Privileged Mobilities

Tourism as World Ordering

Edited By: Katarina Schough, Mekonnen Tesfahuney

£41.99

Marking an important contribution to the growing school of critical studies of tourism, this title raises questions regarding privileged mobiles from the standpoint of class, gender, ethnicity and citizenship.

Privileged Mobilities contributes to a growing school of critical studies of tourism. Mobility is about power and space. In this anthology, a series of questions…

Privileged Mobilities contributes to a growing school of critical studies of tourism. Mobility is about power and space. In this anthology, a series of questions are raised regarding privileged mobiles – who travels, where and whence, and why – not least from the standpoint of class, gender, ethnicity and citizenship. The authors portray tourism as a force of re- and de-territorialization: tourism conquers, re-encodes and exploits everything from sea bottom to outer space: places, cultures, histories and life sequences.

To paraphrase Guy Debord, tourism “is the mode of appropriation of the natural and human environment by capitalism, which true to its logical development toward absolute domination, can (and now must) refashion the totality of space into its own decor.” In a touristified world, we all become tourists and are fostered to see, experience and act accordingly – whether we want to or not. The tourist emerges as the ideal subject, an a-political being, steeped in experience, adventure and enjoyment.

Mekonnen Tesfahuney is Associate Professor of Human Geography, at the University of Karlstad, Sweden. His doctoral thesis “Imag(in)ing the other(s). Migration, Racism, and the Discursive Constructions of Migrants” dealt with spaces of circulation, mobility control and uneven access to space. He is the co-editor of the two volume anthology Education in Multicultural Societies (2001). His publications include The Best of All Possible Worlds? Reflections on the Post-Political Contemporary (2008), which is concerned with states of exception, territory, citizenship and biopolitics, and The Post-Political City, a forthcoming anthology on space, urban politics and neoliberalism in Sweden. His teaching and research interests are mobility space and power, geo-philosophy and postcolonial theory.

Katarina Schough is an Associated Professor in Human Geography. Her publications include works on the geography of knowledge, such as Lake Duortnus, Royal Science, and Nomadic practice (2007), and Hyperboré (2008). Her most recent book is an anthology for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency on environmental politics and the transformation of society, titled The Generational Goal (2013). She is currently working on an biography of the anthropologist and author Kerstin Eidlitz Kuoljok.

Richard Ek, Khalid Khayati, Katarina Mattsson, Katarina Schough, Josefina Syssner