Spring Mill Pioneer Village: Examining the Multiple Contestations of Representation and Communication of History

Spring Mill Pioneer Village illustrates the problems inherent to most heritage sites. Much is known about the history of the original village, yet there remains a strong disagreement among interpreters and park administration as to the time period the village should portray and the degree of place specificity versus generality. While time and place representations can be more concrete through visual materials (signage, brochures), sites that have interpreters, or actors, add another dimension to the experience. This research presents some of the ways in which site agents contest representations of history and the implications this may have for tourist experience

Lifestyle mobilities: a politics of lifestyle rock climbing

The conceptualization of 'lifestyle mobilities' has yet to fully account for the diversity within and across mobile communities in terms of leisure, travel, and identity. Lifestyle rock climbers, for example, maintain minimalist, hypermobile lifestyles in the full-time, non-professional pursuit of the sport. In an effort to interrogate lifestyle rock climbing within the broader conceptualization of lifestyle mobilities, this paper applies Cresswell's (2010) mesotheoretical 'politics of mobility' framework. It begins by tracing constellations of mobility and historical contexts within the rock climbing community more broadly. This is followed by an examination of the facets of a politics of mobility: motive force, speed, rhythm, route, experience, friction, turbulence and remove, which together offer more nuanced understandings of the movement patterns and travel decisions of lifestyle climbing. However, to account for the community dynamics of lifestyle mobilities, there is a need to delve deeper and attend to the social relations that result from collective performances

Spectacle and adventure philanthropy

While humanitarian tourism is increasingly examined from critical theory perspectives (see Ingram, 2011; Mostafanezhad, 2013, 2104; Simpson, 2004), less attention has been given to the role of media and spectacle in the enactment of this type of tourism. This research note aims to expose the social power of spectacle in humanitarian tourism, broadly, by arguing that the production of spectacle is necessary to adventure philanthropy, specifically. Adventure philanthropy combines altruism and humanitarianism with adventure travel (Lyons & Wearing, 2008) and is part of broader trends in philanthropy that employ alternative means of fund-raising (Coghlan & Filo, 2013; Goodwin, McCombes, & Eckardt, 2009). In adventure philanthropy, individuals partner with charitable organizations to set travel goals while engaging social media to raise awareness and funds for specific causes – for example, trekking the Silk Road to raise funds for women’s health initiatives or kayaking to Guatemala to support children’s education in the country. However, the spectacle of travelling towards destinations where aid recipients wait commodifies both the recipients’ poverty and the philanthropists’ adventure stories. This effect, in turn, depoliticizes the structural causes of poverty, ultimately normalizing inequality and reproducing the status quo, which raises questions as to the effectiveness and the results of humanitarian tourism. Such questions are relevant to a number of stakeholders: tourists/participants, audiences, recipient communities, corporate sponsors, and humanitarian organizations

A working holiday: From home to destination with a guide dog

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Tourism geographies and the place of authenticity

Along with the earliest theories of tourism arose an interest in understanding the role of authenticity. These burgeoning efforts were based in history, anthropology, and sociology (see Boorstin, 1961; MacCannell, 1973, 1976; Cohen, 1979); yet, the subsequent infusion of geographical perspectives that spatialize authenticity have greatly enriched our conceptualizations. Indeed, these scholars were invaluable in laying the foundations of key aspects of authenticity – Boorstin (1961) in asserting tourism is comprised of pseudo-events drew attention to staged aspects of tourism encounters, MacCannell (1973; 1976) explicated the mechanisms through which staging occurs and initiated a discussion of the socio-cultural significance of authenticity, which Cohen (1979) then refined by elaborating on the various ways authenticity comes into play in tourists’ motivation for recreational, diversionary, experiential, experimental, and existential experiences. However, what these contributions were lacking was attention to the geographical, that tourism is simultaneously a mobilities and a placed-based phenomenon, and as such the roles of scale, mobilities, space, place, and landscape are crucial to experiences of authenticity

Self-care for the researcher: dark tourism in Varanasi, India

Dark tourism is a popular niche of tourism that allows tourists to come into close proximity with death, atrocity, and the macabre, and therefore has the potential to be an emotional and even traumatic encounter for tourists. While this context has inspired tourism researchers to investigate dark tourists’ motivations, as well as the marketing and representation of dark tourism sites, we have yet to attend to its implications for the researcher. This paper analyzes the emotional experiences and aftermath of fieldwork at the cremation grounds of Varanasi, India, which involved working closely with tourists, Doms, and Aghoris by focusing on the relations of reflexivity, positionality, and emotionality. As a result, we suggest a number of reflexive and self-care practices to be put into place so as to attend to the researchers’ emotional well-being in the fieldwork process

Managing cultural tourism in post-conflict areas: the Kurdistan Federal Region, Iraq

Conflict and post-conflict areas often suffer several challenges regarding tourism development owing to poor infrastructure, low investment, a lack of appropriate tourism management planning, and poor implementation mechanisms. Much research has been undertaken regarding cultural tourism management issues, challenges and sustainability, yet there is a lack of knowledge on how post-conflict issues affect cultural tourism planning and management. The aim of this paper is to understand the challenges posed in post-conflict regions, for cultural tourism development and to propose solutions and recommendations for successful, competitive and sustainable cultural tourism sectors. The context for the research is the Kurdistan Federal Region (KFR) in Iraq. The study revealed several challenges facing cultural tourism in KFR. The paper reports data from a series of focus groups conducted with residents and tourists, and a number of in-depth interviews with tourism policymakers and experts in KFR

Travelling with a Guide Dog: Experiences of People with Vision Impairment

There is considerable research on people with vision impairment (PwVI) in the transport, travel and tourism sectors, which highlights the significance of real-time information and consistency in services to accessibility. Based on interviews with guide dog owners in the United Kingdom, this paper contributes an additional dimension to our understanding of transport accessibility for PwVI by focusing specifically on guide dog owners’ experiences in the travel and tourism sector. A guide dog is more than a mobility tool, but a human–dog partnership that improves the quality of life for PwVI; however, it also introduces constraints related to the dog’s welfare and safety. Further, lack of understanding of guide dog owners’ rights to reasonable accommodation leads to discrimination through service refusals and challenges to service access. This paper concludes that the limited and inconsistent public knowledge of disability diversity has serious ramifications for transport accessibility and suggests specific industry and legislative interventions in response.publishedVersio

Wilderness state of mind: expanding authenticity

This paper challenges the overuse of existential authenticity as a categorical umbrella encapsulating touristic experience and contributes new insights to the way postmodern authenticity is defined in tourism research. To date, studies associated with postmodern authenticity have focused on the inauthentic and themed, with scholars contending that it speaks more to the consumptive, the superficial, and the trivial than to the substantive and meaningful. By working through a case study focused on nature tourists in pursuit of authentic wilderness experiences, this paper illustrates the ways postmodern authenticity encompasses much more than cynical authenticity, for while the American wilderness may be a hyperreal, and even hypernatural, simulacrum, nature tourists nevertheless report deep, meaningful, and " authentic " engagements with wilderness