Arvid Viken - Böcker

Although blurred and heavily contested, the concept of ’tourist destination’ still deserves careful attention. Despite its unstable characteristics, ’destination’ is a central and meaningful term in play among all parties in the field of tourism, including tourists, tourism operators, and politicians, as well as students and tourism scholars. This anthology draws on different approaches and discourses of tourism destination development, while focusing on how they are shaped and reshaped and how they should be read and rehearsed. The book reveals dominant as well as alternative approaches to the field. The authors demonstrate how tourism destinations are commercial, but socially embedded; how they are both material and territorial, but at the same time socially constructed; how production of touristic brands and images are vital, but contested. Such tensions are unfolded through paradigmatic discussions and a series of case studies from the northern hemisphere. The chapters in the book investigate how destination development is catalysed through theming, how changing environments lead to reorientations, and how destinations are political. Altogether, the book provides experts and students with an up-to-date theoretical and empirical insight into tourist destinations.

Through an interdisciplinary range of case studies from across the Northern rim of Europe, this volume shows how place reinvention as a concept affects not only global cities but also marginal regions. Linking place reinvention to the economic, the symbolic and the political production of space, the volume puts forward insights into how 'marginal areas' understand their role in the global competition between places and regions through their branding strategies, playing with representations of the unique and the ordinary, urban and rural, reindustrialization and cultural economy. It also shows how and why some places seem to retain and strengthen their uniqueness, whilst others are losing their local distinctiveness in the struggle to survive.

Through an interdisciplinary range of case studies from across the Northern rim of Europe, this volume shows how place reinvention as a concept affects not only global cities but also marginal regions. Linking place reinvention to the economic, the symbolic and the political production of space, the volume puts forward insights into how 'marginal areas' understand their role in the global competition between places and regions through their branding strategies, playing with representations of the unique and the ordinary, urban and rural, reindustrialization and cultural economy. It also shows how and why some places seem to retain and strengthen their uniqueness, whilst others are losing their local distinctiveness in the struggle to survive.

Although blurred and heavily contested, the concept of ’tourist destination’ still deserves careful attention. Despite its unstable characteristics, ’destination’ is a central and meaningful term in play among all parties in the field of tourism, including tourists, tourism operators, and politicians, as well as students and tourism scholars. This anthology draws on different approaches and discourses of tourism destination development, while focusing on how they are shaped and reshaped and how they should be read and rehearsed. The book reveals dominant as well as alternative approaches to the field. The authors demonstrate how tourism destinations are commercial, but socially embedded; how they are both material and territorial, but at the same time socially constructed; how production of touristic brands and images are vital, but contested. Such tensions are unfolded through paradigmatic discussions and a series of case studies from the northern hemisphere. The chapters in the book investigate how destination development is catalysed through theming, how changing environments lead to reorientations, and how destinations are political. Altogether, the book provides experts and students with an up-to-date theoretical and empirical insight into tourist destinations.

This is the first book to exclusively address tourism and indigenous peoples in the circumpolar North. It examines how tourism in indigenous communities is influenced by academic and political discourses, and how these communities are influenced by tourism. The volume focuses on the ambivalence relating to tourism as a modern force within ethnic groups who are concerned with maintaining indigenous roots and traditional practices. It seeks to challenge stereotypical understandings of indigenousness and indigeneity and considers conflicting imaginaries of the Arctic and Arctic indigenous tourism. The book contains case studies from Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia and will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers of tourism, geography, sociology, cultural studies and anthropology.