Johan Hultman
Professor
The Role of Nature in Swedish Ecotourism
Author
Editor
- Stefan Gössling
- Johan Hultman
Summary, in English
Our purpose in this paper is to discuss Swedish nature in a specific context, namely that of ecotourism. The wider framework is the concept of cultural economy in relation to nature. Nature is culturally constructed – given meaning – by the actual doings of e.g. ecotourism operators, and this meaning is transformed into cash flows through tourist practices. It is this cultural construction of nature by ecotouristic practices we will focus upon here.
The paper is structured through a set of changes having occurred in Swedish ecotouristic practices during the last few years. We will tentatively define these changes as shifts in focus from nature as thing to nature as experience, from nature as place to nature as universalised locality, and finally changes in the different actorships manifested by ecotourist operators and ecotourists. The material we use is the organisation Nature’s Best, a certifier of quality for Swedish ecotourism businesses. We view this organisation as a mediator/constructor of nature, partly in the way it represents the businesses they certify and partly in the way it represents nature. We also use a number of the actual ecotourism businesses Nature’s Best certify as a source of the cultural construction of nature. We will loosely sketch a development from “traditional” ecotouristic practices and rhetoric to what we perceive as the new cultural economy of nature, but the greater part of the text will be dealing with the new practices displayed by Nature’s Best and to some extent similar ecotourist operators.
The paper is structured through a set of changes having occurred in Swedish ecotouristic practices during the last few years. We will tentatively define these changes as shifts in focus from nature as thing to nature as experience, from nature as place to nature as universalised locality, and finally changes in the different actorships manifested by ecotourist operators and ecotourists. The material we use is the organisation Nature’s Best, a certifier of quality for Swedish ecotourism businesses. We view this organisation as a mediator/constructor of nature, partly in the way it represents the businesses they certify and partly in the way it represents nature. We also use a number of the actual ecotourism businesses Nature’s Best certify as a source of the cultural construction of nature. We will loosely sketch a development from “traditional” ecotouristic practices and rhetoric to what we perceive as the new cultural economy of nature, but the greater part of the text will be dealing with the new practices displayed by Nature’s Best and to some extent similar ecotourist operators.
Department/s
- Department of Service Studies
Publishing year
2006
Language
English
Pages
76-88
Publication/Series
Ecotourism in Scandinavia. Lessons in Theory and Practice
Document type
Book chapter
Publisher
CABI Publishing
Topic
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Keywords
- Nature's Best
- nature
- authenticity
- ecotourism
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 1-84593-134-3