About the Book
Although blurred and heavily contested, the concept of `tourist destination’ still deserves careful attention. Despite its unstable characteristics, `destination’ is a central and meaningful term in play among all parties in the field of tourism, including tourists, tourism operators, and politicians, as well as students and tourism scholars. This anthology draws on different approaches and discourses of tourism destination development, while focusing on how they are shaped and reshaped and how they should be read and rehearsed. The book reveals dominant as well as alternative approaches to the field. The authors demonstrate how tourism destinations are commercial, but socially embedded; how they are both material and territorial, but at the same time socially constructed; how production of touristic brands and images are vital, but contested. Such tensions are unfolded through paradigmatic discussions and a series of case studies from the northern hemisphere. The chapters in the book investigate how destination development is catalysed through theming, how changing environments lead to reorientations, and how destinations are political. Altogether, the book provides experts and students with an up-to-date theoretical and empirical insight into tourist destinations.
Table of Contents:
Contents: Preface; Dimensions of tourism destinations, Arvid Viken and Brynhild Granås. Part I Conceptualizing Destinations: Destinations discourses and the growth paradigm, Arvid Viken; Transforming destinations: a discursive approach to tourist destinations and development, Jarkko Saarinen; Destination development performances: or how we learn to love tourism, Simone Abram; A place for whom? A place for what? The powers of destinization, Brynhild Granås. Part II Catalysing Themed Destinations: Weaving with witchcraft: tourism and entrepreneurship in Strandir, Iceland, Guðrún Þóra Gunnarsdóttir and Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson; Ski resort development: scripts and phronesis, Arvid Viken; Sled dog racing and tourism development in Finnmark. A symbiotic relationship, Kari Jæger and Arvid Viken. Part III Reorienting Destinations: Integrated tourism development? When places of the ordinary are transformed to destinations, Anniken Førde; Standardization and power in cruise destination development, Ola Sletvold; Transforming visions and pathways in destination development: local perceptions and adaptation strategies to changing environment in Finnish Lapland, Eva Kaján and Jarkko Saarinen; A hotel waiting for renovation: Pallas as a challenging case for tourism development in Finnish Lapland, Seija Tuulintie and Jenni Lankila. Part IV Destinations as Politics: Dynamic development or destined to decline? The case of Arctic tourism businesses and local labour markets in Jokkmokk, Sweden, Dieter K. Müller and Patrick Brouder; Responsible tourism governance. A case study of Svalbard and Nunavut, Arvid Viken, Margaret Johnston, Torill Nyseth and Jackie Dawson; Epilogue: reflections on tourism destination development, Arvid Viken. Index.
About the Author :
Arvid Viken is Professor in Tourism at UiT - the Arctic University of Norway. He has written extensively within the field of tourism, particular with a focus on northern aspects. Together with Torill Nyseth he edited Place Reinvention. Northern perspectives also published by Ashgate. Dr Brynhild Granas is Associate Professor at UiT - the Arctic University of Norway, Department of Tourism and Northern Studies, since 2012, having worked for nine years at the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Planning at UiT - the Arctic University of Norway. Her research has mainly focused on place development processes and together with Professor Jorgen Ole Baerenholdt, she has previously edited the Ashgate book Mobility and Place. Enacting Northern European Peripheries. Arvid Viken, Brynhild Granas, Jarkko Saarinen, Simone Abram, Gudrun Pora Gunnarsdottir, Gunnar Thor Johannesson, Kari Jaeger, Anniken Forde, Ola Sletvold, Eva Kajan, Jarkko Saarinen, Seija Tuulintie, Jenni Lankila, Dieter K. Muller, Patrick Brouder, Margaret Johnston, Torill Nyseth, Jackie Dawson
Review :
'The destination is central to the study of tourism but it is easy for the concept to become a somewhat simplistic territorial one overly infused by analysis of economics, marketing and strategy. This book digs far deeper into the intellectual roots of the destination. It spends adequate critical time grappling with meaning; it provides rich illustration through case studies and offers new insights into the re-orientation of destination studies.' John Tribe, University of Surrey, UK 'If tourism's formative power in the making of societies is acknowledged, few contributions take this point as comprehensively into social science as this impressive volume edited by Viken and Granas. Through critical thinking and theoretically informative case studies, readers are taken aboard reflexive and situated investigations of the plural and multiple ways in which tourist destinations develop.' Jorgen Ole Baerenholdt, Roskilde University, Denmark
