Decommodifying grassroots struggle against a neoliberal tourism agenda: Imagining a local, just and sustainable ecotourism

© 2016 selection and editorial matter, Jan Mosedale; individual chapters, the contributors. It is not surprising that an advanced welfare state such as Sweden has significantly decommodified social policies and also demonstrates some of the community based ideals and best local practices of an ethical and socially just ecotourism. The areas covered by Swedish certification include animal welfare, waste and resource management, use of local goods and services and use of fuel-efficient and sustainable transport alternatives. There are also limitations on the capacities of local economies and communities to resist, challenge and in some cases robustly respond to the imperatives of neoliberalism. Alternative ecotourism development is not the same as alternative social development because the tourist/client is dependent on highly unregulated market forces to sustain tourism (Salole, 2007). The impact of market principles on small-scale tour operators and hosts cannot be ignored in the drive for profits. Nonetheless, global capitalism has a way of delivering paradoxical movements to the modes of profit making, competition amongst economic interest and production that reflect the neoliberal agenda. Our arguments here suggest that there is some dynamic for a countermovement from local operators and hosts to such economic globalization in order to drive forward decommodified agendas in ecotourism

Troubled men: ageing, dementia and masculinity in contemporary British crime drama

Focussing on three recent British film and television crime dramas, Mr Holmes, The Fear and the English language version of Wallander, this article argues that older men in these texts are a site through which contemporary social and cultural anxieties about ageing and dementia are played out in highly gendered ways that link to social and philosophical reflections on power, autonomy and selfhood. The dramas, while very different in affective orientation and tone, nonetheless all produce reflections on the meanings of memory loss within figurations of masculinity in the crime genre which have a broader significance for thinking through the representational dilemmas of dementia

Best Practice Interpretation Research for Sustainable Tourism

This article outlines the development of a framework that enables the classification of different interpretation research so that it can be linked to management needs in protected areas. The developed framework has been linked to selected case studies, thus enabling this research to be systematically placed in a protected area management context. A real life context for interpretation research is important if park managers are to take new knowledge of interpretation and apply it to their operational practices

Inclusion of the "Othered" in Tourism

This paper highlights that tourism, due to the fact it is a multi-faceted activity and by implication its management has similar multiple contexts, often leads to the exclusion of many who are part of that tourism context. One area that has been left on the fringes of tourism is how contemporary tourism management has ¿othered¿ those regarded as being removed from the neoliberal business foundation of tourism. One such group is the host communities in developing countries. The failure to involve and engage with host communities and develop collaboration in the process of planning and management for tourism is and has in the past been detrimental to the sustainability of tourism. In many cases, host communities have been ignored by the industry, with few or no mechanisms or processes put in place to enable them to participate in the management of tourism. This paper presents an overview of how this engagement of host communities can expand the market for tourism and lead to more satisfying visitor experiences, enhance the sustainability of these experiences and, thus, be considered good management practice within the industry. The paper examines how to engage in these practices and create processes that are both enabling for communities and incorporate research techniques that move beyond the very limited monocultural attempts undertaken by the majority of tourism enterprises today. In widening the involvement of the host community, we turn to mechanisms for engagement to provide a platform to demonstrate how this can be done to provide better management practice. In doing so, we extend the scope of engagement to involve those previously considered to be outside of mainstream tourism enterprises, and present an argument that, if sustainability is to move beyond economic and environmental Western constructs to embrace social sustainability, changing global values require tourism management to adopt more inclusive ways of practice and management principles

Volunteer tourism as alternative tourism: Journeys beyond otherness

Seismic changes in leisure time, disposable income, mobility and communication technologies have created a context in which tourism has thrived, grown and diversified to encompass a wide array of leisure travel behaviours that were not imagined even as recently as a couple of decades ago. Leading the way in this process of diversification is alternative tourism, which describes a form of tourism that rebukes mass tourism and the consumptive mindset it engenders and instead offers alternative, more discriminating, socially and environmentally sustaining tourist experiences (Wearing, 2001). The demand for alternative tourism has led to a diverse array of niche products and services, each the subject of critical scholarly analysis including educational tourism, farm tourism, cultural exchange tourism, scientific tourism and volunteer tourism, which is the subject and focus of this book. Definitions of volunteer tourism have begun to emerge in the academic and popular literature and are cited in a number of the case studies presented in this volume. Some of these definitions are relatively narrow in their focus. For example, Wearing (2002) defines volunteer tourists as those who 'volunteer in an organized way to undertake holidays that may involve the aiding or alleviating the material poverty of some groups in society, the restoration of certain environments, or research into aspects of society or environment' (p. 240). This definition uses criteria that limit volunteer tourism to those experiences located within the context of holidays or vacations. Others take a more macro-approach and consider the more inclusive notion of volunteering in tourism as an expression of what is recognized in tourism literature as the "other" dimension of postmodern tourism, which emphasizes the growing appeal of concepts such as "alternative", "real", "ecological", and "responsible" forms of tourism'. While specific definitions are used in some of the contributions to this book to frame individual case studies, we have resisted the temptation to offer an overarching definition of volunteer tourism for this volume. Instead we recognize volunteer tourism as a form of contested alternative tourism

C60 adsorption on an aperiodically modulated Cu surface

Copper deposited on the ve-fold surface of icosahedral Al-Pd-Mn forms domains of a structure whose surface has a one-dimensional aperiodic modulation. It is shown that C60 deposited on this aperiodic film has highly reduced mobility as compared to C60 deposited on periodic Cu surfaces. This fnding is explained in terms of the recently proposed structural model of this system

Nucleation and growth of a quasicrystalline monolayer: Bi adsorption on the five-fold surface of i-Al70Pd21Mn9

Scanning tunnelling microscopy has been used to study the formation of a Bi monolayer deposited on the five-fold surface of i-Al70Pd21Mn9. Upon deposition of low sub-monolayer coverages, the nucleation of pentagonal clusters of Bi adatoms of edge length 4.9 A is observed. The clusters have a common orientation leading to a film with five-fold symmetry. By inspection of images where both the underlying surface and the Bi atoms are resolved, the pentagonal clusters are found to nucleate on pseudo-Mackay clusters truncated such that a Mn atom lies centrally in the surface plane. The density of these sites is sufficient to form a quasiperiodic framework, and subsequent adsorption of Bi atoms ultimately leads to the formation of a quasicrystalline monolayer. The initial nucleation site is different to that proposed on the basis of recent density functional theory calculations.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Are short sellers stakeholders?

This paper analyses the role of short sellers in the context of stakeholder theory and poses the question: should short sellers be considered as stakeholders? The paper examines the conditions under which short sellers operate and how short selling can be a profitable activity. Next the paper considers the view of short sellers from the perspective of the finance literature and this perspective is contrasted with concerns which are frequently expressed in the news media about the activities of short sellers. The constraints on short selling are discussed, together with the phenomenon of optimism in analysts’ forecasts which is believed to support ‘high’ share prices. The usefulness of the preceding analysis is then discussed in the context of stakeholder theory and the paper discusses some potential policy implications in terms of corporate governance and financial reporting. The paper concludes that short sellers can legitimately be regarded as stakeholders and, indeed, encouraging short sellers to operate more effectively in the market as well as providing fuller disclosure of their activities could provide a useful anti-dote to some of the excessive and unjustified share price rise which have been seen in recent years in failing companies