Tourism and Citizenship (Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility) - Softcover

Bianchi, Raoul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415707382 ISBN 13: 9780415707381

Publisher: Routledge, 2014

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Raoul V. Bianchi is Principal Lecturer in International Tourism at the University of East London. He has published widely on the political economy of international tourism and has a particular interest in exploring the intersections between politics, the economy and civil society, within a variety of tourism contexts.  He has conducted research on tourism development, sustainable tourism, World Heritage and  urban cultural heritage, primarily in the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands. 

Marcus L. Stephenson is an Associate Professor of Tourism Management at Middlesex University Dubai (United Arab Emirates).  He has published extensively on the sociology of tourism, especially in relation aspects of race, ethnicity, nationality, culture and religion. Marcus has also conducted tourism-based research in the Caribbean, Middle East, Tanzania and the UK. He is currently researching socialist models of tourism development in a range of destination contexts.

Review:

"Tourism and Citizenship is a welcome and much needed scholarly intervention into the complex relationships between global mobility, human rights and travelling cultures. Bianchi and Stephenson do an excellent job bringing together interdisciplinary insights and putting them to work in an exciting and broad-ranging study that does not shy away from difficult and pressing political concerns. Indeed, central to this book is an important interrogation of how the supposedly inclusive values of freedom, rights, and cosmopolitanism often reproduce entrenched asymmetries in the global order. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars in Geography, Politics, Law and International Relations who are seeking to expose global power relations in unexpected places, but it will also be indispensable for Tourism Studies scholars asking important ethical and political questions that exceed traditional concerns about economic growth and expansion." - Dr. Debbie Lisle, School of Politics, International Studies & Philosophy, Queen's University Belfast

"This book provides the first full-scale examination of the contradictory market and political forces that shape the "freedom to travel" today. The authors conceptually map movements of international tourists, migrants, refugees, and "illegals" onto emerging geo-political realities of hyper inequality both within and between nations, the dramatic reversal of fortune of a number of formerly "third world" economies, terrorism, and new forms of travel restriction. They challenge axiomatic assumptions about positive psychic, cultural and economic benefits of tourism and the relationship of increasing tourism to democratization, international understanding, and world peace. A number of unpleasant facts about current global travel patterns appear all the more clearly as they are bathed in the bright light of the drive to make unrestricted international travel a universal human right."- Professor Dean MacCannell, Environmental Design and Landscape Architecture, University of California, Davis

"...we strongly recommend the book to tourism scholars, students and all those interested in knowing more about the unfolding relationship between tourism and notions of citizenship, all the more so for the opportunity of raising a much needed debate." – Inge Hermann and Ruud Welten, European Journal of Tourism Research

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0415707382
• ISBN 13: 9780415707381
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 294