Tourists and Global Environmental Change: A Possible Scenario in Relation to Nature and Authenticity

Summary, in English

The aim of this chapter is to discuss global environmental change (GEC) through the social construction of nature and notions of authenticity. We will discuss the social construction of nature in a specific context, namely that of different kinds of nature-based tourism. The argument will revolve around what we perceive as a shift in focus from the image of nature as thing to nature as experience, also expressed as a shift from nature as place to nature as globalised locality. We will sketch a development from “traditional” nature tourism practices and rhetoric to the formation of another cultural economy of nature in order to discuss possible effects of GEC on tourist phenomenologies. By structuring our analysis around three aspects of authenticity, we will argue that different nature tourism operators stress the non-essentialist, experiential image of nature, where the destination per se seems to have a secondary role. We further suggest that the non-essentialist and therefore fluid concept of authenticity in tourist experiences might be adaptable to perceptions of change on a global scale. We aim to interpret GEC, although encompassing potentially devastating processes in a great number of ways, as also being able to be incorporated in common discourses of tourist experiences.

• Author: Erika Andersson Cederholm; Johan Hultman
• Editor: Stefan Gössling; C. Michael Hall
• Department/s: Department of Service Studies
• Publishing year: 2006
• Language: English
• Pages: 293-304
• Publication/Series: Tourism and Global Environmental Change
• Document type: Book chapter
• Publisher: Routledge
• Topic: Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
• Keywords: authenticity; nature; tourism; global environemtal change; ecotourism
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISBN: 0-415-36132-X