halt of global tourism, forcing stakeholders to find new ways to conduct business, perform leisure activities and maintain relationships over digital platforms. For a brief moment, these experimental endeavors revealed the contours of an alternative future, and urged tourism geographers to contemplate on the economic, cultural, societal, environmental and technological implications of restricted mobility and forced immobility (Special issue of Tourism Geographies on the implications of Covid-19, 2021). The regeneration of places and communities in post-pandemic times take divergent trajectories. Some destinations upscale their commitment to de-growth, while others return to unsustainable paths. Controversial practices are often rooted in vulnerable positions and inherited dependencies and show how tourism activities generate new inequalities for places in both the North and the Global South.
We see the aftermath of the pandemic as a laboratory for the regeneration of tourism, where possible, desirable, and preferable scenarios can be devised. By exploring new patterns and confluences of international and local travel, it can help us to redefine what role tourism mobilities do and should play in preparing societies towards a more equal and resilient future. How have temporary solutions put in motion to alleviate the impact of the pandemic triggered more enduring societal transformations and economic practice? How are they shaping geographical and political relationships between places? How do urban destinations cope with the long-term consequences of absent long-haul mobility, business events and overtourism and how do rural places and natural deal with unexpected crowding? How did the pandemic transform the tourism labour market? How do hotels, restaurants, resorts and airlines absorb the sudden lack of workforce and unavailability of migrant workers? How has it affected people’s travel choices and cross-cultural encounters between hosts and guests? Finally, how have pandemic-induced technological innovations accelerated or upscaled digital encounters, teleworking, platform businesses and sharing cooperatives?
In this paper session, we aim to bring together researchers who address these sociospatial and socioeconomic disruptions and transformations on both micro and macro scales. We welcome multidisciplinary contributions discussing the evolution of post-pandemic tourism mobilities, its opportunities and challenges from any of the following perspectives:
- New forms of tourism conditioned by the pandemic (short-haul mobility, vaccine tourism, etc)
- Truncated mobility and tourism development
- Destabilized tourism value chains and value chain transformations
- New geographies of inequality (urban-rural; Global South vs. North, etc.)
- Health inequalities and freedom of mobility
- Regenerative experiments and collaborative platforms
- Tourism labour mobility, migration and decent work
Please sent your abstract or expressions of interest of no more than 250 words to Szilvia Gyimóthy ([email protected]) and Dimitri Ioannides ([email protected]) by October 1st 2021.
2. Old challenges in a new era: sustainability in outdoor recreation and sport activities
Session organizers: Dimitri Ioannides; Cecilia de Bernardi
Even before the changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns relating to instigating a shift towards sustainability in outdoor recreation and sport related activities were already on the top of the agenda. The Mistra sport and outdoors program received funding by the Swedish Mistra Foundation in 2020 for four to eight years “to generate knowledge and solutions for increased sustainability within sport and outdoor recreation.” The topics touched upon in this comprehensive program are knowledge and transformation, transportation, land and water use, equipment, events as well as policy and behavior. While the Mistra program has a predominantly Swedish and Nordic focus, in this session we welcome presentations reflecting international perspectives on the sustainability aspects related to sport and outdoor activities.
As the pandemic restrictions have gradually been loosened or lifted, many parts of the world, most notably natural areas, have begun to face over-visitation. This has happened, for instance, in British and American national parks. Problems that are not necessarily new, such as overtourism and overcrowding, appear to have increasingly shifted from popular urban spaces to areas in the countryside where visitors engage in sport and outdoor recreation activities. Furthermore, the development of sports, seen from the viewpoint of sportification, intersects with a rapid growth of specialized equipment and standardization. Different aspects connected to sustainability are closely tied to the specific sport and outdoor activity, its popularity and where the activity takes place. Different places have different premises related to which activities can be pursued there, which are strongly place-dependent. These relevant aspects related to the sustainability of sport and outdoor activities relate to the behavior and attitudes of end-users as well as policies steering sustainability, circularity, environmental conservation, and the sport themselves.
In this paper session, we aim to bring together research that addresses these different aspects touching upon sustainability in sport and outdoor activities on both micro and macro scales. We welcome multidisciplinary contributions from any of the following perspectives:
Please sent your abstract of no more than 250 words to Dimitri Ioannides ([email protected]) and Cecilia de Bernardi ([email protected]) by no later than October 1st 2021
Session organizers: Dimitri Ioannides; Cecilia de Bernardi
Even before the changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns relating to instigating a shift towards sustainability in outdoor recreation and sport related activities were already on the top of the agenda. The Mistra sport and outdoors program received funding by the Swedish Mistra Foundation in 2020 for four to eight years “to generate knowledge and solutions for increased sustainability within sport and outdoor recreation.” The topics touched upon in this comprehensive program are knowledge and transformation, transportation, land and water use, equipment, events as well as policy and behavior. While the Mistra program has a predominantly Swedish and Nordic focus, in this session we welcome presentations reflecting international perspectives on the sustainability aspects related to sport and outdoor activities.
As the pandemic restrictions have gradually been loosened or lifted, many parts of the world, most notably natural areas, have begun to face over-visitation. This has happened, for instance, in British and American national parks. Problems that are not necessarily new, such as overtourism and overcrowding, appear to have increasingly shifted from popular urban spaces to areas in the countryside where visitors engage in sport and outdoor recreation activities. Furthermore, the development of sports, seen from the viewpoint of sportification, intersects with a rapid growth of specialized equipment and standardization. Different aspects connected to sustainability are closely tied to the specific sport and outdoor activity, its popularity and where the activity takes place. Different places have different premises related to which activities can be pursued there, which are strongly place-dependent. These relevant aspects related to the sustainability of sport and outdoor activities relate to the behavior and attitudes of end-users as well as policies steering sustainability, circularity, environmental conservation, and the sport themselves.
In this paper session, we aim to bring together research that addresses these different aspects touching upon sustainability in sport and outdoor activities on both micro and macro scales. We welcome multidisciplinary contributions from any of the following perspectives:
- Visitation management, transportation, overtourism and overcrowding in outdoor recreation and sports
- The circular economy in sport and outdoor activities
- End-user behavior, nudging, consumer behavior (among others) related to sport and outdoor recreation
- The use of equipment, surfaces, land and water resources for sport and outdoor activities
- The future of sport and outdoor recreation events from a sustainability perspective
- Policy perspectives on sport and outdoor recreation activities
Please sent your abstract of no more than 250 words to Dimitri Ioannides ([email protected]) and Cecilia de Bernardi ([email protected]) by no later than October 1st 2021
3. AI and Big Data in Tourism: social media, spatially distributed data and data mining in tourism research
Session Organizer: Andrei Kirilenko, Department of Tourism, Hospitality & Event Management, University of Florida
Description
This session invites innovative advanced data intensive research on tourism-related issues with the goal of exchanging ideas, new approaches, and forming potential collaborations. The data revolution, which started during the past decade, brought new possibilities for decision making and innovation based on the novel methods of analysis of (typically) very large sets of data. Tourism analytics is a new area. Evidentially, the field is highly fragmented, the methods to analyze data are not firmly set, are still evolving and very fluid. We invite submissions in tourism analytics, including but not limiting to the following topics:
∙ Spatial data analysis and visualization with GIS and other geospatial technologies and models (GPS, RS, LiDAR, digital traces, etc.). This includes mapping of tourist routes, tourist flows, travel photo locations, geo-locations of tweets, emotional mapping, and other spatially distributed social data.
∙ Analysis of social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and similar platforms), online customer reviews, tourist experiences reported online and other user-generated content.
∙ Analysis of unstructured data: text analysis, sentiment analysis, analysis of photographs and video.
∙ People as sensors (digital traces, big data from sensory experiences, Google glasses and similar technologies).
We welcome papers covering data intensive applications in tourism.
Please e-mail paper titles and abstracts to the conference organizers Andrei Kirilenko ([email protected]). Abstracts may not exceed 250 words.
Session Organizer: Andrei Kirilenko, Department of Tourism, Hospitality & Event Management, University of Florida
Description
This session invites innovative advanced data intensive research on tourism-related issues with the goal of exchanging ideas, new approaches, and forming potential collaborations. The data revolution, which started during the past decade, brought new possibilities for decision making and innovation based on the novel methods of analysis of (typically) very large sets of data. Tourism analytics is a new area. Evidentially, the field is highly fragmented, the methods to analyze data are not firmly set, are still evolving and very fluid. We invite submissions in tourism analytics, including but not limiting to the following topics:
∙ Spatial data analysis and visualization with GIS and other geospatial technologies and models (GPS, RS, LiDAR, digital traces, etc.). This includes mapping of tourist routes, tourist flows, travel photo locations, geo-locations of tweets, emotional mapping, and other spatially distributed social data.
∙ Analysis of social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and similar platforms), online customer reviews, tourist experiences reported online and other user-generated content.
∙ Analysis of unstructured data: text analysis, sentiment analysis, analysis of photographs and video.
∙ People as sensors (digital traces, big data from sensory experiences, Google glasses and similar technologies).
We welcome papers covering data intensive applications in tourism.
Please e-mail paper titles and abstracts to the conference organizers Andrei Kirilenko ([email protected]). Abstracts may not exceed 250 words.
4. From Overtourism to Undertourism…and Back Again? Confronting Post-Pandemic Tourism “Regrowth” with Postcapitalist Pathways
Session Organizers:
Asunción Blanco-Romero, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: [email protected]
Macià Blázquez-Salom, Universitat de les Illes Balears: [email protected]
Robert Fletcher, Wageningen University: [email protected]
ABSTRACT:
The ongoing COVID pandemic has dramatically impacted tourism in nearly every destination worldwide. One of the most striking of these impacts can been the way it quickly and decisively ended growing complaints about “overtourism” in many popular destinations in the years prior to the pandemic, instead replacing these with newfound concerns about the negative economic consequences of the resulting “undertourism” produced by pandemic travel restrictions. Most tourism planners are now strategizing to manage the tourism regrowth already beginning or projected to begin once the pandemic further recedes. Yet these responses take very different forms in different locations: while some places aim merely to restimulate tourism to pre-pandemic levels or beyond, even further liberalizing regulation to achieve this, others appear to be taking the pandemic as an opportunity to proactively manage or limit tourism regrowth to forestall a return of overtourism and its discontents. But a less analyzed option is degrowth, through a reorientation the activity in the Global North in favor of improvements in equity, justice and collective well-being. Starting from the basis that tourism does not have to be a capitalist activity, it is proposed that sustainable tourism requires the acceptance of limits based on the commons and promoting them through post-capitalist forms of production and exchange.
In this panel, we explore how a range of prominent tourism destinations previously experiencing overtourism are situated within this spectrum. Taking documentation of the pre-COVID debates concerning overtourism as a baseline, we explore how these discussions and associated policy measures have transformed in the time since in preparation for a post-pandemic future. We ask how new measures introduced or proposed promise to address the pre- or mid-pandemic tourism impacts to which they are directed and what the likely outcomes of such interventions will therefore be in years to come. We also explore more radical proposals to reform tourism more dramatically away from the growth-oriented model long dominating the global tourism industry. The purpose of this call for contributions is therefore, on the one hand, to diagnose re-growth trends and, on the other, to explore alternative ‘spaces of hope’ to develop a roadmap of pathways towards post-capitalist tourism.
The aim is to develop a programme comprising multiple sessions addressing these different yet interconnected themes, and then to use these discussions to develop, within the next year, two new proposals for journal special theme collections: one focused on current proposals to address post-pandemic regrowth in destinations previously experiencing overtourism; the other focused on possibilities (both conceptual and theoretical) for more dramatic post-capitalist transformation. So in responding to this call, please also indicate whether you are interested to have your contribution considered for either of these collections (and if so which).
Please send a title and abstract (max. 250 words) to [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] by Monday 18 October. We will let you know soon after whether we can include you in the programme so that you have time to officially submit before the 4 November deadline.
Session Organizers:
Asunción Blanco-Romero, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: [email protected]
Macià Blázquez-Salom, Universitat de les Illes Balears: [email protected]
Robert Fletcher, Wageningen University: [email protected]
ABSTRACT:
The ongoing COVID pandemic has dramatically impacted tourism in nearly every destination worldwide. One of the most striking of these impacts can been the way it quickly and decisively ended growing complaints about “overtourism” in many popular destinations in the years prior to the pandemic, instead replacing these with newfound concerns about the negative economic consequences of the resulting “undertourism” produced by pandemic travel restrictions. Most tourism planners are now strategizing to manage the tourism regrowth already beginning or projected to begin once the pandemic further recedes. Yet these responses take very different forms in different locations: while some places aim merely to restimulate tourism to pre-pandemic levels or beyond, even further liberalizing regulation to achieve this, others appear to be taking the pandemic as an opportunity to proactively manage or limit tourism regrowth to forestall a return of overtourism and its discontents. But a less analyzed option is degrowth, through a reorientation the activity in the Global North in favor of improvements in equity, justice and collective well-being. Starting from the basis that tourism does not have to be a capitalist activity, it is proposed that sustainable tourism requires the acceptance of limits based on the commons and promoting them through post-capitalist forms of production and exchange.
In this panel, we explore how a range of prominent tourism destinations previously experiencing overtourism are situated within this spectrum. Taking documentation of the pre-COVID debates concerning overtourism as a baseline, we explore how these discussions and associated policy measures have transformed in the time since in preparation for a post-pandemic future. We ask how new measures introduced or proposed promise to address the pre- or mid-pandemic tourism impacts to which they are directed and what the likely outcomes of such interventions will therefore be in years to come. We also explore more radical proposals to reform tourism more dramatically away from the growth-oriented model long dominating the global tourism industry. The purpose of this call for contributions is therefore, on the one hand, to diagnose re-growth trends and, on the other, to explore alternative ‘spaces of hope’ to develop a roadmap of pathways towards post-capitalist tourism.
The aim is to develop a programme comprising multiple sessions addressing these different yet interconnected themes, and then to use these discussions to develop, within the next year, two new proposals for journal special theme collections: one focused on current proposals to address post-pandemic regrowth in destinations previously experiencing overtourism; the other focused on possibilities (both conceptual and theoretical) for more dramatic post-capitalist transformation. So in responding to this call, please also indicate whether you are interested to have your contribution considered for either of these collections (and if so which).
Please send a title and abstract (max. 250 words) to [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] by Monday 18 October. We will let you know soon after whether we can include you in the programme so that you have time to officially submit before the 4 November deadline.
Session Trilogy at the AAG 2022 meeting in New York:
EEG: Anticipate - Adapt - Reconfigure? Current perspectives on Evolutionary Economic Geographies and Tourism Mobilities
Organisers:
Salvador Anton Clavé, Rovira i Virgili University salvador.anton@urv,cat
Julie Wilson, Open University of Catalonia UOC [email protected]
Antonio Paolo Russo, Rovira i Virgili University [email protected]
Patrick Brouder, Vancouver Island University [email protected]
This special track of three interrelated sessions centres on current perspectives on evolutionary economic geographies and tourism mobilities in different socio-spatial and cultural contexts. The three sessions are co-sponsored by the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission on Tourism, Leisure and Global Change and the Recreation, Tourism and Sport Specialty Group of the AAG. Sessions A and B are being organised under the banner of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities-funded project ADAPTOUR: The Adaptability of Complex Tourist Destinations in the Present Era of Social, Economic and Environmental Transformations: Innovative Paths Towards Destination Resilience while Session C is part of the EU Horizon2020 project SMARTDEST - Cities as mobility hubs: tackling social exclusion through ‘smart’ citizen engagement (both projects are led by the GRATET Research Group).
5. Adaptability and innovative paths of complex tourism destinations moving towards destination resilience
Chair: Professor Salvador Anton Clavé, GRATET Research Group: Rovira i Virgili University
This first session call aims to contextualise the evolution of tourism destinations within the broader vectors of interpretation of adaptability and resilience frameworks. Global dynamics and local transformations can increase the vulnerability of destinations and decrease their capacity to face potential crisis situations (Cheer & Lew, 2017). Key concepts provided by evolutionary economics geography (EEG), especially path dependence / creation, may increase our understanding of how destinations can anticipate, prepare for, respond to and recover from crises, creating a continually changing environment including reactive and proactive capacities that generate a continuous trade-off between stability and flexibility. As such, adaptability is a key process from an evolutionary perspective involving all destination stakeholders, underpinned by societal change. Such analysis requires conceptual and empirically complex, non-linear and non-deterministic models. This is most pertinent in the context of the economic lock-in that many complex destinations are facing, due to either internal processes of over-specialisation or external dynamics of social, economic and environmental transformation. Papers are invited that explore the adaptability and resilience of destinations from an evolutionary economic geographies (or related) perspective.
6. ‘Moments’ in the Geographical Political Economy of Tourism Destinations
Co-Chairs: Dr Julie Wilson, NOUTUR Research Group, Open University of Catalonia UOC and Patrick Brouder, Vancouver Island University
Local, regional and global economic linkages and flows of people and resources are shaping the rapid and unexpected spread of shocks and spontaneous ‘moments’ (Sanz, Wilson and Anton, 2017) that can in turn generate major impacts, disruption and a whole range of externalities within and beyond tourism destinations. Destinations’ recovery from disruptive global moments and subsequent reconfiguration processes stemming from local-level key transformations may vary according to specific socio-economic contexts in terms of the characteristics and form of prior ‘destinationscapes’. Co-evolutionary processes emerge in response, leading to a diverse range of path-shaping outcomes that can range from the reinforcing of existing paths, subtle shifts towards new, more plastic paths or the creation of entirely new paths. This second call for proposals aims to discuss the utility of the `moments’ approach in understanding destination evolution and to illustrate how the ‘moments’ concept may help both researchers and tourism industry professionals to learn from tourism transformation dynamics. This also connects the EEG tourism destinations related analysis with Cultural Political Economy (Ribera Fumaz, 2009; Sum & Jessop, 2013); Geographical Political Economy (Sheppard, 2010; MacKinnon et al, 2019); and socio-ecological resilience theories (Cottrell & Duke, 2016).
7. The reconfiguration of tourism mobilities systems and local footprints: social exclusion from an evolutionary perspective
Chair: Professor Antonio Paolo Russo, GRATET Research Group: Rovira i Virgili University
Global tourism mobilities and the related flows of workers, capital and goods are a recognized constitutive agency of places, inducing complex dynamics in relation to ‘resident’ communities, in particular in urban contexts and historical cores therein (López Gay et al., 2020). Authors subscribing to the mobilities turn, such as Tim Cresswell, Kevin Hannam, and Katharina Manderscheid, have advanced the research agenda regarding the nature and effects of the multiple negotiations unfolding locally, bringing out a politics of mobilities which spans from the power to be mobile at the micro-scale of urban spaces, to the global implications of expanding leisure mobilities, as well as the relational implications of pandemic ‘immobilizations’ (Salazar, 2020). Yet the pathways of production of social inequality in tourism places is still a relatively under-researched topic (Sheller, 2021; Higgins-Desbiolles, vv.), interrogating for instance the very nature of labor, home, and citizenship. This third session call invites contributions that, using mobilities as epistemology and evolutionary economic geography as a conceptual canvas, provide innovative reflections and hard evidence as to the material, spatial, institutional, and discursive dimensions of the production of social injustice and exclusion in tourism places.
If you are interested in joining this session, please register and submit an abstract to the AAG system by October 18th, 2021, and send a copy of your abstract to the session organisers as soon as possible but not later than October 18th, 2021. Please note the AAG final submission deadline for all paper abstracts is October 19th, 2021.
EEG: Anticipate - Adapt - Reconfigure? Current perspectives on Evolutionary Economic Geographies and Tourism Mobilities
Organisers:
Salvador Anton Clavé, Rovira i Virgili University salvador.anton@urv,cat
Julie Wilson, Open University of Catalonia UOC [email protected]
Antonio Paolo Russo, Rovira i Virgili University [email protected]
Patrick Brouder, Vancouver Island University [email protected]
This special track of three interrelated sessions centres on current perspectives on evolutionary economic geographies and tourism mobilities in different socio-spatial and cultural contexts. The three sessions are co-sponsored by the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission on Tourism, Leisure and Global Change and the Recreation, Tourism and Sport Specialty Group of the AAG. Sessions A and B are being organised under the banner of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities-funded project ADAPTOUR: The Adaptability of Complex Tourist Destinations in the Present Era of Social, Economic and Environmental Transformations: Innovative Paths Towards Destination Resilience while Session C is part of the EU Horizon2020 project SMARTDEST - Cities as mobility hubs: tackling social exclusion through ‘smart’ citizen engagement (both projects are led by the GRATET Research Group).
5. Adaptability and innovative paths of complex tourism destinations moving towards destination resilience
Chair: Professor Salvador Anton Clavé, GRATET Research Group: Rovira i Virgili University
This first session call aims to contextualise the evolution of tourism destinations within the broader vectors of interpretation of adaptability and resilience frameworks. Global dynamics and local transformations can increase the vulnerability of destinations and decrease their capacity to face potential crisis situations (Cheer & Lew, 2017). Key concepts provided by evolutionary economics geography (EEG), especially path dependence / creation, may increase our understanding of how destinations can anticipate, prepare for, respond to and recover from crises, creating a continually changing environment including reactive and proactive capacities that generate a continuous trade-off between stability and flexibility. As such, adaptability is a key process from an evolutionary perspective involving all destination stakeholders, underpinned by societal change. Such analysis requires conceptual and empirically complex, non-linear and non-deterministic models. This is most pertinent in the context of the economic lock-in that many complex destinations are facing, due to either internal processes of over-specialisation or external dynamics of social, economic and environmental transformation. Papers are invited that explore the adaptability and resilience of destinations from an evolutionary economic geographies (or related) perspective.
6. ‘Moments’ in the Geographical Political Economy of Tourism Destinations
Co-Chairs: Dr Julie Wilson, NOUTUR Research Group, Open University of Catalonia UOC and Patrick Brouder, Vancouver Island University
Local, regional and global economic linkages and flows of people and resources are shaping the rapid and unexpected spread of shocks and spontaneous ‘moments’ (Sanz, Wilson and Anton, 2017) that can in turn generate major impacts, disruption and a whole range of externalities within and beyond tourism destinations. Destinations’ recovery from disruptive global moments and subsequent reconfiguration processes stemming from local-level key transformations may vary according to specific socio-economic contexts in terms of the characteristics and form of prior ‘destinationscapes’. Co-evolutionary processes emerge in response, leading to a diverse range of path-shaping outcomes that can range from the reinforcing of existing paths, subtle shifts towards new, more plastic paths or the creation of entirely new paths. This second call for proposals aims to discuss the utility of the `moments’ approach in understanding destination evolution and to illustrate how the ‘moments’ concept may help both researchers and tourism industry professionals to learn from tourism transformation dynamics. This also connects the EEG tourism destinations related analysis with Cultural Political Economy (Ribera Fumaz, 2009; Sum & Jessop, 2013); Geographical Political Economy (Sheppard, 2010; MacKinnon et al, 2019); and socio-ecological resilience theories (Cottrell & Duke, 2016).
7. The reconfiguration of tourism mobilities systems and local footprints: social exclusion from an evolutionary perspective
Chair: Professor Antonio Paolo Russo, GRATET Research Group: Rovira i Virgili University
Global tourism mobilities and the related flows of workers, capital and goods are a recognized constitutive agency of places, inducing complex dynamics in relation to ‘resident’ communities, in particular in urban contexts and historical cores therein (López Gay et al., 2020). Authors subscribing to the mobilities turn, such as Tim Cresswell, Kevin Hannam, and Katharina Manderscheid, have advanced the research agenda regarding the nature and effects of the multiple negotiations unfolding locally, bringing out a politics of mobilities which spans from the power to be mobile at the micro-scale of urban spaces, to the global implications of expanding leisure mobilities, as well as the relational implications of pandemic ‘immobilizations’ (Salazar, 2020). Yet the pathways of production of social inequality in tourism places is still a relatively under-researched topic (Sheller, 2021; Higgins-Desbiolles, vv.), interrogating for instance the very nature of labor, home, and citizenship. This third session call invites contributions that, using mobilities as epistemology and evolutionary economic geography as a conceptual canvas, provide innovative reflections and hard evidence as to the material, spatial, institutional, and discursive dimensions of the production of social injustice and exclusion in tourism places.
If you are interested in joining this session, please register and submit an abstract to the AAG system by October 18th, 2021, and send a copy of your abstract to the session organisers as soon as possible but not later than October 18th, 2021. Please note the AAG final submission deadline for all paper abstracts is October 19th, 2021.
8. Sports Mega-Event Geographies
Cerianne Robertson
University of Southern California, School of Communication
The ‘eventness’ of sports mega-events means they have a limited duration, spanning a few weeks or even just a day. But their production unfolds over much longer temporalities, making claims on a host city or country’s past, present, and future. Similarly, the televised spectacle takes place in a limited set of spaces, but flows of capital, goods, people, images, ideas, technologies, and infrastructure networks circulate far beyond the securitized event venue gates, entangling the mega-event with hyperlocal, municipal, regional, national, transnational, and global geographies. This session explores sports mega-events beyond the typical temporal and spatial boundaries of the ‘event’ category, interrogating the political economies, spatial imaginaries, and networks of power and resistance involved in the production of sporting spectacle.
We invite papers that explore questions such as (but not limited to): What is the role of geographic/spatial imaginaries in the production and consumption of mega-event geographies? What forms of knowledge and political claims are mobilized in debates around event-related developments and policies? What kind of networks converge around or through mega-events? What is the role of sports’ affective qualities in driving the appetite for mega-events? What are the afterlives of past mega-events? How are future mega-events unfolding in the present? How do mega-events call certain futures into being and foreclose others, inhibiting debates about the utility of spectacularized sporting events as a useful tool for humanity?
To take part in these paper sessions, participants should first register for the AAG conference, submit their abstract, and take note of their abstract number. Presenters should then email Cerianne Robertson ([email protected]) with their abstract number, paper title, and abstract, and a note on whether they are planning to present in-person or virtually. We aim to hold an in-person panel, but will consider abstracts for virtual presentation from participants who are unable to travel to New York. The deadline to register for this session is Tuesday October 19th.
Cerianne Robertson
University of Southern California, School of Communication
The ‘eventness’ of sports mega-events means they have a limited duration, spanning a few weeks or even just a day. But their production unfolds over much longer temporalities, making claims on a host city or country’s past, present, and future. Similarly, the televised spectacle takes place in a limited set of spaces, but flows of capital, goods, people, images, ideas, technologies, and infrastructure networks circulate far beyond the securitized event venue gates, entangling the mega-event with hyperlocal, municipal, regional, national, transnational, and global geographies. This session explores sports mega-events beyond the typical temporal and spatial boundaries of the ‘event’ category, interrogating the political economies, spatial imaginaries, and networks of power and resistance involved in the production of sporting spectacle.
We invite papers that explore questions such as (but not limited to): What is the role of geographic/spatial imaginaries in the production and consumption of mega-event geographies? What forms of knowledge and political claims are mobilized in debates around event-related developments and policies? What kind of networks converge around or through mega-events? What is the role of sports’ affective qualities in driving the appetite for mega-events? What are the afterlives of past mega-events? How are future mega-events unfolding in the present? How do mega-events call certain futures into being and foreclose others, inhibiting debates about the utility of spectacularized sporting events as a useful tool for humanity?
To take part in these paper sessions, participants should first register for the AAG conference, submit their abstract, and take note of their abstract number. Presenters should then email Cerianne Robertson ([email protected]) with their abstract number, paper title, and abstract, and a note on whether they are planning to present in-person or virtually. We aim to hold an in-person panel, but will consider abstracts for virtual presentation from participants who are unable to travel to New York. The deadline to register for this session is Tuesday October 19th.
9. Theorizing Geopolitics in/through Tourism - Panel Session
By the start of the century, nearly one billion international travelers were circulating the globe annually, placing tourism among the worlds’ most ubiquitous geopolitical encounters. While the COVID-19 pandemic brought the industry to a sudden halt, its geopolitical significance remained. With striking clarity, tourism desires and reinvented mobilities revealed the impermanence of Old World orders as new global alliances were forged. While scholars have critically examined tourism in the contexts of development, cultural change, and environmental crisis, much less attention has been paid to the geopolitical drivers and consequences of the world’s largest industry. This session homes in on tourism and its geopolitical entanglements by examining its contemporary affects, imaginaries, and infrastructures. It develops the concept of tourism geopolitics to reveal the growing centrality of tourism in geopolitical life, as well as the geopolitical nature of the tourism encounter.
Panelists will show enacted processes such as labor migration, conservation, securitization, nation building, territorial disputes, ethnic cleansing, heritage revitalization, and global health crisis management, among others. These contended societal processes are deployed through tourism development initiatives that mobilize deeply uneven symbolic and material landscapes. The presentations will reveal how a range of experiences are implicated in this process: museum visits, walking tours, architectonical evocations of the past, road construction, militarized island imaginations, gendered cultural texts, and official silences. Collectively, the presentations will offer ethnographically rich illustrations from around the world that demonstrate the critical nature of tourism in formal geopolitical practices, as well as the geopolitical nature of everyday tourism encounters. This session will be of interest to critical geographers, anthropologists, and political scientists, as well as scholars of tourism and cultural studies.
To be included in this panel session please send an email to Mary, Mati and Roger and include your name, relevant expertise and whether you are interested in being a panelist or discussant presenter.
Mary Mostafanezhad - [email protected]
Matilde Córdoba Azcárate - [email protected]
Roger Norum - [email protected]
By the start of the century, nearly one billion international travelers were circulating the globe annually, placing tourism among the worlds’ most ubiquitous geopolitical encounters. While the COVID-19 pandemic brought the industry to a sudden halt, its geopolitical significance remained. With striking clarity, tourism desires and reinvented mobilities revealed the impermanence of Old World orders as new global alliances were forged. While scholars have critically examined tourism in the contexts of development, cultural change, and environmental crisis, much less attention has been paid to the geopolitical drivers and consequences of the world’s largest industry. This session homes in on tourism and its geopolitical entanglements by examining its contemporary affects, imaginaries, and infrastructures. It develops the concept of tourism geopolitics to reveal the growing centrality of tourism in geopolitical life, as well as the geopolitical nature of the tourism encounter.
Panelists will show enacted processes such as labor migration, conservation, securitization, nation building, territorial disputes, ethnic cleansing, heritage revitalization, and global health crisis management, among others. These contended societal processes are deployed through tourism development initiatives that mobilize deeply uneven symbolic and material landscapes. The presentations will reveal how a range of experiences are implicated in this process: museum visits, walking tours, architectonical evocations of the past, road construction, militarized island imaginations, gendered cultural texts, and official silences. Collectively, the presentations will offer ethnographically rich illustrations from around the world that demonstrate the critical nature of tourism in formal geopolitical practices, as well as the geopolitical nature of everyday tourism encounters. This session will be of interest to critical geographers, anthropologists, and political scientists, as well as scholars of tourism and cultural studies.
To be included in this panel session please send an email to Mary, Mati and Roger and include your name, relevant expertise and whether you are interested in being a panelist or discussant presenter.
Mary Mostafanezhad - [email protected]
Matilde Córdoba Azcárate - [email protected]
Roger Norum - [email protected]
Places, spaces and landscapes of/for tourism
Organized by: Jarkko Saarinen, University of Oulu
Tourism development comes with strings attached. The industry can create income, employment, and wellbeing, but it can also result in environmental, social and political impacts that are considered harmful by some stakeholders. Furthermore, while tourism utilizes places and their existing characteristics, it also generates and modifies spatial identities and representations of destinations and host communities for the industry’s needs. Some of the touristic used od places and place identities are positive or ‘harmful’, while others can be debatable or even conflicting and detrimental in respect to local perceptions, values and identities. This session will focus on the places, spaces and landscapes of tourism and how tourism uses, changes and commodifies its destination spaces and identities. The session welcomes both empirical and conceptual contributions.
Organized by: Jarkko Saarinen, University of Oulu
Tourism development comes with strings attached. The industry can create income, employment, and wellbeing, but it can also result in environmental, social and political impacts that are considered harmful by some stakeholders. Furthermore, while tourism utilizes places and their existing characteristics, it also generates and modifies spatial identities and representations of destinations and host communities for the industry’s needs. Some of the touristic used od places and place identities are positive or ‘harmful’, while others can be debatable or even conflicting and detrimental in respect to local perceptions, values and identities. This session will focus on the places, spaces and landscapes of tourism and how tourism uses, changes and commodifies its destination spaces and identities. The session welcomes both empirical and conceptual contributions.
Transforming Resiliency and Sustainability in Tourism: Economies and Politics of Tourism
Organized by: Jarkko Saarinen, University of Oulu
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a serious shock to global tourism. However, the COVID-19 pandemic is not the only challenge – although the most concrete now – that the tourism businesses, tourism-dependent communities and destinations are facing. Global climate change, loss of biodiversity and economic instability are creating major needs for the industry to mitigate, adjust and adapt to a changing operative environment in the relatively near future. In addition, changing geopolitics and related bordering processes and possible economic sanction policies may create challenges for tourism destination governance. All this can challenge the sustainability of tourism. This calls for a new kind of resilience thinking. In general, resilience has become one of the major conceptual tools to understand and deal with change in tourism. It is a multi-scalar idea referring to the capacity of individuals and human systems to absorb disturbance and reorganise their functionality while undergoing a change. While it is a potential tool for sustainability, it involves also problematic elements that may emphasise path-dependency and lock-ins in the development that may obstruct us to see the core problems beyond symptoms.
This session focuses on resilience thinking and sustainable development needs in tourism in the changing socio-ecological, economic and political contexts. In addition, the session discusses the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism destination development and governance. The session welcomes both conceptual papers and empirical case studies.
Organized by: Jarkko Saarinen, University of Oulu
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a serious shock to global tourism. However, the COVID-19 pandemic is not the only challenge – although the most concrete now – that the tourism businesses, tourism-dependent communities and destinations are facing. Global climate change, loss of biodiversity and economic instability are creating major needs for the industry to mitigate, adjust and adapt to a changing operative environment in the relatively near future. In addition, changing geopolitics and related bordering processes and possible economic sanction policies may create challenges for tourism destination governance. All this can challenge the sustainability of tourism. This calls for a new kind of resilience thinking. In general, resilience has become one of the major conceptual tools to understand and deal with change in tourism. It is a multi-scalar idea referring to the capacity of individuals and human systems to absorb disturbance and reorganise their functionality while undergoing a change. While it is a potential tool for sustainability, it involves also problematic elements that may emphasise path-dependency and lock-ins in the development that may obstruct us to see the core problems beyond symptoms.
This session focuses on resilience thinking and sustainable development needs in tourism in the changing socio-ecological, economic and political contexts. In addition, the session discusses the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism destination development and governance. The session welcomes both conceptual papers and empirical case studies.
