Local Cultures – Global Spaces

Abstract

This study assesses critically the changes and future prospects of/ for landscapes of tourism, in a crisis-laden post pandemic world, broadly described in terms of increasing globalization, rampant consumerism/ commodification, time-space compression, proliferation of new ICTs, changing patterns of mobility, etc. The paper begins with a reconsideration of the processes of this ‘new cultural economy of space’ (termed ‘enworldment’, ‘unworldment’, ‘deworldment’, ‘transworldment’ and ‘reworldment’) in contemporary landscapes, and proceeds to explore and discuss the repercussions of current socio-spatial changes over the uses and meanings of landscape in/for tourism. Initially coined in 2006 (Terkenli and d’Hauteserre, Landscapes of a New Cultural Economy of Space, Dordrecht: Springer), the processes of this ‘new cultural economy of space’ have a serious bearing on the role and significance of landscape for tourism and on landscapes of tourism, in terms of their conceptualization, valuation, constitution, designation, planning, use, and management. Contemporary spatial change, occurring at a much more rapid pace than in the past, is developing structures and functions of spatial organization that transcend previous sectoral and scalar interconnections. Principally a First World phenomenon, such change refers back to processes with distinctive political economic, historical and cultural articulations, some widely familiar, some strikingly novel. Conscious or unconscious application and expression of such transformation in human contexts of life becomes most direct and discernible in their landscapes. Although all aspects of life come into play in shaping change as accounted for above, culture—in its broader sense—is central to the articulation of present-day socio-spatial transformation.