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Rematerializing Tourism Studies: Toward a Political Economy of Tourist Space

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Progress in French Tourism Geographies

Part of the book series: Geographies of Tourism and Global Change ((GTGC))

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the challenges of a materialistic approach to tourism within geography. These challenges will be examined in the light of the theoretical changes that tourism research has undergone over the past three decades. While the economic perspective has been privileged up until the end of the 1980s, tourism studies have been predominantly influenced by the “cultural turn” since the early 1990s. Although this theoretical shift has led to a better understanding of tourism, and specifically of tourist practices and imaginaries, it also tends to remove tourism research from the study of structural inequalities. Based on this observation, I present a theoretical reflection that brings tourism geography back into a materialistic approach. Such a proposal is mostly based on theoretical debates on the spatial dimension of tourism. I particularly use the theoretical legacy of the Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre whose work has inspired a political economy of space. The return to historical materialism is then seen as a way of reviving the critical approach to tourism, while at the same time overcoming the weaknesses of those Marxist and structuralist approaches developed in the 1970s. In such a way, it also demonstrates the contribution of tourism studies to a broader understanding of contemporary capitalist societies, especially in relation to new forms of gentrification and urban dynamics.

This research was funded by the Pays de la Loire region under the Angers TourismLab program.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In France, this return to materialistic approaches in geography is addressed in a series of recent publications such as the thematic issue of the journal Carnets de géographes devoted to “géographies critiques” (2012), and the collective work Espaces et rapports de domination coordinated by A. Clerval, A. Fleury, J. Rebotier and S. Weber (2015).

  2. 2.

    Personal translation.

  3. 3.

    For a similar finding in the English-speaking context, see Gibson (2009).

  4. 4.

    Mexico is the number one tourist destination in Latin America with approximately 39 million international visitors per year, plus many more national tourists (although this is difficult to quantify). Tourism is also a strategic activity for the national economy and ranks third after oil revenues and remesas, remittances sent home by Mexican emigrants.

  5. 5.

    One example of this is in urban studies, where the study of conflicts has for many years given rise to a great deal of theoretical work, particularly on the question of the “right to the city” and “urban social movements”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR CNRS 6590 ESO – University of Angers, Angers, France

    Clément Marie dit Chirot

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  1. Clément Marie dit Chirot
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Correspondence to Clément Marie dit Chirot .

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  1. Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Mathis Stock

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Marie dit Chirot, C. (2021). Rematerializing Tourism Studies: Toward a Political Economy of Tourist Space. In: Stock, M. (eds) Progress in French Tourism Geographies. Geographies of Tourism and Global Change. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52136-3_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52136-3_10

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