Bryan S.R. Grimwood

Advancing tourism’s moral morphology: Relational metaphors for just and sustainable arctic tourism

Perceptions and representations of Arctic tourism that reify ‘pristine’ nature can obscure the livelihoods of Arctic Aboriginal inhabitants, thus impeding cooperation among all Arctic tourism stakeholders. The purpose of this article is to illuminate relational, value-based metaphors that may nurture cooperative spaces for just and sustainable Arctic tourism. It draws on case study research of the Thelon River in Arctic Canada and, specifically, the productive tensions and affiliations expressed through diverse practices of canoe tourists and Inuit residents of Baker Lake, Nunavut, documented using mobile ethnography. Empirical substance is interpreted against a backdrop of supporting literatures to flesh out emplacement, wayfaring and gathering as relational metaphors of becoming; that is, in their fluidity, hybridity and indeterminacy, they refuse absolute, universal or divisive expressions of value. These metaphors intend to disrupt the ‘nature’ of Arctic tourism and create opportunities to understand, debate and craft tourism’s intellectual terminology.

Ethical considerations of last chance tourism

Global environmental change is altering natural and built systems in many regions of the world and such changes play a significant role in an emerging travel trend that has been labelled ‘last chance tourism’ (LCT). In LCT, tourism demand is based on the desire to see these vulnerable places and features before they disappear or are essentially and irrevocably changed. The paradox in this new form of travel lies in the fact that the tourists often travel long distances and, thus, are disproportionately responsible per capita for increased greenhouse gas emissions and various other stressors that have the potential to alter further the very attractions being visited. The emergence of LCT requires careful ethical consideration and adds a new twist to the debate about ‘loving a destination to death’. In this case, the relationship is indirect and intangible, and is complicated by spatial and temporal lags, as well as the complex system of biophysical interactions at the heart of climate change. LCT presents a situation that is considerably more difficult to manage and mitigate than those where tourism involves only direct and local impacts. Through a praxis/reflective approach, we discuss this complexity and the various ethical issues associated with marketing and managing LCT. In order to provide context and clarification of the LCT concept, we use one of the most evocative symbols of climate change, the polar bears of Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, as a source of empirical evidence and a foundation for exploring ethical considerations.

Thinking outside the gunnels: considering natures and the moral terrains of recreational canoe travel.

This article draws upon geographic approaches to ethics to outline an approach for envisioning enhanced responsibility amid the multiple natures of recreational canoe travel and, by extension, to argue for the consideration and practice of outdoor leisure as a moral space. This article begins by introducing the “nature of canoeing,” a perceived and physical leisure–wilderness space that holds popular currency as a mechanism for social change. A diverse literature illustrates objections to this hegemonic nature of canoeing and, beneficial to my aims, highlights the multiplicity of natures embedded within a canoescape. To service the envisioning of responsibility amid multiple canoeing natures, I articulate the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of an ongoing research project, namely a relational approach to responsibility couched with the geographical metaphor moral terrain, which follows from Figueroa and Waitt (Cracks in the mirror: (Un)covering the moral terrains of environmental justice at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Ethics, Place and Environment, 11(3), 327–349). These abstractions are exemplified with narratives derived from my encounters as researcher-canoeist within a particular Arctic riverscape.

Situating the wildlife spectacle: ecofeminism, representation, and polar bear tourism

This paper presents a critical investigation of power relations circulating in promotional materials associated with polar bear tourism in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. Drawing on precepts of ecofeminism, critical discourse analysis, and the content of cultural texts (websites, souvenirs) produced by tourism operators, businesses, and crown corporations, the study interprets how representations of polar bears re-inscribe regimes of truth that marginalize non-human animal others and are complicit with patriarchal ideologies. Focus in our analysis is placed first, on illustrating the portrayal of “performing spectacle bears” – a socially constructed subjectivity designed to serve the desires of wildlife tourism producers and consumers – and, second, on diagnosing the privileged discourses that work to maintain and normalize this construction, along with the interspecies dynamics they support. In effect, the paper sheds light on the complex and recurrent effects of anthropocentric and instrumentalist orientations in tourism, including their contingency upon masculine systems of value and rationality. The paper also points out the potential of ecofeminist ethics of care for enhancing interspecies relationships in sustainable tourism.

Guides to Sustainable Connections? Exploring Human-Nature Relationships among Wilderness Travel Leaders.

This paper explores and critically interprets the role wilderness travel may play in fostering environmental sustainability. The paper draws upon two qualitative studies that sought to understand human–nature relationships as experienced by different groups of wilderness travel leaders in Canada. According to leaders involved in the studies, wilderness experience enhances emotional connections to nature and encourages a desire to foster similar nature connections among others (i.e. the campers/clients of wilderness trips). However, our interpretations show that leaders’ perceptions of wilderness are varied and ambiguous, and that the priority given to ‘experience’ may help to re-inscribe dominant discourses in which nature and culture are dichotomized. The paper discusses these complexities and sheds light on the potential of wilderness experience to contribute to the individual and social transformations that environmental sustainability calls for.

Arctic community engagement during the 2007–2008 International Polar Year

The 2007 2008 International Polar Year (IPY) directed a surge of resources to internationally coordinated, interdisciplinary research activities in both the Arctic and Antarctic. The fundamental concept of the IPY emphasized scientific research and observation at the Earth’s poles, but was underlined with the call to engage with Northerners, whether through collaborations, training, or simply in expanding communication and transparency toward northern Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Accordingly, the ‘human face’ of the IPY consisted not only of research on human health and socio-cultural issues; it also entailed education, outreach, and partnership activities with Arctic communities. When, for instance, the 44 Canadian IPY projects were approved for funding in March 2006, many researchers and Northerners had to respond to these challenges. Initiatives with and within communities were to take shape in many ways: school programs, material, and curriculum would be developed; accessible and innovative methods for sharing data and research outcomes would emerge; community researchers would enable locally derived understanding and documentation of social and ecological processes; and research training and capacity building among Northerners would be fostered. The promise of the IPY was thus for the research relationships built among natural scientists, social scientists, scholars in the humanities, and Arctic communities to prompt more complete understanding of Arctic change at diverse scales, increased awareness of the complementary aspects of local traditional knowledge and science, and improved methods for communicating Polar region research in communities and to the general public. This special issue of Polar Geography brings together a series of papers by an interdisciplinary group of authors which focus on Arctic community engagement during the IPY. For our purposes, community engagement is conceptualized broadly to include the diverse education, outreach, and communication activities of IPY science and social science in Arctic communities, but also the participatory, collaborative, and leadership roles assumed by Arctic residents or community

Pausing at the intersections of tourism moralities and mobilities: Some neighborhood history and a traffic report

Recent turns to morality and mobility have enriched the knowledge produced and used within the field of tourism studies. In this Special Issue, contributing authors intentionally merge, or grapple with in parallel, the terrains of tourism moralities and tourism mobilities. Our collective task has been to examine and critique these intersections for conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and empirical insights that shift understanding toward what morality does or can do in relation to tourism mobilities (and vice versa). This introduction sets the stage for the five papers that follow. We summarize the moral and mobility turns, draw attention to epistemological contours and convergences within these analytical fields, and synthesize key insights from each paper to show the promise that tourism moralities and mobilities has for our field of study and practice.

An Ecofeminist Narrative of Urban Nature Connection

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore meanings, experiences, and perceived impacts associated with an urban nature connection program as narrated by mothers of program participants. “Project Connect”, a charity organization established in 2008, delivers the program investigated in urban parks and green spaces in Toronto, Canada. Drawing on ecofeminism and narrative inquiry, the study reveals a community narrative that depicts how Project Connect serves a group of mothers as an incubator of relationships spanning social and environmental domains, and which enable resistance of status quo forces that shape contemporary cityscapes. Nature connection in this sense is very much a political and cultural process that opens opportunities to challenge but also reproduce aspects of the dominant nature-related discourses. Accordingly, this study prompts consideration of the power of mothers and an ethics of care to transform human-nature relationships, and weaves critical consciousness and cautious re-valuing around the nature narratives we tell.

Photo Essays for Experiential Learning: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Place in Tourism Education

This article complements practices of critical pedagogy in tourism education, the significance of place-making in the tourism field, and applications of visual methods in tourism research. It reports a photo essay assignment and related activities conceptualized within a framework of experiential learning and designed to express a critical pedagogy of place. The process involved graduate students adopting an identity of “tourist-researcher” to experience, document, narrate, and interpret a tourist activity or destination. We argue that photo essays show promise as an instructional strategy that facilitates awareness within students of the role they play in tourism place-making.

Ascetic practices for reflexively navigating power, privilege and freedoms in leisure research

ABSTRACT Critical reflexivity enables leisure researchers to interrogate assumptions and discursive structures associated with subjectivities enacted in and through research processes. We argue that reflexive practices implemented prior to entering into fieldwork help researchers prepare for, understand and negotiate power-imbued contexts that will be encountered during research. Drawing on Foucault’s ideas on practices of freedom, this paper represents an ascetic practice whereby the first author, with support from her co-author advisers, engaged in a reflexive exercise of the self to think critically about her subjectivities in relation to freedom, justice and forthcoming leisure research. Methodologically, the paper engages a decontextualized perspective-taking exercise that opens opportunities for exploring the limits and regulations of research desires, privileges and powers, and how perspectives of injustice and oppression are inextricably linked to subjectivity.