Tourism As A Form Of International Relations

This timely book introduces the tourist as a non-state actor on the international political stage. Discussing the ways in which tourism has enabled political dynamics to unfold and shape political affairs, Katerina Antoniou suggests how tourist activity can be used to foster inclusive and empowering political conduct.

Just a generation ago the notion that holidays should be invested with ethical and political significance would have sounded odd. Today it is part of the lifestyle political landscape. Volunteer tourism is indicative of the growth of lifestyle strategies intended to exhibit care and responsibility towards others less fortunate, strategies aligned closely with developing one’s ethical identity and sense of global responsibility. It sits alongside telethons, pay-per-click, Fair Trade and ethical consumption generally as a way to “make a difference”. Volunteer tourism involves a personal mission to address the political question of development. It draws upon the private virtues of care and responsibility and disavows political narratives beyond this. Critics argue that this leaves the volunteers as unwitting carriers of damaging neoliberal or postcolonial assumptions, whilst advocates see it as offering creative and practical ways to build a new ethical politics. By contrast, this volume analyses volunteer tourism as indicative of a retreat from public politics into the realm of private experience, and as an expression of diminished political and moral agency. This thought provoking book draws on development, political and sociological theory and is essential reading for students, researchers and academics interested in the phenomenon of volunteer tourism and the politics of lifestyle that it represents.

Whether its bungee jumping in Queenstown or visiting the Guinness factory in Dublin, where we travel and what we do when we get there - has changed significantly in the past twenty years. This innovative textbook explores what is possibly the most unrecognized of international service industries, placing tourism in the context of contemporary gl

Though conflict is normal and can never fully be prevented in the international arena, such conflicts should not lead to loss of innocent life. Tourism can offer a bottom-up approach in the mediation process and contribute to the transformation of conflicts by allowing a way to contradict official barriers motivated by religious, political, or ethnic division. Tourism has both the means and the motivation to ensure the long-term success of prevention efforts. Role and Impact of Tourism in Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation is an essential reference source that provides an approach to peace through tourism by presenting a theoretical framework of tourism dynamics in international relations, as well as a set of peacebuilding case studies that illustrate the role of tourism in violent or critical scenarios of conflict. Featuring research on topics such as cultural diversity, multicultural interaction, and international relations, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, government officials, international relations experts, academicians, students, and researchers.

Tourism and Politics: Introduction -- Chapter 1: Democracy and Tourism: Exploring the Nature of an Inconsistent Relationship -- Section 1: Politics, Democracy and Organisations -- Chapter 2: Tourism as Political Platform: Residents' Perceptions of Tourism and Voting Behaviour -- Chapter 3: Privatisation during Market Economy Transformation as a Motor of Development -- Chapter 4: Group politics and tourism interest representation at the supranational level. Evidence from the European Union -- Chapter 5: The Politics of Exclusion? Japanese Cultural Reactions and the Government's Desire to Double Inbound Tourism -- Chapter 6: Taming Tourism: Indigenous Rights as a Check to Unbridled Tourism -- Chapter 7: Celebrating or Marketing the indigenous? International right organisations, national governments and tourism creation -- Chapter 8: The Politics of Institution Building and European Co-operation: reflections on an EC-TEMPUS project on Tourism and Culture in Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Chapter 9: Towards the Responsible Management of the Socio-Cultural Impact of Township Tourism -- Chapter 10: Hegemony, globalization and tourism policies in developing countries -- Chapter 11: The Politics of Tourism: Ethnic Chinese Spaces in Malaysia -- Chapter 12: Preparing Now for Tomorrow: The Future for Tourism in Scotland up to 2015 -- Chapter 13: Governing Tourism Monoculture: Mediterranean Mass Tourism Destinations and Governance Networks. -- Chapter 14: 'The MTV Europe Music Awards Edinburgh 03: Delivering Local Inclusion? -- Chapter 15: The Lost Gardens and Airport Expansion: Focalisation in Heritage Landscapes -- Section 3: Circulation, Flows and Security -- Chapter 16: The War is Over so Let the Games Begin -- Chapter 17: Hostile Meeting Grounds: Encounters between the Wretched of the Earth and the Tourist through Tourism and Terrorism in the 21st Century -- Chapter 18: Defending Voyuerism: Dark tourism and the problem of Global Security -- Chapter 19: Rethinking Globalization Theory in Tourism -- Chapter 20: The End of Tourism, the Beginning of Law?; Politics, democracy, and organisations -- Scapes, mobility and space -- Circulation, flows and security.

Tourism Reassessed: Blight or blessing? provides a balanced assessment of the effects of tourism on 20th century life and evaluates its significance in international relations. Inspired by Sir George Young's book, Tourism: Blessing or blight?, published 25 years ago, this book places tourism firmly within its wider context. Tourism Reassessed sees tourism as: · A factor of international relations · A facet of the global economic order It takes a new approach by examining the place of tourism in the global political economy, analysing both how far it is shaped by the political-economic system and its own role in shaping that system. Tourism Reassessed is ideal for educators and researchers in tourism and all those studying or interested in the subject. Policy makers in governments and international and national organizations in tourism and related fields will find this essential reading.

`This book is one of several indications that the sociology of tourism is on the move.... these articles raise relevant important themes in the study of tourism.... The contributors to this very readable book provide valuable insights, many of which have been derived from empirical research, that should interest anyone involved in the study of international tourism. And by moving us away from polarised positions over the social impact of tourism toward more complex but also more considered perspectives they have also helped alter the agenda for future research′ - David Harrison, University of Sussex Tourism is becoming an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary life. More of us travel for pleasure than ever before, yet the social scientific literature on tourism is relatively scant. This book provides an original contribution to the field of tourist studies. The contributors to International Tourism reconceptualize the local and the global, avoiding such crude oppositions as centre v periphery, modern v traditional, macro v micro and North v South. Instead, they demonstrate that the local cannot be understood without the global, and that the global can never be isolated from the regional setting within which it operates. Providing new insights into theories of touristic practice, this volume places tourism within the same framework as other transnational global studies.

More than sixty years since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights first enshrined the right to freedom of movement in an international charter of human rights, the issue of mobility and the right to tourism itself have become increasingly significant areas of scholarly interest and political debate. However, despite the fact that cross-border travel implies certain citizenship rights as well as the material capacity to travel, the manifold intersections between tourism and citizenship have not received the attention they deserve in the literature. This book endeavours to fill this gap by being the first to fully examine the role of tourism in wider society through a critically-informed sociological reflection on the unfolding relationships between international tourism and distinct renderings of citizenship, with particular emphasis on the ideological and political alignments between the freedom of movement and the right to travel. The text weaves its analysis of citizenship and travel in the context of addressing large-scale societal transformations engendered by globalization, neoliberalism and the geopolitical realignments between states, as well as comprehending the internal reconfiguring of the relationship between citizens and states themselves. By doing so, it focuses on key themes including: tourism and social citizenship rights; race, culture and minority rights; states, markets and the freedom of movement; tourism, peace and geo-politics; consumerism and class; and, ethical tourism, global citizenship and cosmopolitanism. The book concludes that the advancement of genuinely democratic and just forms of tourism must be commensurate with demands for distributive justice and a democratic politics of mobility encompassing all of humanity. This timely and significant contribution to the sociology and politics of international tourism through the lens of citizenship is a must read for students and scholars in both in the fields of tourism and social science. The royalties received from this book will be donated to the International Porter Protection Group.