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Mathis Stock (ed.), Progress in French Tourism Geographies: Inhabiting Touristic Worlds

Geographies of Tourism and Global Change Series, Springer, 2021, 244 p.
Salvador Anton Clavé
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Mathis Stock (ed.), Progress in French Tourism Geographies: Inhabiting Touristic Worlds, Geographies of Tourism and Global Change Series, Springer, 2021, 244 p.

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1The aim of the book Progress in French Tourism Geographies: Inhabiting Touristic Worlds is to present recent research developments in Francophone tourism geography to the English-speaking academic audience. It includes contributions from France, as well as from other Francophone academic environments, such as Québec, Switzerland, and Morocco. Mathis Stock, the editor of the book, as well as the author of chapters 1 and 2 and co-author of chapters 11 and 12, is currently a professor of tourism geography at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he leads the Research Group “Cultures and natures of tourism”. He also serves as the editor in chief of the scientific journal, Mondes du tourisme.

2As Stock states in the first chapter, which is mainly devoted to introducing the research context of the thirteen papers included in the book, a “French touch” of tourism geography is presented to a global audience (p. 16). The book provides an overview of some of the recent significant theoretical advances and empirical studies within the Francophone academic research tradition and successfully addresses some key French-speaking tourism geography research agenda questions, which are significantly different from those common in Anglophone research. The book identifies, for instance, the inspiring role of specific concepts like inhabiting, provides a unique discussion about the particular meaning and implications of the notion of territory in French-language tourist studies, and explores the urban dimensions of tourism beyond existing current debates about tourism in cities and resorts.

3In so doing, the book meets the objective of the Springer Geographies of Tourism and Global Change Series (where it is published) by acknowledging the interrelationship of tourism to wider processes within society and the environment – in this case, accordingly, with the particular development of Francophone tourism geography. Additionally, it provides different approaches to the Anglo-American understanding of tourism from a geographical analysis, being able to inspire and catalyse new developments in linguistic contexts other than Francophone. In this sense, the book may be considered a part of a long legacy of highlighting in English the research that is undertaken and published in other linguistic domains. This is of utmost importance for the whole tourism geography as a field of knowledge because, as stated previously in a book on European research traditions in tourism geographies, an important body of research and the subsequently related theory building deriving from it is still hardly disseminated in the dominant Anglo-American circuits of knowledge (see Wilson and Anton Clavé, 2013).

4A strong point of the book is the range and profile of its contributors. Twenty-one authors from 11 universities participate in this joint overview (six from France, six from Switzerland, five from Morocco, one from Québec, one from Italy, and two co-authors of a collective work from two research centres in Spain). It is particularly important to highlight the role of the Institute of Geography and Sustainability at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where the editor and four other contributors are based, and three additional contributors from the University of Angers. The rest of the contributors are based at the following universities: Cadi Ayyad (Marrakech), Paris-Panthéon Sorbonne, Littoral Côte d’Opale (Dunkerke), Québec (Montréal), Turin, Neuchâtel, Hassan I (Settat), Autònoma de Barcelona, and Santiago de Compostela (La Coruña). Interestingly, the contributions benefit largely from Francophone theoretical advances in social and cultural geography and from social sciences in general, whereas the legacy of economic geographical approaches is less significant.

5Hence, theoretical approaches focus on the symbolic dimensions of tourism, on the role of territory in tourism studies, and on the evolution of tourism and tourism urban places. Additionally, in case studies, tourists are interpreted as mobile, digital, situated, skilled, and reflexive inhabitants of places. All this gives meaning to the expression “inhabiting touristic worlds”, which is the subtitle of the book. More precisely, according to Stock (p. 14), the question of inhabiting tourism worlds allows the combination of the question of mobility and the question of the appropriation of place to produce new realities. From this perspective, tourism can be understood, as highlighted in the book, as a world-making power through symbolic systems and practices that make sense for specific communities

6The compiled essays also reflect the valorisation of tourism geography research in France and its increasing interest for multidisciplinarity since the early 2000s, after the epistemological turn that was led by the Équipe MIT in the mid-1990s (Fourier and Knafou, 2013). Since then, as Stock underlines in his introduction,

[...] relational thinking about place, mobility, tourism, culture, and society has played a key role in recent developments [and] Francophone theoretical geography have been mobilised in Francophone tourism geography. (p. 2)

7This includes the work of Lefebvre, Lussault, Lévy, Raffestin, and other social thinkers such as Foucault. Hence, current geographical French-speaking approaches to the analysis of tourism systems integrate embodied mobile practices and existential, symbolic, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions.

8Thus, the book’s chapters illustrate a research situated in time, space, culture, language, and society and represent an academic tradition with specific interests and problematisations. Also in this vein, most chapters reflect the importance of the historical contextualisation of tourism –the geohistory of tourism – as a significant element within Francophone tourism geography, as is highlighted by Stock in the introductory chapter (p. 8-11).

9Even though contributions are not organized in sections, as explained by the editor of the book, the first four chapters after the introduction refer to tourist practices and mobilities. Chapter 2 (“Inhabiting as Key Concept for a Theory of Tourism?” by Mathis Stock) discusses the concept of inhabiting as an important element to evaluate the implications of individuals’ engagement with multiple places and mobilities. Chapter 3 (“Tourists and the City: Knowledge as a Challenge for Inhabiting” by Léopold Lucas) illustrates how tourists inhabit the city – in this case, Los Angeles – coping with unusual urban environments by engaging competences and knowledge. Chapter 4 (“Help or Hindrance? Media Uses and Discourses on Media in Outdoor Sport Tourism” by Valérian Geffroy) deals with technologically mediated world-making in specific outdoor sports practices. Chapter 5 (“Challenging Connectivity During Nature-Based Tourism: (Dis)connection at Banff National Park” by Morgane Müller-Roux) explores how the ubiquity of ICT produces new ways of experiencing the wilderness, creating digitally (dis)connected touristic worlds in natural spaces throughout the research on tourist narratives and performances in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada.

10The next five chapters present issues associated with the French expression “territoire”. Chapter 6 (“Tourism Territory/Territoire(s) Touristique(s): When Mobility Challenges the Concept” by Dominic Lapointe) surveys how English and French geographies have constructed the notion of territory, develops the concept of “touristic territory” and “territorial project”, and explores how the touristic economy of signs challenges the economic development of places. Chapter 7 (“Living Treasures, Common Goods and Tourism Development of the Agdal of Yagour, Zat Valley, High Western Atlas, Morocco” by Saïd Boujrouf, Ayoub El Ouarti, Fatima El Khadali, Saïd Abbanay, Nada Baki, Mari-Carmen Romera, and Veronica Blanco-Magariños) exemplifies the role of tourism in “territorial development” in a case of heritagisation and touristification of culture and nature. Chapter 8 (“From Tourist Gaze to Tourist Engagement: A Relational Approach to Heritage” by Maria Gravari-Barbas and Sébastien Jacquot) questions concern and tourism commitment to heritage and studies the attachment to it through the analysis of storytelling and micro-narratives on social media. Chapter 9 (“Discussing Overtourism: Recognizing Residents’ Needs in Tourism Management in Ticino, Switzerland” by Mosè Cometta) illustrates changes in the management of over tourism in the Swiss Ticino region, shows that the problem behind anti-tourist movements is not over tourism but the reaction to social exclusion, and opens new critical perspectives on the notion of over tourism. Chapter 10 (“Rematerializing Tourism Studies: Toward a Political Economy of Tourist Space” by Clément Marie dit Chirot) proposes a materialist political economy for tourism places framework through a Lefebvrian approach and demonstrates the contribution of tourism studies to a broader understanding of contemporary capitalist societies.

11Finally, the last three chapters reflect on the evolution of tourism and tourism destinations and related urbanisation processes in a context of globalisation. Chapter 11 (“Tourism as Urban Phenomenon and the Crux of ‘Urban Tourism’” by Vincent Coëffé and Mathis Stock) examines the double urban revolution represented by the touristification of cities and the urbanisation of resorts, which is an issue in urban and tourism studies as it reflects the complexity of the urban dimensions of tourism. Chapter 12 (“Rethinking Resort Development Through the Concept of ‘Touristic Capital’ of Place” by Mathis Stock, Christophe Clivaz, Olivier Crevoisier, and Leïla Kebir) develops the concept of the “touristic capital” of resorts in order to understand their variable trajectories over time and their differential capacity of accumulating and engaging resources, governance, image, monetary income, urban qualities, and knowledge. Finally, to end the book, Chapter 13 (“The Contemporary Expansion of Tourism as Third ‘Tourism Revolution’?” by Philippe Violier) examines the characteristics of the third global touristic revolution at the end of the twentieth century, reconstructing the ever-changing tourism process of globalisation until the Covid-19 pandemic.

12To summarize, in a context where English language dominance in disseminating tourism geography knowledge through academic publishing generates a kind of Anglo-American hegemony in theory building, concept formation, and selection of research cases (Wilson and Anton Clavé, 2013), this book introduces significant and relevant dimensions of the Francophone “touch” of tourism geography. This is reflected in particular conceptual developments, the selection of the research topics, and the choice of case studies. Reinforcing this, one of the major added values of the book, is the bibliography of each chapter, containing an important number of relevant tourism geography and geography-related references in French. Otherwise, it is also important to point out that the ideas, contents, and questions discussed in this book are of general interest, not only for tourism geographers, but also for geography in general, and other social sciences beyond tourism analysis. Hence, as stated by Stock (p. 11-14), current Francophone tourism geography is seen as contributing to French language produced theoretical geography, not only as an application of general geographical models, but also contributing to a range of issues. Thus, from urban theory to theories of place transformation, centrality, mobility, or otherness, French tourism geography research is fertilizing geography throughout the transfer of new ideas and knowledge (Équipe MIT, 2000).

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Bibliographie

Équipe MIT, “La mise en tourisme des lieux : un outil de diagnostic”, Mappemonde, vol. 77, n° 1, p. 2-6, 2000.

Carine Fourier and Rémy Knafou, “From the Geography of Tourism to a Geographical Approach to Tourism in France”, in Julie Wilson and Salvador Anton Clavé (eds), Geographies of Tourism. European Regional Perspectives, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013, p. 55-68.

Julie Wilson and Salvador Anton Clavé (eds), Geographies of Tourism. European Regional Perspectives, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013.

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Référence électronique

Salvador Anton Clavé, « Mathis Stock (ed.), Progress in French Tourism Geographies: Inhabiting Touristic Worlds »Mondes du Tourisme [En ligne], 20 | 2021, mis en ligne le 15 décembre 2021, consulté le 21 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/tourisme/4257 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/tourisme.4257

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Salvador Anton Clavé

Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Catalonia, Spain
salvador.anton[at]urv.cat

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