Eric J. Shelton

The nature of tourism studies

Nature-based tourism activities are highly modulated by how Nature has been constructed in modern Western societies. The way we have come to perceive what is “other-than-human” impacts on how we engage with, and experience, a location, a place, or a tourism space that is based on/around the natural world. This review discusses how this construct has been formulated by different social scientists and philosophers, and how these constructions impact on nature-based tourism experiences in contemporary societies. In this review article, Reis and Shelton argue that in order to advance and refine our understandings of nature-based tourism practices, tourism scholars need to acknowledge, or, better, explore, how the different meanings attached to “nature,” or the different “natures” constructed by societies, intervene and sometimes dictate tourism practices and experiences. Likewise, practices and experiences in tourism management/development provide an everchanging context of human–nature relationships that highlight the worldmaking agency of tourism. Here, Reis and Shelton conclude by inviting scholars in Tourism Studies/Tourism Sciences to incorporate notions of embodiment, interagentivity, and indigenous perspectives, among others, into their discussions and analysis of nature-based tourism. (Review Editor’s abstract)

Children with Disabilities and the Education System: The Experiences of Fifteen Fathers.

Abstract Fifteen fathers of children with disabilities living in urban and rural settings were interviewed about their experiences which included their interactions with teachers and other professionals in the school system. The fathers’ accounts revealed issues similar to those reported in studies in which mothers were the participants. Where early childhood centres and schools are rejecting of children with disabilities, and where resources are difficult to access, parents experience stress. Supportive professionals and educational settings, on the other hand, are experienced as contributing to child development and family well‐being.

The psychological deficits associated with Parkinson's disease

Abstract Parkinsons disease (PD) is a progressive neurological condition of later life characterized by symptoms of tremor, rigidity, and akinesia. The aim of the present review is to describe the neurological features and the psychological deficits associated with Parkinsonism. Although PD is primarily a disease of the basal ganglia, and motor disabilities dominate the clinical picture, it is apparent that the neuroanatomical damage sustained by these patients is not confined to subcortical structures, and that dementia or other cognitive impairments may occur. Neuropsychological testing has confirmed that the incidence of dementia and more subtle cognitive deficits in PD is higher than in the general population; however, no cognitive deficits exclusive to the disorder have been identified. PD patients have an increased risk of depression, which may be indicative of their problems adjusting to the effects of a chronic and irreversible disease. The clinical psychologist has a role in documenting the cognitive, motor, and affective consequences of the disease, and in evaluating the success with which patients and their families are adapting to associated disabilities.

Post-disaster tourism: Towards a tourism of transition

‘Disaster tourism’ is usually conflated with ‘dark tourism’ and also is often linked with disaster recovery. This article contributes to discussion on these relationships by examining the post-disaster narratives which have played out through tourism in the central Canterbury city of Christchurch, New Zealand, following the major earthquakes of September 2010 and February 2011. Through an analysis of regional and national media and tourism promotion material related to the earthquakes, the post-disaster narratives which developed in relation to tourism were observed. The article thereby highlights how disasters become framed through tourism, showing how post-quake tourism narratives can transition from narratives of destruction and loss to narratives of renewal and hope. The notion of ‘transition’, having become a powerful tourism product in itself, sheds new light on the relationship between ‘disaster tourism’ and ‘dark tourism’ and also between tourism and disaster recovery.

Managed to be wild: species recovery, island restoration, and nature-based tourism in New Zealand

New Zealand and its sub-Antarctic dependencies had an abundance of birdlife, endemic flora, and invertebrates but no terrestrial mammals before the arrival of Homo sapiens. Subsequent mammalian imports have severely adversely affected the endemic and native fauna and flora. In response to the impossibility of nationwide mammalian predator eradication, endangered species are transferred to relatively safe environments: either offshore islands or �mainland islands.� Individuals of species at risk in their traditional environments can be transferred to one or more of these islands. New Zealand has pioneered this form of restoration program and substantial nature-based tourism occurs in these settings. Traditional binaries such as captive/free and captivity/wild are problematic because these descriptors do not capture the nature and range of the possible environments and experiences provided by �islands.� It is proposed that a more useful descriptive and analytic framework involves focusing on the matrix of power relationships that exist between native and endemic fauna and flora, introduced fauna and flora, and groups of humans. Furthermore, it is argued that such a focus usefully reformulates longstanding controversies within conservation, highlights the utility of a restoration narrative, and promotes the development of sustainable nature-based tourism.

Ordering the Disordered Subject : A Critique Of Chinese Outbound Tourists as New Zealand Seeks to Become China Ready

Currently, expanding Chinese outbound tourism attracts significant practical research effort utilizing various conceptual approaches in many countries. In this Review Article, J. Zhang and Shelton ...

Narrative Frameworks of Consideration: Horizontal and Vertical Approaches to Conceptualizing the Sub-Antarctic

Tourists engage with narrative as they experience location, construct place, and act or perform within produced space. Northern and southern polar and subpolar regions offer multiple opportunities for narrative engagement. When conceptualizing tourists’ narrative engagement with location, place, and space in the sub-Antarctic and in Antarctica, it is interesting to consider tensions, consistencies and inconsistencies, and coherence and incoherence produced when activities and processes occurring on this part of the earth’s surface are grouped and analyzed either vertically or horizontally. Many engagements with the area are organized vertically, along two axes. One vertical axis is through Southern Australia, New Zealand, and various islands to the Ross Sea. Another vertical axis runs from the tip of South America, through various islands, to the Antarctic Peninsula. Alternatively, the sub-Antarctic may be conceived of horizontally as a distinct circumpolar domain lying between specified latitudes. Both of these analytic approaches, vertical and horizontal, involve the sub-Antarctic being described in ways which are themselves narratives of appropriation in that the descriptions are framed as persuasive communications intended to privilege one approach over the other.

A Political Ecology of the Yellow-eyed Penguin in Southern New Zealand: A Conceptual and Theoretical Approach

Here, we engage with the political and ecological story of the yellow-eyed penguin (Megadyptes antipodes), a major tourist attraction, during four years of dramatically declining numbers of breeding pairs (New Zealand Department of Conservation in Unpublished census of yellow-eyed penguin breeding pairs 2015–16, 2016). One site, Long Point, is useful for presenting the possibilities of thematic integration since, using the principles of reintroduction biology (Seddon et al. in Conserv Biol 21(2):303–312, 2007; Armstrong and Seddon in Trends Ecol Evol 23:20–25, 2008), it is being used specifically to produce habitat for seabirds, rather than the more traditional restoration ecology approach. Also, the demands of tourism, for example to show respect through product offering (Zhang and Shelton in Tourism Anal 20(3):343–353, 2015) are, from the outset, being reinterpreted and integrated into the design and management of the site. Political ecology of tourism (Mostafanezhad et al. in Political ecology of tourism: communities, power and the environment. Routledge, London, pp 1–22, 2016) potentially is a fruitful analytic tool for formulating such thematic integration of ‘wildlife tourism’, ‘applied ecology’, and ‘environmental education and interpretation’. Political ecology emerged as a critique of an allegedly apolitical cultural ecology and ecological anthropology, and illustrates the unavoidable entanglement of political economy with ecological concerns (Zimmerer in Prog Hum Geogr 32(1):63–78, 2006). Also, political ecology has been described as ‘an urgent kind of argument or text … that examines winners or losers, is narrating using dialectics, begins and/or ends in a contradiction, and surveys both the status of nature and stories about the status of nature’ (Robbins in Political ecology: a critical introduction. Wiley-Blackwell, New York, 2004, p. viii). Relevant examples of such narratives include Shelton and Tucker’s (Tourism Rev Int 11(3):205–212, 2008, p. 198) text that constituted ‘the restoration narrative … central to the long-term viability of tourism in New Zealand because environmental preservation, conservation and restoration facilitate the continuation, and possible expansion, of nature-based tourism’ and Reis and Shelton’s (Tourism Anal 16(3):375–384, 2011, p. i) demonstration that ‘nature-based tourism activities are highly modulated by how Nature has been constructed in modern Western societies.’ It is this textual, discursive approach that differentiates political ecology from other approaches to issues surrounding ‘natural area tourism’, for example, the impacts approach of Newsome et al. (Natural Area Tourism: Ecology, impacts and management. Channel View Publications, Bristol, 2013).