Special Interest Groups on:
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ATLAS Special Interest Group
Space, Place, Mobilities in Tourism
The contact persons for this research group are:
Follow the group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spaceplacemobilitiestourism/
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Following the special track on “Space, place, mobilities and moorings in tourism research" that took place at the ATLAS annual meeting held in Canterbury, UK, 14‐16 September 2016, a group of researchers (ATLAS members and not) has gathered around a SIG project that has the ambition to cover the relatively unexplored ground for conceptual and applied research opened by the mobilities paradigm and its multiple intersections with emerging ‘turns’ in social science: spatial, relational, performative, postcolonial, feminist, critical, etc.
The new SIG should replace the now inactive ‘Tourism Geographies’ SIG, extending its scope beyond and across disciplinary frontiers. Through the articulations of the mobilities paradigm in tourism and its connections with place‐making and place politics, the SIG emphasizes ‘tourist space’ as a producer of processes, and unravels the implications that this production can have on the social, economic, cultural and political dynamics. All this has opened new ground for repositioning tourism research (Richards & Russo, 2016).
The SIG aims to generate new and exciting knowledge about place as continuously moulded by the interventions and actuations of different mobilities: human and nonhuman, physical or immaterial. It will also explore how the epistemologies involved by such new turns may be making room for a transformative agenda ‘from below’ of the tourist space and for subversive policy frameworks, whose logic is to accommodate diverse mobilities in a ‘common space’ founded of the legitimation of multiplicity and difference.
The scholars that take part in the “Space, Place, Mobilities in Tourism” SIG include highly recognised senior experts in the fields involved and emerging researchers with a sincere desire to break through mainstream conceptualisations in tourism and place studies. Most are active in several high-level international networks. This guarantees that the activities of the SIG will have ample resonance in the broader scientific community and will be published in international journals. However the SIG will also care about establishing connections with the civic society - grassroots organizations, placemakers and governments who are engaged in the debate about ‘what is (and what should be) tourism today’.
Objectives
The overarching aims of the group are thus:
- To foster the development of the broad field of tourism, leisure and place studies as inflated in recent years by the trans- or post-disciplinary shifts, which are seen as new powerful drivers for the generation of new knowledge that resituates tourism in contemporary society;
- To produce conceptual and applied research on tourism mobilities which bridge academic knowledge with the societal concerns arising around tourism in the contemporary age, making ourselves useful to - and heard by - civic and political organisations currently engaged in a debate on tourism and place
- To promote collaborative research activity and academic events and publications in the field mentioned above as it is customary for the ATLAS SIG groups
Key topics
The SIG will engage with a large variety of topics concerning space and place, mobilities, performance and bodily practices in tourism, among which:
- Recent developments in tourism mobilities research
- Technical analyses of mobilities, their determinants and their effects end engagements with space and society
- Bodily performances and the materiality of space
- ‘Experiencescapes’, negotiation and resignifications of place and its identity
- Tourism behaviour, consumption, leisure and relational practices in space
- The role of technology as ‘mobiliser’ and the human/technological interaction
- The semiotics of tourist spaces: cosmopolitanism, cultural enclaves, cultural conflict and place readability
- Politics of mobility in the tourist place: producing and regulating mobilities, spatial justice and the ‘right to the city’, accessibility and legitimating difference, diversity and heterogeneity
Program of activities
- Presentation of the SIG to the broad ATLAS community and enrolment of new members
- 1st SIG workshop on Space, Place, Mobilities, at URV (Vila-seca, Tarragona, Spain), 17-18 October 2017 (in connection with IGU-Tourism congress on ‘Tourism Shaping Places’, 18-21 October, CfP to be issued soon).
- Next SIG meetings once a year
- Webinars organised by the SIG and hosted by affiliates, in the format recommended by ATLAS.
- Participation in ATLAS Annual Conference – as a thematic panel
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The activities of this SIG over the last year, have been focusing on the preparation and processing of a special issue for Tourism Geographies collecting a selection of papers presented at the 3rd SIG seminar held in May 2021 (“Social mobility goes on holiday: tourist im|mobilities, conflicts and empowerment”).
The special issue hopefully will include 8 papers which are currently under review, plus an introductory piece written by the organisers (A.P. Russo, C. Rabbiosi and F. Cavallo).
The SIG is also hosting a Special Track at the forthcoming annual ATLAS event in Cork, as Special Track 1 “Analysing and rethinking the infrastructure of tourism mobilities”, again co-organised by A.P. Russo, C. Rabbiosi and F. Cavallo. The ST will eventually host 12 presentations over 4 sessions, among which some distinguished authors in the field of tourism and mobilities studies (provisional information). At the meeting, we will launch a possible new publication project drawn from this material and discuss eventual reorganisations of the SIG.
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The activities of this SIG over the last year, have been focusing on the organisation and realisation of the III SIG meeting as an international seminar. The event should have been held at the beginning of 2021 in physical format at the University of Padova. Eventually it was moved to an online format and held in May, co-organised and sponsored by the Universities of Padua, Ca’ Foscari of Venice, and Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona) – each host paid for the invitation of one keynote speaker.
The web seminar was eventually held on 27-28 May 2021. It has hosted 14 paper presentations, 3 keynote speakers (Marco D’Eramo, Stroma Cole and Dianne Koenker), a short ‘promotional’ intervention by the ATLAS Coordinator and a final organisational round up by the SIG coordinator. The streaming of the paper sessions has been restricted to registered participants (42), the keynotes have been offered to a wider public through the host institution Facebook live streaming. The book of extended abstracts has been circulated prior to the event. A call for paper derived from this seminar has been launched for publication of a special issue in Tourism Geographies. The three co-organisers (Antonio Paolo Russo, Chiara Rabbiosi and Federica Cavallo) are now in the stage of collecting and verifying the quality of the material sent to prepare the special issue package for the journal.
Through this seminar, new contacts and expressions of interest have arrived allowing us to expand the reach of the SIG and promote ATLAS membership.
As a further activity promoted by the SIG, we have co-hosted one session of the POLITUR congress organised by URV on 25-27 November 2020 “Mobilities Transforming Destinations” (http://politurproject.org/?page_id=708). This session, convened by the SIG coordinator, was entitled “Tourism policies, mobilities, place prosperity and sustainability” and has included one keynote (J. Cheer) and five paper presentations.
There are currently no plans for a participation as SIG-themed special session at the annual event, due to the lack of availability of the driving members of the SIG (although Antonio Russo will participate). The next plans for 2022, after the publication of the special issue in TG in underway, is to organise a seminar as a stand-alone event or more presumably as a multi-session track at the annual meeting in Cork, hoping it will be in physical format.
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Paolo Russo
The activities of this SIG over the last year, and to a work overload of its coordinator and assistant, have been sparse. Due to COVID some of the planned activities have been disrupted (a special session at the Prague meeting) and others have been postponed. There are now firm plans for a 3rd SIG event¸ following the one in Tarragona in 2017 and the one in Buxton in 2019. The workshop will be held at the University of Padova in May 2021, and will receive collaboration and co-funding from the University of Venice ‘Ca’ Foscari’ (which will host one session) and the University Rovira i Virgili. The tentative title of the workshop is “Social mobility goes on holiday: Tourist im|mobilities, conflicts and empowerment” and a call for paper and provisional program (including the name of two keynotes) as well as plans for publication will be set out within October.
The plan is to use this event also to ‘revive’ and reorganise the SIG membership.
We have not made any plans yet to also be present with a special session at the Prague annual meeting rescheduled for September 2021, but it is possible.
This SIG also plans to offer at least one webinar, possibly coinciding with the POLITUR congress organised by URV on 25-27 November 2020 “Mobilities Transforming Destinations” (http://politurproject.org/?page_id=708) and with a special session organised by Antonio Paolo Russo therein, “Overtourism, urban resilience and post-pandemic recovery: politics and policies” (the whole session or only the ‘keynote’). However a final decision on the congress is to be taken later in September, it might be postponed because of the new surge of the Covid-19 in Spain.
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Paolo Russo
The activities of this SIG over the last year have focused on the preparation of two SIG events:
A 2nd International Seminar of the ATLAS SIG Space Place Mobilities in Tourism, entitled “Spaces of nature, places of nature: Exploring the tourism encounter with nature” has been held on June 3, 2019, at the University of Derby, Buxton, UK, organized by our member Iride Azara. Following a formula experimented for the first time with the 1st international seminar of the SIG, this event was offered in association with a larger event, the Tourism Naturally 2019 congress, held on June 4-6 in the same venue. This seminar has gathered 10 international scholars presenting their contributions and one keynote speaker, prof. Hazel Andrews.
The event, in spite of the small size, has been a fruitful opportunity to advance the scope of the SIG towards themes of performativity and embodiments of tourism and leisure in the natural environment. Unfortunately the Coordinator of the SIG could not attend this one (he only gave a short welcome message in Skype). It was posteriorly agreed between the organisers that this absence could have to some extend marred the event’s success in terms of lacking a clear ‘sign of identity’ as an ATLAS event. Besides we found that it’s been a bit of a lost of opportunity to promote ATLAS in a more ‘visible way’ (with banners, a desk with ATLAS publications, etc.). For the future we’d like to see this kind of events clearly supporting also visually ATLAS and this SIG, and we will require a closer cooperation of the ATLAS secretariat for that.
A SIG Special Track has been organised at the 2019 annual event in Girona, entitled “The Politics of Tourism Mobilities”. Contributions have been called for on topics such as: The technical analysis of tourism mobilities and their effects in the political debate; Multi-scale governance and conflicts between local, national and global; EU frameworks and policy agendas shaping tourism mobilities; Transitions to sustainability in the politics of tourism mobilities: from boosterism to sustainability and degrowth; The fallacies of the sustainability fix in tourism policy; The political economy of tourism mobilities: policing the city ‘for tourists’ and/or ‘for residents’; ‘Smart’ tourism mobilities and their social effects; Urban welfare and tourism – from conflicts to synergies; Contesting tourism mobilities: controversies, new stances, and positionings of destination stakeholders; Planning for the inclusive destination: towards a ‘procommons’ agenda. We have received to this date (24 July) 18 abstracts to this track, 15 of which have been accepted or required to provide minor revisions. It is our plan to also hold an ‘organisational session’ for this SIG at the Girona event, in order to discuss governance issues and a publication strategy.
Finally, there are first plans set out by Chiara Rabbiosi, recently employed at the University of Padova, to host a 3rd SIG event at the University of Padova in early 2021, again possibly in connection with a larger event. We expect to take a final decision and send out a call for papers in the spring of 2020.
Throughout this last year we consolidated a sort of ‘coordination committee’ for this SIG between Antonio Paolo Russo, Iride Azara and Chiara Rabbiosi, and further expanded the list of contacts, which now counts around 30 people who show up more or less regularly at SIG events or require to be in the loop for publication plans.
Things have not gone so well on the publications side, as all attempts to gather a coherent conjunct of materials to publish in a book or a special journal issue have not been successful, we just don’t receive sufficient material of good quality for this. Elgar Publishers has repeatedly invited me to send a book proposal but I haven’t got so far sufficient bases to do it, and we prefer to explore opportunities with high-impact journals first. In this sense, the coordinators of this SIG plan to have a pre-proposal accepted in time to present it at the Girona meeting.
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Paolo Russo The 1st SIG meeting was held in Vila-seca (URV Campus) on 17-18 October 2017, in coincidence with the IGU-Tourism conference ‘Mobilities shaping places’ organised by URV and held on 18-21 October. Participants have been offered the possibility to attend both at a discounted price.
The program of the SIG meeting involved :
• Three 2-hour sessions:
o Challenges in Mobilities Research: Methods and Applications
o Dissonant performances in tourist places: resignifying space
o ‘Hosts and guests’ in the age of mobilities: practices of cosmopolitanism
• An introductory session, chaired by K. Hannam, SIG coordinator of ATLAS
• Two keynote lectures offered by D. Ioannides and J. Caletrio
• An ‘organisational’ SIG meeting establishing the way forward.
In total 19 papers have been presented by mostly young scholars from 9 countries.
This meeting has also provided an opportunity to talk openly and frankly about the way forward and the next steps for this SIG. Topics that will be touched are the funding, the membership (to be extended and promoted further in the whole ATLAS network), the publication projects, the circulation of researchers, the next events, possible collaborative research projects, etc.
After consultations with Elgar Publ. and with Kevin Hannam, editor of Applied Mobilities, it was decided to leave a first publication project in stand-by until the next 2018 ATLAS meeting in Copenhagen (see later). ATLAS webinar Another achievement of the SIG has been the ATLAS webinar broadcasted on 17/10, that included Dimitri Ioannides’ presentation at the 1st SIG meeting, and was attended by some 20 people online using the Adobe Connect platform. The experience was positive so we’ll certainly repeat this in a future occasion.
A new SIG session has been convened as Special Track 3 at the 2018 annual meeting, entitled ‘MOBILITY CLASHES AT TOURISM DESTINATIONS’ and calling for communications that bridge the gap between technical analyses (of mobility patterns, geographies, impacts) using a variety of methodological approaches, and the political economy of place development underlining relations of agency, dominance and contestation between the plurality of actors navigating the destination. The track will be cochaired by Antonio Paolo Russo, Chiara Rabbiosi of University of Bologna and Iride Azara of University of Derby.
27 abstracts have been sent in for this track so we’re quite positive that this will be an opportunity both to extend our SIG with new contacts and affiliates, and to gather sufficient quality material for one or two SIG publications proposals.
Finally, we are in talks with Iride Azara of University of Derby to host a new SIG event at the University of Derby in early 2019. We expect to take a final decision and send out a call for papers in the fall of 2018.
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Paolo Russo The SIG Space, place, mobilities in tourism research held a ‘foundational event’ at the 2016 Annual Meeting in Canterbury, when the coordinator invited the ATLAS members who responded to his invitation to gather and discuss about their ideas for a new trans-disciplinary group that had to ‘replace’ the old Tourism Geographies SIG.
At that meeting we suggested that a good way to start the activity of the group would be to have a first SIG meeting, and URV-Tarragona offered as a venue.
The activity of putting together the group have continued in the following months, with a mailing list of confirmed names (people who said that YES they want to be involved in the group) that is included below. Other ‘networked activities’ have been carried out in this initial stage:
• A Doodle to choose a name for the group, which eventually turned out to be the one we have by majority vote
• A brainstorming, helped by the circulation of some documents and notes, to wrap up a ‘work plan’ and/or manifesto of the group
• A consultation about the research topics to be included in the first SIG events.
The 1st SIG meeting will be eventually held in Vila-seca (URV Campus) on 17-18 October 2017, in coincidence with the IGU-Tourism conference ‘Mobilities shaping places’ organised by URV and held on 18-21 October. Participants have been offered the possibility to attend both at a discounted price. The two events slightly overlap in terms of potential audiences however the SIG meeting is clearly more trans-disciplinary in character.
The program of the SIG meeting involves
• Three 2-hour sessions:
- Challenges in Mobilities Research: Methods and Applications
- Dissonant performances in tourist places: resignifying space
- ‘Hosts and guests’ in the age of mobilities: practices of cosmopolitanism
• An introductory session
• Two keynote lectures offered by D. Ioannides and X. Caletrio
• An ‘organisational’ SIG meeting establishing the way forward.
A Scientific Committee has been convened for the occasion and includes: Antonio Paolo Russo, Salvador Anton (URV), Julie Wilson (Open University Catalonia), Dimitri Ioannides (Mid Sweden University), Javier Caletrío (Mobile Lives Forum), Kevin Hannam (Edinburgh Napier), Saida Palou (University of Girona) and Claudio Milano (Ostelea School of Tourism) has revised.
The SC has received and eventually accepted after revisions 22 abstract proposals, approximately 6 by ‘local’ (Catalan) authors and the rest by Spanish and international contributors, in majority people who were in the loop as part of the SIG, and a few contributors who take part both in the SIG and in the IGU event. The registration to the event for accepted will be opened in September (through the ATLAS website).
This meeting will be the first real opportunity we had to talk openly and frankly about the way forward and the next steps for this SIG. Topics that will be touched are the funding, the membership (to be extended and promoted further in the whole ATLAS network), the publication projects, the circulation of researchers, the next events, possible collaborative research projects, etc. Obviously we’ll use the Annual Meeting in Viana as a further opportunity to get together with those SIG that will attend.
We thought about having one of the keynotes broadcasted as an ATLAS webinar as announced in previous occasions. This still has to be technically organised but I will make a proposal within the next weeks.
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