Abstract

It is often imagined that tourism is a unique form of social space, distinguishable, broadly, from the everyday (MacCannell 1976), the world of work (Urry 1990) and the serious governmental and business concerns of the social centre (Shields 1990). Such ‘touristic’ places on the so-called social margin were deemed to be sociologically distinguishable as ludic places (Rojek 1993; Shields 1990), or as merely ritual locations of recreation, social reproduction and transition (see Franklin 2003 and 2009 for a discussion of this). Worse, some, have argued that tourism creates and transits through, many forms of non-place; of airports, aircraft, route ways, resorts etc., (Auge 1995) and ‘spaces of travel’ that are neither the social centre nor yet the social margin (Urry 2000).