IGU 2022: Tourism and routing: exploring the economic, cultural and political dimensions of walking routes

Please consider contributing to our special session “Tourism and routing” at the International Geographic Union’s Centennial Congress (Paris, 18-22 July 2022).

We are very glad to welcome abstracts in English, French and Spanish (see details below).

Deadline for abstracts (250 words) submission is January 11th, 2022, without extension.

Special Session: “Tourism and routing: exploring the economic, cultural and political dimensions of walking routes”

Chair: Alessia Mariotti, Centre for Advanced Studies in Tourism, University of Bologna, alessia.mariotti@unibo.it

Co-chair: Chiara Rabbiosi, Centre for Advanced Studies Mobility & Humanities, University of Padua, chiara.rabbiosi@unipd.it

Co-chair: Szilvia Gyimothy, Copenhagen Business School, sgy.marktg@cbs.dk

Co-chair: Maria Laura Gasparini, Centre for Advanced Studies in Tourism, University of Bologna, marialaura.gasparin3@unibo.it

Description of the session:

Interest in promoting walking holidays to tourist audiences and providing the infrastructure necessary for undertaking these holidays – such as paths, signposts, digital apps, and walker-friendly accommodation and services – has increased in the last few years. Walking route promotions may emphasise the spiritual dimensions of following an ancient pilgrimage trail or of walking through nature. But walking routes may also pivot around literary or gastronomic themes, in so doing intersecting common cultural tourism themes. Often, the limited carbon footprint walking routes require to be experienced and the physical benefits of outdoor activity are also stressed. Along these lines, local, national and transnational policies have been implemented, seeking to exploit walking routes as a tool to promote lesser-known regions. Safety and security perceptions (also with respect to Covid-19) have added a further layer to the promotion and consumption of walking routes. Walking routes therefore are not just infrastructure but a place making strategy, to augment the imaginaries, affordances and attractiveness of rural regions. They are co-produced by a wide range of actors, cutting across diverse domains (from public to private, commercial to spiritual and human to ‘more-than-human’ actors), and emerge as a multi-layered social and spatial practice. As such, walking routes are subject to frictions, conflicts and inclusion and exclusion patterns; however, these aspects have been overlooked by recent research on walking routes, which has mostly concentrated on the potential benefits of walking route promotions. Besides the advocacy of walking route development, there is a need to critically address how an increasing number of walkers and (post)pandemic leisure mobilities affect fragile environments. What are the controversial aspects of walking routes’ planning and management that often mobilise principles of cultural identity, social cohesion and economic development? How do social and spatial representations connected with walking routes and walking tourism contribute to forge specific discourses on bodies, places and identities? How are these representations enacted and challenged by walking performances? How are tourists’ walking mobilities confronted with other walking mobilities (e.g. migrants, workers)?

Topics:

We invite papers addressing the above-mentioned questions, including conceptual papers or case studies that may focus on:

· localism, nationalism, europeanisation and transnationalism about and around walking routes

· the moral production and consumption of walking tourists (eg. through “en route” narratives broadcasted by promotion agents, digital platforms, residents, walkers)

· learning while walking, enhancement of proprioception, kinesthesia, etc. through digital and material design

· more-than human entanglements and encounters in walking routes (animals, plants, atmospheres)

· walking routes and ‘footprints’ (from ecological discourses to embodied forms of place-making through walking)

· walking routes and mobilities contradictions (eg. between migration and leisure mobilities)

· walking routes and multimodal transport in tourism

· rethinking walking routes as tourist destinations (goverance, legal frameworks and policy networks)

Please submit your abstract through the official Conference’s website.

Mobility

For the Mobile Lives Forum, mobility is understood as the process of how individuals travel across distances in order to deploy through time and space the activities that make up their lifestyles. These travel practices are embedded in socio-technical systems, produced by transport and communication industries and techniques, and by normative discourses on these practices, with considerable social, environmental and spatial impacts.

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