Mobilizing research on Africa's development corridors

Across Africa, development corridors – networks of roads, railways, pipelines and ports that facilitate the movement of commodities between landlocked production areas, processing zones and global markets – are being built at an unprecedented pace. In mainstream development discourse, these mega-infrastructure projects have been framed as an effective way of creating conditions that are attractive to investors while simultaneously driving inclusive economic growth and development. Yet, recent geographic research on new development corridors has revealed certain tensions and inconsistencies in this win–win narrative, drawing attention to cases where the spatial reorganization of land that has accompanied corridor development has introduced new patterns of spatial exclusion and immobility. This article shows how approaching the study of development corridors using the new mobility paradigm – paying attention to uneven and conflicting mobilities along new corridor routes – stands to generate important empirical and theoretical insights about peoples' lived experiences with corridors, as well as about the trajectories of power enacted through corridor development. Ultimately, it is argued that applying the new mobilities paradigm in future research on development corridors may help researchers to better understand emergent forms of spatial exclusion and immobility created by new corridors

Beyond ‘A Trip to the Seaside’: Emotional connections, family tourism and psycho-Social wellbeing

This paper draws together ideas from wellbeing tourism, ecopsychology and geography, to examine how holidays by the sea enable families to perform and create emotional connections to the coastal environment and with each other. Although an obvious tourism segment, little research has been conducted on how families engage and perform on an emotional level, while on holiday. The sea is presented as an agent for family wellbeing and as a repository for emotional connectedness. A case study of Brighton in the UK assesses family holiday making in a traditional British seaside resort. Primary research findings elicit motivations and emotional impacts around the desire to go on family trips to the sea, the effects on family bonding, wellbeing and the legacy of memory making. Conceptually, the research uses multiple theories; ‘Place identity’ - where a place has symbolic importance as a repository for emotions and relationships that give meaning to human life. From the field of environmental psychology, the concept of environmental connectedness emphasises the emotionally transformative power of nature experiences. The work also shows how emotional connections with the natural environment can be explained through the concept of ‘lived space’, i.e. the relationships between people and setting that are generated in place, and the emotions that thus emerge through participation in or inhabitation of the (coastal) world. (Kearns and Collins, 2012). Furthermore, concepts of existential and inter-personal authenticity inform family tourism relations in a variety of human-landscape interactions, emotions and experiences

More than sense of place? Exploring the emotional dimension of rural tourism experiences

It is widely suggested that participation in rural tourism is underpinned by a sense of rural place or “rurality”. However, although nature and the countryside have long been recognised as a source of spiritual or emotional fulfilment, few have explored the extent to which tourism, itself often claimed to be a sacred experience, offers an emotional/spiritual dimension in the rural context. This paper addresses that literature gap. Using in-depth interviews with rural tourists in the English Lake District, it explores the extent to which, within respondents’ individual understanding of spirituality, a relationship exists between sense of place and deeper, emotional experiences and, especially, whether participation in rural tourism may induce spiritual or emotional responses. The research revealed that all respondents felt a strong attachment to the Lake District; similarly, and irrespective of their openness to spirituality, engaging in rural tourism activities resulted in highly emotive experiences for all respondents, the description/interpretation of such experiences being determined by individual “beliefs”. However, sense of place was not a prerequisite to emotional or spiritual experiences. Being in and engaging with the landscape � effectively becoming part of it � especially through physical activity is fundamental to emotional responses

“I’m a Red River local”: rock climbing mobilities and community hospitalities

With individuals continually on the move, mobility fosters constellations of places at which individuals collectively moor and perform community. By focusing on one climbing destination – the Red River Gorge – this paper works across scales to highlight the spatial politics of mobilizing hospitality. In so doing, it summarizes the ways hosting/guesting thresholds dissolve with the growth of particular rock climbing associated infrastructures and moves to examine the ways climbers performances of community result in the (semi-)privatization of public space and attempts at localization. Further, the paper highlights the ways mobility is employed to maintain a political voice from afar, as well as to forge “local” identities with The Red as place with distinct subcultural (in)hospitality practices. Hospitality practices affirm power relations, they communicate who is at “home” and who has the power in a particular space to extend hospitality. The decision to extend hospitality is not simply the difference between an ethical encounter and a conditional one; it takes place in the very performance of identity. Thus, integrating a mobilities perspective into hospitality studies further illuminates the spatial politics that are at play in an ethics of hospitality

Time, tourism consumption and sustainable development

The availability of time has played a pivotal role in the analysis of tourism. An examination of social theory and time suggests that tourists experience time in multiple ways, which has implications for the traditional temporal and spatial reference frame. This article calls for a better understanding of 'time' in tourism and sets the agenda for further research into time and the sustainable development of tourism. It analyses the role of time in shaping tourism consumption and illustrates the challenges posed by new temporal understandings and distance concepts to create less greenhouse-gas-dependent tourism in our society. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

‘We had the most wonderful times’: seaside nostalgia at a British resort

Morecambe is a traditional British seaside resort that experienced a dynamic ebb and flow of visitors. It still attracts visitors, many of whom are from the North of England and in the second half of their lives. The experiences of such traditional seaside markets have not been examined as carefully by academics in recent years as one might assume. All too often this subject falls between the gap between serious academic study and popular culture, which supports narratives focussing on the apparent decline of an idealised seaside. Instead this paper attempts to gain an understanding of this seaside experience, and is based around ten semi-structured interviews with 55-74 year old repeat North of England visitors to Morecambe. It considers their nostalgic connection and reaction to the resort, which emerged as a significant element of visitor experience. The seaside is considered timeless by these visitors and facilitates a reverie through which one can temporarily revisit a past which is populated by childhood memories of family members. The resort allows visitors to fleetingly transcend time, through immersion in the unchanging resort with its timeless seacape. This reconnection with the past highlights a dissatisfaction with the present which hinges on the loss of childhood. Yet nostalgia also allowed for a positive re-telling of the past which underpinned family narratives and contributed to the cross-generational appeal of the beach

Progress in Tourism Management: from the geography of tourism to geographies of tourism - A review

This Progress in Tourism Management paper seeks to review the development of geographical contributions to the study of tourism over the last decade. Given the limited number of surveys of geography published in academic journals since the 1970s, it is particularly timely to question and debate where the subject has evolved to, the current debates and issues facing those who work within the subject and where the subject will evolve in the next five years. The paper is structured around a number of distinct themes to emerge from the research activity of geographers, which is deliberately selective in its coverage due to the constraints of space, but focuses on: explaining spatialities; tourism planning and places; development and its discontents; tourism as an 'applied' area of research, and future prospects