New Research Paradigms in Tourism Geography

This collection of papers from Tourism Geographies emphasizes new and emerging research paradigms in the geographic study of tourism. The papers included in this collection follow one of two threads: explicitly supporting specific research frameworks, or implicitly presenting new and emerging theoretical perspectives through empirical research on the geographical topics. These begin with three overview papers from themes that emerged from recent annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers, including evolutionary economic geography (EEG), political ecology and community resilience. Each of these theoretical and conceptual frameworks is leading to new explorations and insights in a wide variety of geographical and social science research, including tourism studies. These are followed by a series of papers that extend our knowledge and thinking on a range of key geographical topics, including development and underdevelopment (by Saarinen & Rogerson), sustainable tourism planning (by Torres-Delgado & Saarinen), encounters with the natural environment (by Hill), and the geography of place names (by Light), as well as economic geography and new technologies and their applications to spatial behavior research. The papers in this special issue are especially relevant to tourism scholars, and very much represent the types of perspectives that Tourism Geographies seek to promote.

This book was published as a special issue of Tourism Geographies.

1. Introduction to the new Tourism GeographiesRESEARCH FRONTIERS 2. Evolutionary economic geography: a new path for tourism studies? 3. What’s political ecology got to do with tourism? 4. Scale, change and resilience in community tourism planning 5. Tourism and the Millennium Development Goals: perspectives beyond 2015 6. Using indicators to assess sustainable tourism development: a review RESEARCH ARTICLES 7. Towards an economic-geographical approach to the globalisation of the hotel industry 8. Understanding tourist encounters with nature: a thematic framework 9. Measuring tourist activities in cities using geotagged photography 10. Typologies of tourists’ time–space consumption: a new approach using GPS data and GIS tools 11. Linking tourism, retirement migration and social capital 12. Tourism and toponymy: commodifying and consuming place names

Alan A. Lew is a Professor in the Department of Geography, Planning, and Recreation at Northern Arizona University where he teaches courses in geography, urban planning and tourism. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Tourism Geographies journal and has published several books on geography and tourism, including Tourism Geography, 3^rd edition, with Stephen Williams. His interests and writings focus on tourism across East and Southeast Asia.