Double Boundary and Cosmopolitan Experience in Europe

This contribution aims to open up the debate about national, European and cosmopolitan identity through an interpretation of Simmel’s double boundary dialectic: human beings are boundaries and only those who stand outside their boundaries can see them as such. One difficulty with defining oneself as European stems from what could be called the “double Other” (intra- and extra-European) diachronic recognition process. Exploring the possible/impossible cosmopolitan meta-synthesis can identify certain traits of the cosmopolitan experience in Europe.Peer reviewe

From Slow Tourism to Slow Travel: An Idea for Marginal Regions

Tourism represents a strategy that can be used to imagine the development of marginal areas. But what type of tourism? Slow tourism is considered in literature and by themain development policies ofmarginal areas as one of the forms of tourism that best lends itself to the specific context of these territories. There are three factors whose possible relationship and interaction will be studied: tourism, slowness, and marginal areas. In this piece, the matter of marginal areas is not discussed, and it is taken as fact. What is discussed is the combination of slowness and tourism, often identified with the idea of “slow tourism”. The article proposes its own definition of slow tourism, where slowness, as a conscious and alternative attitude, invests in and modifies the economic sector of tourism. We therefore identify the attitudes of slowness that bring meaning to a territorial project, useful to the development (not only financial but also cultural and social) of marginal areas. From tourism, we move on to travel, a free and discovery-based approach, in line with the lessons that slowness can provide