Tourism Encounters and Controversies: Ontological Politics of Tourism Development

The multiplicity of tourism encounters provide some of the best available occasions to observe the social world and its making(s). Focusing on ontological politics of tourism development, this book examines how different versions of tourism are enacted, how encounters between different versions of tourism orderings may result in controversies, but also on how these enactments and encounters are entangled in multiple ways to broader areas of development, conservation, policy and destination management. Throughout the book, encounters and controversies are investigated from a poststructuralist and relational approach as complex and emerging, seeing the roles and characteristics of related actors as co-constituted. Inspired by post-actor-network theory and related research, the studies include the social as well as the material, but also multiplicity and ontological politics when examining controversial matters or events.

Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson is Associate Professor at the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland. His research interests are in the area of tourism policy, cultural economies and innovation. Carina Ren is Associate professor in culture and innovation at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research interests include tourism encounters, the materiality of tourism and destination and nation branding practices. René van der Duim has a Special Professorship in Tourism and Sustainable Development at Wageningen Uuniversity. His research focuses on the relation between tourism and sustainable development.