New report: The anthropocenic imaginary: political ecologies of tourism in a geological epoch

New report: The anthropocenic imaginary: political ecologies of tourism in a geological epoch

This article pushes forward emerging approaches in the political ecology of tourism that recognize the Anthropocene as both a geological epoch and conceptual regime. In doing so, the issue contributes to emerging conversations on the relationship between politics, ecology and tourism in the so-called recent age of man.

 

Norum, Roger. The anthropocenic imaginary: political ecologies of tourism in a geological epoch in Journal of Sustainable Tourism. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2018.1544252

 

The Anthropocene is fundamentally a social imaginary that is both shaped by and is reshaping tourism practice. In this article, we enroll the concept of the anthropocenic imaginary to describe how the Anthropocene is symbolically and materially produced as well as the ways in which it draws on the historical separation of Humanity and Nature. As the structural roots from which the anthropocenic imaginary has grown, this binary co-produces new and old forms of political and ecological inclusion and exclusion. We demonstrate how core themes in tourism studies have fertilized the seeds from which the theoretical branches of post-humanist, capitalist and ecological imaginaries in tourism have taken shape. These anthropocenic imaginaries, we argue, are appropriated in market-based solutions to environmental degradation that emanate from neoliberal contexts internal to the problem. Thus, we question the reconciliation of capitalist accumulation and environmental limits in sustainable tourism.

 

Photo: World Bank Photo Collection/Flickr.

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Tourists enjoy a snack of fresh coconut after a walk through the canopy walk at Kakum National Forest near Cape Coast, Ghana, June 20, 2006. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst)

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