Liminality is not typically associated with tourism, even though it can be viewed as an intrinsic element of the social/cultural experiences of tourism. Liminality in Tourism: Spatial and Temporal Considerations aims to build upon the tradition of liminality as expounded in social and anthropological disciplines, elaborating on the theoretical principles and concepts found within certain aspects of the tourist journey and tourist product. The emergence of post-modern society has impelled a change in the tourist gaze towards a more experiential and adventuresome globalised experience. An important aspect of the tourist phenomenon of liminality is where a transformative experience is triggered by entering a liminoid tourist space, leaving the tourist permanently psychologically transformed, before returning to normalised society. The narrative provides a new perspective on the tourist experience with a provocative examination into the multidimensional aspects of tourism, by exploring tourism within the spatial and temporal aspects of liminal landscapes. Covid-19 has further changed the rubric of tourism. Until the current pandemic, tourism has basically been a fun experience. In a post pandemic world, however, the tourist is now facing an unknown future which will almost certainly affect tourism liminality. This book presents the reader with a wealth of examples and case studies closely illustrating the association between tourism and liminal experiences. The geographical perspectives explore the more subconscious outcomes of destination and tourist product consumption. The book should be a useful reader to tourism geography where the theory of liminality can be synthesized into tourist experiences. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Tourism Geographies.

Liminal Landscapes brings together variety of new and emerging methodological approaches of liminality from varying disciplines to explore new theoretical perspectives on mobility, space and socio-cultural experience. By doing so, it offers new insight into contemporary questions about technology, surveillance, power, the city, and post-industrial modernity, within the context of tourism and mobility. The book brings together recent research from scholars with international reputations in the fields of tourism, mobility, landscape and place, alongside the work of emergent scholars who are developing new insights and perspectives in this area.

Routledge Handbook of the Tourist Experience offers a comprehensive synthesis of contemporary research on the tourist experience. It draws together multidisciplinary perspectives from leading tourism scholars to explore emergent tourist behaviours and motivations. This handbook provides up-to-date, critical discussions of established and emergent themes and issues related to the tourist experience from a primarily socio-cultural perspective. It opens with a detailed introduction which lays down the framework used to examine the dynamic parameters of the tourist experience. Organised into five thematic sections, chapters seek to build and enhance knowledge and understanding of the significance and meaning of diverse elements of the tourist experience. Section 1 conceptualises and understands the tourist experience through an exploration of conventional themes such as tourism as authentic and spiritual experience, as well as emerging themes such as tourism as an embodied experience. Section 2 investigates the new, developing tourist demands and motivations, and a growing interest in the travel career. Section 3 considers the significance, motives, practices and experiences of different types of tourists and their roles such as the tourist as photographer. Section 4 discusses the relevance of ‘place’ to the tourist experience by exploring the relationship between tourism and place. The last section, Section 5, scrutinises the role of the tourist in creating their experiences through themes such as ‘transformations in the tourist role’ from passive receiver of experiences to co-creator of experiences, and ‘external mediators in creating tourist experiences'. This handbook is the first to fill a notable gap in the tourism literature and collate within a single volume critical insights into the diverse elements of the tourist experience today. It will be of key interest to academics and students across the fields of tourism, hospitality management, geography, marketing and consumer behaviour.

This book explores and challenges the concept and experience of liminality as applied to critical perspectives in the study of events. It will be of interest to researchers in event studies, social and discursive psychology, cultural and political sociology, and social movement studies. In addition, it will provide interested general readers with new ways of thinking and reflecting on events. Contributing authors undertake a discussion of the borders, boundaries, and areas of contestation between the established social anthropological concept of liminality and the emerging field of critical event studies. By drawing these two perspectives closer together, the collection considers tensions and resonances between them, and uses those connections to enhance our understanding of both cultural and sporting events and offer fresh insight into events of activism, protest, and dissent.

Moving, slowing down, or watching others moving allows people to cross physical, symbolic, and temporal boundaries. Exploring the imaginative power of liminality that makes this possible, Liminal Moves looks at the (im)mobilities of three groups of people - street monkey performers in Japan, adolescents writing about migrants in Italy, and men accompanying their partners in Switzerland for work. The book explores how, for these ‘travelers’, the interplay of mobility and immobility creates a ‘liminal hotspot’: a condition of suspension and ambivalence as they find themselves caught between places, meanings and times.

Book Review

Within events management, events are commonly categorised within two axes, size and content. Along the size axis events range between the small scale and local, through major events, which garner greater media interest, to internationally significant hallmark and mega events such as the Edinburgh Festival and the Tour de France. Content is frequently divided into three forms – culture, sport or business. However, such frameworks overlook and depoliticise a significant variety of events, those more accurately construed as protest. This book brings together new research and theories from around the world and across sociology, leisure studies, politics and cultural studies to develop a new critical pedagogy and critical theory of events. It is the first research monograph that deals explicitly with the concept of critical event studies (CES), the idea that it is impossible to explore and understand events without understanding the wider social, cultural and political contexts. It addresses questions such as can the occupation and reclamation of specific spaces by activists be understood as events within its framework? And is the activity of activists in these spaces a leisure activity? If those, and other similar activities, can be read as events and leisure, what does admitting them into the scope of events management and leisure studies mean for our understanding of them and how the study of events management is to be conceptualised? This title will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students on events management and related courses and scholars interested in understanding the ways in which events are constructed by the social, the cultural and the political.

Sex Tourism examines the issues which emerge from sex worker-client interactions and from tourists visiting 'sex destinations'. It is a comprehensive summary of past research by academics and original primary and secondary research by the authors and has examples from Asia, Australasia and the USA. The authors have generated new models to show different dimensions of sex tourism, which normalise at least some components of the sex industry, and represent a new way of looking at sex tourism by challenging the preconceived perceptions that some people have of sex tourism or confirm the impression of others. Sex Tourism looks at issues of importance to those working in tourism, women's studies, gender studies and social change.

The Routledge Companion to Media and Tourism provides a comprehensive overview of the research into the convergence of media and tourism and specifically investigates the concept of mediatized tourism. This Companion offers a holistic look at the relationship between media and tourism by drawing from a global range of contributions by scholars from disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. The book is divided into five parts, covering diverse aspects of mediatization of tourism including place and space, representation, cultural production, and transmedia. It features a comprehensive theoretical introduction and an afterword by leading scholars in this emerging field, delving into the ways in which different forms of media content and consumption converge, and the consequential effects on tourism and tourists. The collection is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of tourism studies, cultural studies, and media and communication, as well as those with a particular interest in mediatization, convergence culture, and contemporary culture.

Liminality has the potential to be a leading paradigm for understanding transformation in a globalizing world. As a fundamental human experience, liminality transmits cultural practices, codes, rituals, and meanings in situations that fall between defined structures and have uncertain outcomes. Based on case studies of some of the most important crises in history, society, and politics, this volume explores the methodological range and applicability of the concept to a variety of concrete social and political problems.