Tourism in the USA: A spatial and social synthesis by Dimitri Ioannides and Dallen J. Timothy

Reviews / Comptes rendus

Introduction to environmental impact assess-ment (2nd ed.)

by Bram F. Noble, Oxford University Press, DonMills, 2010, xiv + 274 pp., paper $52.95 (ISBN978-0195429626)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00404.x

This slim volume (which is only slightly less slimthan the first edition) aims to provide an in-troductory text on environmental impact assess-ment (EIA), for students in both academic andprofessional positions. The intent of the book isto focus on the process of EIA rather than thedetails of regulatory systems, the intricacies ofperforming an assessment, or on presenting in-numerable case studies of the application of EIA.Noble has succeeded admirably in achieving this,and he provides both a balanced and up-to-dateperspective on the EIA process and how it isevolving.

The layout of the book is rational and me-thodical, basically following the various stages ofthe EIA process, a sequence one is likely to useto teach the subject. Of particular significancein keeping the book current are the two chap-ters that introduce the important developmentsof strategic environmental assessment and cumu-lative effects assessment. New to this second edi-tion are an appealing cover, chapters on publicparticipation in EIA, and an evaluation of the ef-fectiveness of EIA. Of particular use for teach-ing EIA are an explanatory glossary of terms atthe end of the book, and the study questionsand exercises at the end of each chapter. Thetext is enlivened by examples and case studiesdrawn from the Canadian experience with EIA,but could be more approachable with some useof colour and figures to replace tables in places.For example, the process of EIA is set out as atable, but it would be much more easily and ef-fectively conveyed in a flow or systems diagram.

The main drawback of this book is that it isdry and dull. While it is everything it purports tobe, I think that few would be inspired about thetopic of EIA after reading this book. The prac-tise of EIA is absorbing and can be exciting be-cause the process represents a clash of interests,while it provides a means for their airing and for

arriving at a compromise between them. EIA isalso fascinating in that the technical challengesof actually determining impacts in certain fieldsrequire many insights from environmental sci-ence. My preference, therefore, in teaching EIA,is the approach of Larry Canter (1996), whoseexcellent book provides an exhaustive array ofinsights into, and tools for meeting, the chal-lenges of actually making assessments of effects.Learning how to assess the effects of develop-ment on all the elements of environmental qual-ity, from air to noise and socio-economic issues,requires that you actually must learn somethingof these various technical topics. This makesCanter’s book much more detailed and interest-ing (and, it must be said, very long). Despite itsage it remains the best resource of its kind thatI am aware of. That said, though, the book byNoble is everything that it claims to be, is short,to-the-point, and affordable, and I shall probablyuse it again as a companion text for teaching EIAto Canadian students.

Reference

Canter, L. 1996. Environmental impact assessment. 2nd ed.Boston, MA: Irwin McGraw-Hill.

David Scott

University of British Columbia Okanagan

The new economy of the inner city: Restruc-turing, regeneration, and dislocation in thetwenty-first-century metropolis

by Thomas A. Hutton, Routledge, New York,2010, xiv + 333 pp., paper $39.99 (ISBN 978-0415569323)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00405.x

In The new economy of the inner city, ThomasHutton engages the changing economic and so-cial dynamics of the contemporary central city,presenting an incipient theoretical interventionbased on a program of field research since1993. Following Allen Scott, Hutton restatesthe centrality of industrial production within

The Canadian Geographer / Le Geographe canadien 2012, 56(1): 142–153

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00404.xC© Canadian Association of Geographers / L’Association canadienne des geographes

Reviews / Comptes rendus 143

metropolitan urbanization, to stress both theneed for theoretical engagement with the dy-namic nature of industrial enterprise in themetropolitan core, and the “persistent saliency”of the inner city “as a critical terrain ofmetropolitan transformation” (p. 4). In doing so,he contends that the “reassertion of production”in the inner city—centred on the cultural andknowledge production of the New Economy—challenges post-industrial theory with “sufficientevidence of novelty” to suggest we may be enter-ing a new stage of after-postindustrial urbanism(p. 2).

Hutton contextualizes his central thesis firstthrough a synthetic review of the diverse factorsinfluencing the formation of new inner cityindustrial sites; questioning accounts of thepostindustrial centre city’s essentially monocul-tural downtown office economy and marginalizedfringe. The sweeping discussion incorporatesproperty markets and reconstructed productionlandscapes; human, social, and cultural capital;the metropolitan context; and exogenous factorsof globalization, industrial restructuring, andcompetition, into a schematic model of theproduction economy of the inner city (p. 36).Second, drawing from secondary cases, Huttonconstructs a dynamic understanding of inner cityindustrial sites as “zones of experimentation,creativity, and innovation,” shaped within thecontingencies of place and pre-existing “old”economic regimes (p. 65).

The majority of the book details adaptive NewEconomy reindustrialization through case stud-ies of select inner city spaces in four globalcities (London, Singapore, San Francisco, andVancouver). Over five chapters, Hutton drawsfrom impressive empirical data—including inter-views, media and policy analysis, and varied il-lustrations (although many of the photographsare superfluous)—to illustrate the diverse, oftenprecarious, paths of inner city reindustrializa-tion. However, his tendency to present descrip-tive vignettes leaves the task of extrapolatingthe cases studies’ conceptual significance to aconcluding “essay in theoretical synthesis.” Here,Hutton sketches out the components of a recom-binant economy, engaging the complex mannerin which industrial regimes (pre-Fordist, Fordist,post-Fordist) coexist, collaborate, and com-pete. The concept of “recombination” usefully

illuminates the “complex synergies, syntheses,and interdependencies” shaping contemporaryurban economies (p. 279) and provides a caution-ary counter-narrative to “creative” urban booster-ism by highlighting the limited regenerative ca-pacity of the New Economy.

In asking the book’s central question, “Inwhat ways does new industry formation, to-gether with related social dynamics, contributeto the respatialization of the inner city andthe reconstruction of the postindustrial land-scape?” (p. 11), Hutton ambitiously attemptsto synthesize economic geographic research onreindustrialization and the region with literatureaddressing interactions between processes ofindustrial change, space, and place in the city(pp. 11–12). His project, though, is only partiallysuccessful. When focusing on the dynamicsof industry formation, the analysis is assuredand insightful, but when Hutton looks to con-nect with wider issues in urban scholarship,socio-cultural and political dynamics are oftenproblematically unelaborated or under-theorized.A more comprehensive examination of “dislo-cation,” incorporating issues of displacementand social polarization, would be welcome, aswould a systematic comparative analysis acrossthe study sites, particularly regarding: (1) theglobalizing–universalizing elements of the re-combinant economy within broader contours ofeconomic restructuring; and (2) the (neglected)role of multi-scalar state and regulatory regimes.

The “reassertion of production” poses provoca-tive questions for contemporary urban scholar-ship and, as a prolegomenon to future research,Hutton concludes: “we are perhaps approachinga vantage point upon which a more robust rethe-orization process which takes in the restructur-ing episodes of the last two decades might befeasible” (p. 293). The formative conceptualiza-tion of the after-postindustrial city presented inThe new economy of the inner city includes manyconstructive avenues for such a project; how-ever, it inevitably succumbs to the limitations ofa “one-sided love for the historical city” whichuncritically reproduces the primacy of the urbancore and represses “the challenge presented byunloved suburbia” (Sieverts 2003, p. 17). If theinner city and its space-economy are no longerwhat they used to be—as Hutton argues—can weassume the same of the suburbs? The selective


144 Reviews / Comptes rendus

reindustrialization of the inner city does inter-nalize wider processes of industrial and urbanchange, but Hutton does not adequately addressthe metropolitan frame of inquiry or the symbi-otic processes co-constituting city-regional space.In this regard, it is worth considering what pos-sibilities can be gleaned by de-centring the priv-ileged position of the inner city as a critical siteof metropolitan transformation for both urbanand industrial geographic theory, and the twenty-first-century metropolis.

Reference

Sieverts, T. 2003. Cities without cities: An interpretation of thezwischenstadt. London, UK: Spon Press.

Jean-Paul D. Addie

York University

Hong Kong movers and stayers: Narratives offamily migration

by Janet W. Salaff, Siu-lun Wong, and ArentGreve, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 2010,x + 259 pp., paper $35 (ISBN 978-0252077043)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00406.x

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, immigrationfrom Hong Kong left substantial legacies inCanada’s largest cities, particularly Vancouverwhere the wealthiest members of the diasporasettled—though settlement had an unstablemeaning for such a highly transnational popula-tion. For a decade, Hong Kong was the leadingsource of immigrants to Canada, with immigrantlanding cards for some 380 000 filed between1980 and 2001, which was a substantial shareof Hong Kong’s total population of 5 million in1980 and 6.7 million in 2001.

A significant literature has examined thismobile population in Canada and other PacificRim destinations including the United States andAustralia, and a few authors have followed mi-grants back to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong sideof the trans-Pacific space of flows during thisperiod has been largely unexamined, includingthe experiences of those who did not move.Migration was highly stratified, with wealthy

business households and skilled workers hav-ing the broadest overseas opportunities, whileoptions were limited for other Hong Kongers.Survey research in Hong Kong in the early1990s, leading to two books edited by RonaldSkeldon, contacted a large sample of residentsof various classes, asking them about their viewsof 1997 and their migration intentions.

Janet Salaff and Siu-lun Wong were membersof this 1991 project. Contact with respondentsin a related panel study of 30 families led to on-going interaction with nine of the panel families,who were re-interviewed in depth several timesbetween 1992 and 2005. Hong Kong movers andstayers presents the testimonies of members ofthese nine families. The main contributions ofthe book are, first, its emphasis on the strat-ified nature of migration, so its small sampleincludes those who emigrated, those who emi-grated and returned, those who were accepted asimmigrants but chose to remain in Hong Kong,and those who never applied to leave. Second,the longitudinal study is invaluable, recountingthe unfolding of life histories from the 1980s,or earlier, up to 2005. The dynamic and of-ten unpredictable nature of life transitions—thebirth of a handicapped child, unexpected familystrife, the unanticipated de-industrialisation ofHong Kong throughout the 1990s—emerge strik-ingly and fully validate the book’s methodology.Intervening, though unequally, into each of thesefamily biographies is the potential presence ofemigration and its consequences.

The rich data emerging from individual familystories offer not only strength but also a poten-tial weakness to this model of research, as theold dualism of particularity and generalisationreappears. An institutional approach provides thechief heuristic for drawing back from the unique-ness of family narrative, although the term is ap-plied loosely and the title of institution seemsto be extended to almost any broader structureor context behind group decision-making (pp. 6–8). A more immediate set of influences on ac-tion comes from the “social field,” a network offamily, friends, and professional contacts. Amongthese, the abiding configuration of norms andactions may be traced to family roles, notablythe mutual expectations of parent and child thattranscend the boundaries of class and status.The family is an economic unit, and the desire



to enhance social and economic status can easilylead to a strategy of dispersal, with migrationa mechanism to enhance overall family per-formance by drawing upon resources and op-portunities derived from several geographicalsettings. Many of the interviewed families arerelative newcomers without deep roots in HongKong; onward migration continues an already es-tablished family trajectory.

The three middle-class families who immi-grated to Canada experienced the typical out-comes of so many of their peers: for all,“reality seemed much worse than anticipated”(p. 91). Failed or poorly performing economicventures in Canada led to astronaut status as thefamily head returned to the more promising eco-nomic environment of Hong Kong. Less familiarare the accounts of the other families who wereeither rejected as candidates for migration ornever applied. Their lesser economic status, lim-ited overseas connections, and strong local net-works shaped a destiny for them within HongKong. They faced their own challenges as the oldmanufacturing sector relocated to the Mainland,and the prolonged recession after 1997 limitedeconomic opportunities. Against these backdropsand insulated from the “emigration fever,” theystruggled to sustain family well-being.

This well-written book by a knowledgeableteam of Hong Kong specialists provides an illu-minating portrait of the lives of ordinary resi-dents under changing conditions on each side of1997. Emigration provided ambiguous benefits,for economic prospects overseas were largely il-lusory. So, many returned to join those whohad never left, to participate in the ongoing ex-periment of sustaining their families within onecountry and two systems.

David Ley

University of British Columbia

Millionaire migrants: Trans-Pacific life lines

by David Ley, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2010, xii +314 pp., paper $39.95 (ISBN 978-1405192927)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00407.x

This book is primarily a study of wealthy mi-grants who left East Asia (particularly Hong

Kong, Taiwan, and Korea) and relocated inCanada, especially Vancouver, British Columbia.Based on extensive interviews, historical andstatistical analysis, and fieldwork in such placesas Vancouver, Toronto, and Hong Kong, Leyengages in scholarship on transnational mi-gration, Canadian Studies, and neoliberalism.Regarding transnationalism and migration, Ley’sstudy of wealthy migrants from East Asia inCanada demonstrates three major points: (1)the transnational social field stretching fromEast Asia to Canada is not a uniform surfaceof sameness but acutely differentiated; (2) time–space compression has not exhausted the roleof distance, even for millionaire migrants; and(3) place matters, as these migrants embodythe cultural traits of their regions of origin inmoving across the social field.

The book offers important insights into ne-oliberalism’s transnational geography. As shownby Ley’s examination of the Canadian case, theCanadian government’s immigration laws andpolicies have been changed significantly since the1960s. The economic category (entrepreneurs,self-employed, and investors), compared with thefalling percentages of the family and the refugeecategories, has been increasing significantly:from 39 percent of all immigrants admitted inthe 1980s, to 49 percent in the 1990s, and to 58percent in 2000–2006 (p. 8). An understandingof this shift raises questions about changingstate categories of governing populations as awhole. Does this shift suggest that the Canadiangovernment now prioritizes class rather thanrace, ethnicity, and country of origin in countingthe Canadian state as a coherent entity? Alsoraised is the relationship between neoliberalismand transnational migration. It is clear thatthe Canadian government’s immigration policiestake a neoliberal turn by treating the businessimmigrant as an ideal future citizen. “Not merelyself-supporting,” as Ley puts it, “the businessimmigrant has both the skill and the wealth toadd value, to create jobs for others, and providetax revenues for the state” (p. 9). In practice, asthe book goes on to show, the situation is morecomplicated. The business immigrant as a typeof homo economicus has flaws and behaves moreor less in irrational ways.

With respect to those from Hong Kong, amajor focus of this book, I would like to raise



questions about neoliberalism connected both toHong Kong and Canada. Hong Kong is often rec-ognized as one of the world’s freest economies.So, why did business people there emigrate toa place such as Canada, where they might haveto deal with significant economic and social“costs” such as higher taxes, language barriers,narrowed social networks, and higher labourcosts? According to Ley, a significant number ofthem returned to Hong Kong after fulfilling theirimmigration requirements and realizing the dif-ficulties of making money (chapter 5), but somealso returned back to Canada. A common patternlooks like this: mothers, children, and retireesstay in Vancouver while working men and youngadults pursue economic opportunities in EastAsia. It appears to reverse the common patternof Chinese immigration to North America in the19th century. This new trend seemed to confirmthe idea of Hong Kong as a neoliberal economy,perhaps more so than Canada. It also suggeststhat Hong Kong’s neoliberal economy is notlocal or one dimensional, but global and multi-dimensional. With the cooperation of Canada’sneoliberal immigration policies, Hong Kong immi-grants have affected Canada’s real estate sector,for example, as seen in the steady increase ofproperty prices in cities such as Vancouver.Together with other books about neoliberalprocesses in East Asia (mainland China, HongKong, and Korea), Ley’s findings from Canadacontribute to the scholarly understanding ofneoliberalism’s transnational scale, intensity, andorientation. The book’s examination of the livesof what the author calls “millionaire migrants”contributes to international migration scholar-ship, a field that tends to focus on poor andlow-skilled people. Indeed, Ley’s discussion ofChinese immigration is insightful regarding thechanging meaning of the figure of the Chineseimmigrant in Canada, from being an unwelcomedthreatening racial other, to a model minority,and now a homo economicus in the neoliberalera. Any scholar who is interested in Asia in theglobal context will welcome and appreciate thisstudy.

Hai Ren

University of Arizona

Cuban landscapes: Heritage, memory, andplace

by Joseph L. Scarpaci and Armando H. Portela,Guilford Press, New York, 2009, 216 pp., paper$30.50 (ISBN 978-1606233238)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00408.x

Cuban landscapes is an important book andmakes a contribution to the understanding of theisland state from a geographical perspective. Thegeographical perspective is at once both compre-hensive and critical bridging theory and fact toproduce a narrative of Cuba that is best under-stood with reference to its compelling historical,cultural, and natural landscapes. It is these land-scapes, as Scarpaci and Portela observe, that en-capsulate the insular nature of Cuban politics,history, and environment, while positioning theisland within the broader world, beginning withearly European encounters, to that of the con-temporary US political embargo.

The authors examine Cuban landscapes fromthe perspective of five major influences: land-scapes, sugar, heritage, tourism, and information.The concept of landscape, however, which is thetopic of the first chapter, is also the overarch-ing frame of analysis. Borrowing from theoriesof cultural geography, as well as from that ofarchitecture, art, and literature, the authors de-fine the Cuban landscape as embedded within,infused by, and constitutive of heritage, place,and memory. The text that follows is an explo-ration of these landscapes with the goal of un-derstanding the relationship between landscapeand insularity.

Scarpaci and Portela suggest that the con-temporary landscapes of Cuba are a composite,and the “cultural geographic analysis lendsitself nicely to the study of Cuba because ofthe island’s striking historical periods thatspawned distinctive political economies” (p. 14).In this sense, the study goes beyond a descrip-tive account of life and history on the island, tounderstand the deeper processes of industrializa-tion, colonialism, imperialism, and development.It is this deeper analysis that infuses the textand provides its framework. The analysis oflandscape undertaken by the authors is broadlydefined. It incorporates European discovery and



the writings of early explorers such as Baronvon Humboldt; the historical accounts of Cubaby outsiders; European and American landscapepainters; popular music and motion picturesthat represent Cuba to the outside world; as wellas the political iconography and symbolic land-scapes of state. It also includes the impress ofSpanish colonialism, American “republicanism”(p. 17), and postcolonial representations of theisland, well into the post-Soviet era.

In discussing Cuban landscapes, the authorsare thus concerned with the way in which insularrepresentations have been incorporated withinthe symbolic landscape, while representing mul-tiple manifestations of power, place, meaning,and heritage. There is no uncontested or singularrepresentation of Cuba, not even the tropicallandscapes that charm the millions of touristswho have flocked to the country’s resorts in the20th century. The authors are not concernedwith finding the “real” Cuban landscape, butrather in examining the multiple ways in whichthe island’s unique cultural, political, economic,and environmental history has been incorporatedinto a contemporary series of landscapes. Specialtreatment is given to the role of sugar produc-tion as an agent of landscape change, which theyargue has modified the Cuban landscape morethan any other single human–environmentalinteraction. The role of tourism is also singledout, as contemporary Cuba has been inundatedwith tourists around the world, in search of theidealized Cuban landscape and culture foundin visual and musical, literary, and historicalrepresentations.

This book is refreshing because it is not con-sumed with explaining, assessing, and judgingthe political regime on the island. Moreover,there is little of the evaluation of Cuban land-scapes strictly from the perspective of Ameri-can interests—although the book is not entirelydevoid of this bias. The chapter that discussesCuban tourism is striking in its lack of attentionto Canadian tourism in Cuba, or the geographicaldimensions of that tourism. Nonetheless, thereare valuable insights into contemporary Cubantourism and the relationship between this emerg-ing industry and sociopolitical and economic de-velopments on the island.

Does the book succeed in convincing us thatCuban landscapes are indeed an outcome of the

insular history of the island as it accommodates,adapts to, and even rejects or repels the en-croaching world? The short answer is yes. This isa worthwhile read, not only because of its wealthof information and insights, as it attempts tounderstand the Cuban landscape using the the-oretical tools of mainstream cultural geography,but because it is one of the first books to ex-amine the historical and contemporary culturallandscape of the island. It is definitely worth thetime and effort for those who are interested inthe history, landscape, politics, economics, andculture of the island.

Heather Nicol

Trent University

Tourism in the USA: A spatial and social syn-thesis

by Dimitri Ioannides and Dallen J. Timothy, Rout-ledge, New York, 2009, xviii + 240 pp., paper$48 (ISBN 0415956854239)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00409.x

This book was written to offer a single text cov-ering the core curriculum of a course on traveland tourism within the entire United States. Theauthors note that, although written from a ge-ographical and social sciences perspective, thetext should appeal to a broader audience. Theprimary market is for courses offered in Amer-ican colleges and universities, but the text is an-ticipated also to have value to students outsideof the United States.

Organized into ten chapters, the book intro-duces tourism and travel as a field of study; of-fers a historical perspective on American travel;gives an insight into the institutional setting; ad-dresses demand for tourism; discusses the dif-ferent types of tourism attractions, includingtourism types and tourism infrastructure; fo-cuses an entire chapter on the transportationsystem; introduces the economic significance oftourism; dedicates an entire chapter to urbantourism; another one to rubber tire tourism; andconcludes with a discussion of what the futuremight bring. Each chapter includes insets offer-ing closer looks at case studies and concludes



with questions students should consider, andsuggested readings. The back of the book alsocontains a list of references as well as an index.

I found the book informative, factual, well writ-ten, and to the point. It contains relevant anduseful information that any student interested intravel and tourism in the United States ought toknow. But I was left to conclude that it fell shorton encouraging the reader to engage in any op-portunity for critical thinking and debate. Read-ing this text reminded me of American mediacoverage. The text has a strong inward-lookingand domestic tourism focus with the bigger pic-ture and a global perspective given short shrift.The book, for example, does not position or dis-cuss American travel and tourism relative to itsinternational competitors, nor does it addresshow global events, exchange rate fluctuations,and aggressive marketing by other countries im-pact American appetite for travel abroad, as wellas international visits to the United States. Thebook also is surprisingly quiet on the social di-mensions of travel and tourism. It does not, forexample, actively encourage critical examinationof host–guest interactions, nor any of the othertopics that make up a rich literature on the so-cial and anthropogenic aspects of travel. Thiscomes as a surprise given that the text claimsto be written from a social sciences and geo-graphical perspective, and given the substantialcontributions made by these disciplines in thesocial sciences, including human geography, tothese aspects of travel and tourism. The bookalso does not engage in any depth in the debateabout the environmental dimensions underlyingtourism. It does not challenge the students, forexample, to engage in a debate about tourism asan agent of conservation and preservation, andtourism as an agent of environmental degrada-tion and destruction.

Having focused at some length on what con-tent may be missing from the book that wouldmake it the ideal text, let me be quick to reit-erate that the book is filled with facts and con-cepts all students studying travel and tourism inthe United States should learn. The book usesquite a small text font and the pages are denselycovered with material. Despite the case study in-set boxes and the questions and suggested read-ings at the end of each chapter, the book hasa very traditional feel to it, in part because of

the black and white photographs and overall lay-out. This does not take away, however, from thefact that Drs. Ioannides and Timothy have pro-duced an excellent contribution to the tourismliterature. Their book should be given very se-rious consideration by all college and univer-sity instructors when deciding on a core text forclasses focusing on an introduction to the traveland tourism industry in the United States.

Peter Keller

University of Victoria

Tourism geography: A new synthesis (2nded.)

by Stephen Williams, Routledge, New York,2009, xvii + 309 pp., paper $49.95 (ISBN9780415394260)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00410.x

There are many indicators of a vibrant field ofstudy. Stephen Williams’ revised and improvedtext, Tourism geography: A new synthesis, is amark of the evolution and vitality of geography’scontributions to understanding and explainingthe phenomenon of tourism. The book knits to-gether the diversity of tourism geography intothree operative parts and 11 engaging chapters.Particularly relevant among the many layers wo-ven into the text are two broad and interrelatedobjectives.

First, Williams advocates that basic descrip-tions of tourism’s spatial patterns result in lim-ited understanding. Instead, more complex and“interesting territory that relates to the explana-tion of those patterns and the meanings and val-ues that might be embedded within them” (p. 22)can inspire analytical advancements in touristicknowledge. This analytical and explanatory ap-proach is adopted in each chapter and rootedin multi-disciplinary perspectives recognizable tohuman geographers. It enables Williams to in-tegrate a range of theoretical tools: recurrentones such as Butler’s life-cycle, Urry’s touristgaze, sustainable development, and globalization;and emerging ones concerning mobility, iden-tity, power relations, and embodiment, many ofwhich are based on developments in cultural



geography and, what Williams identifies as, post-modern critical positions.

This latter collection of perspectives informsthe substance of Part II and underpins thenew material developed for this second editionand presented in Part III. Here—and this is thesecond central objective I observed—Williamsintroduces relational, as opposed to binary,readings of tourism. Avoided are simple, di-chotomous, or cause-effect categorizations thatare transferable from place to place. Williamsfavours instead more reflective ways of thinkingthat emphasize the contingency of local contextsand how tourism relates to the making ofplaces, the shaping of space, and the changingrelations between production, consumption, andidentity. This orientation helps reframe familiartourism topics, such as host–guest interactionsand tourism impacts, and enables analyticalinsight into, for example, the temporal layers atplay in heritage tourism, the embodied spacesof consumption and meaning associated withadventure and wine tourism, and the function oftourism in re-inventing cities as post-industrialplaces. The spaces and places of tourism, arguesWilliams, are thus becoming more diverse, nu-merous, and harder to differentiate from othereveryday spaces.

Although Williams’ aggregation deserves sub-stantial applause, it is not exhaustive. Notice-ably absent are imperative works by DoreenMassey (1992, 2005) on place and space, andNigel Thrift (1999, 2008) on non-representationaldescriptive geographies. Readers will be in-troduced to leading theorists championed byhuman geographers—Lefebvre, Butler, Bauman,Giddens, Bourdieu—but much of this materialis discussed superficially. Fleeting attention toMichel Foucault provides a case in point, and issuch that the erroneous spelling of “Foucauld”(p. 140) appears not simply as an innocent typo.Connections are not made among emerging lit-eratures on geographies of care and respon-sibility, responsible tourism, polar tourism, oraboriginal tourism. Post-colonial geographies aresurprisingly excluded.

The book is conceptually sound; however, therelational perspective does not extend to anexamination of nonhuman agency in tourismplace making (see, e.g., Cloke and Perkins 2005;Figueroa and Waitt 2008). The human-centrism

of tourism is left unquestioned, an inconsistencyin Williams’ relational presentation because thefundamental human/nature binary remains in-tact. What is more, Williams’ relational orien-tation does not reflexively situate the theory–practice nexus. For instance, left unanswered isthe extent to which the “newer forms of tourism”(p. 269) are constituted by researchers’ “turns”towards different analytical orientations. Thus,while Williams’ analytical review is exceptionaland demonstrates the potential that human ge-ography offers tourism research, the text remainssafely confined to many disciplinary norms.

Stylistically, the clearly written text is com-plemented with effective in-text tables, figures,plates, and boxed-case studies that are appropri-ately labelled and relevant. The included glossaryappears to be weak, though a helpful Internetsearch guide is proffered as an appendix. At-tempts to include a range of international casestudies do not hide the author’s partiality forUK/Eurocentric content.

All in all, Tourism geography will be an im-portant core text for senior undergraduate stu-dents familiar with key concepts and frameworksused in human geography. Tourism and leisuregraduate students seeking to flesh out their stud-ies with geographic perspectives will also benefitfrom this book, particularly because of its im-pressive bibliography, the recommendations foradvanced reading that follow each chapter, andthe critical engagement with diverse theoreti-cal and multi-disciplinary perspectives. With thistext, Williams illustrates the centrality and mag-nitude of geographic inquiry into tourism, andpresents to students and researchers many pathsfor further critical exploration.

References

Cloke, P., and H. C. Perkins. 2005. Cetacean performance andtourism in Kaikoura, New Zealand. Environment and Plan-ning D: Society and Space 23: 903–924.

Figueroa, R. M., and G. Waitt. 2008. Cracks in the mirror:(Un)covering the moral terrains of environmental justice atUluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Ethics, Place and Environ-ment 11(3): 327–349.

Massey, D. 1992. A place called home? New Formations 17:3–15

———. 2005. For space. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Thrift, N. 1999. Steps to an ecology of place. In Human ge-

ography today, eds. D. Massey, J. Allen, and P. Sarre. Cam-bridge, UK: Polity Press, 295–322.



———. 2008. Non-representational theory: Space, politics, affect.New York, NY: Routledge.

Bryan Grimwood

University of Waterloo

Sustainable tourism futures: Perspectives onsystems, restructuring and innovations

edited by Stefan Gossling, C. Michael Hall, andDavid B. Weaver, Routledge, New York, 2009, xix+ 320 pp., cloth $105 (ISBN 0415996198)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00411.x

This book was published as part of the Rout-ledge Advances in Tourism series. It originatedin a meeting on sustainable tourism, which tookplace in Helsingborg, Sweden, in September 2007with “the goal of summarising the state-of-the-artin sustainable tourism development, to presentnew research results, and to discuss avenues toestablish sustainable tourism on a broader basis”(p. xvii). As such, the work draws heavily uponthe presentations made at the three-day work-shop. The editors suggest that there is little ev-idence that the tourism production-consumptionsystem is moving towards greater stability and,for example, if the sector’s contribution to thegeneration of greenhouse gases is taken as anindicator, then tourism needs to be seen as oneof the world’s least sustainable economic sectors.This is a far cry from the perspective of manyadvocates in the second half of the last centurywho claimed that tourism is a smokeless indus-try.

Following a brief introductory statement by theeditors, the book is divided into three parts: The-oretical foundations: Re-thinking the tourism sys-tem; Restructuring the tourism system: Practicalexamples; and Innovation: Sustainable tourismfutures. These sections are of very unequallength, the first consists of two chapters (16 pp.),the second of seven chapters (156 pp.), and thethird contains six chapters (105 pp.), including abrief synthesis and conclusions. I think that thecontext is well articulated in the first section andin the first chapter of the second section, wherethe concept of sustainable development and thedifficulty of implementing it are well described.

The case studies are competent but, with too fewexceptions, mostly address climate change, car-bon emissions, and carbon reduction. The thirdsection, too, places great emphasis on carbon,with chapters on carbon labelling and low-carbontourism. Two points are made repeatedly bymany authors: tourism in its current forms maybe unsustainable because of the energy used andthe carbon released in the transportation phase,and data are insufficient to address the issues inthe detail and at the scales desired.

On reading the book, one can easily get theimpression that climate change, and tourism’scontribution to it, is the problem, and that sus-tainable development is the hoped-for solution—albeit in an unspecified revised form leavenedwith innovation, especially at the level of thefirm but probably at other levels as well. Withoutwishing to minimize the importance of climatechange and its implications for many other en-vironmental issues, most of these issues (speciesdiversity and migration, habitat change, compe-tition for water, disappearing wetlands, forestdestruction, coral bleaching, and so on) receivescant attention, even though most of them haveimplications for tourism. Furthermore, the so-called “triple bottom line” (people, planet, profit)is not even given attention in this work. Thebook is heavily focused on carbon-accountingwith occasional links to sustainable economies,but with little mention of sustainable cultures.Indeed, the different situations of the so-calleddeveloped and developing worlds, as creators ofenvironmental problems, as tourist origins anddestinations, and as causes and recipients of sus-tainability problems, are given short shrift. Sim-ilarly, critiques of sustainable development as awestern paradigm, and related derivatives suchas sustainable livelihoods and pro-poor tourism,are scarcely mentioned.

In summary, this is an extremely useful textfor those interested in transportation, and car-bon production and reduction as they per-tain to tourism. However, those looking for abroader perspective on sustainable development,as might be expected from the title, will likelybe disappointed. The first authors in the bookrightly draw attention to the gap between sus-tainability as a concept and its limited practicalapplication and implementation, and the bookshould be seen as an attempt to give reasons for



this and to find the means to reconcile the two.However, I suspect many of the contributors tothis book have enormous carbon footprints and,indeed, I read the text on flights across the Pa-cific Ocean. Thus, there is an enormous gap be-tween rhetoric and reality. The editors and theirco-authors deserve credit for taking an initialstep at addressing one of the major problemsfacing tourism, with far-reaching implications forboth consumers and suppliers at all scales, butit is only a small step on what promises to be along and turbulent journey.

Geoffrey Wall

University of Waterloo

Technonatures: Environments, technologies,spaces, and places in the twenty-first century

edited by Damian F. White and Chris Wilbert, Wil-frid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, 2009, xi +266 pp., paper $42.95 (ISBN 978-1554581504)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00412.x

In 1984, Neil Smith signalled an important mo-ment in critical scholarship by claiming that“nature is nothing if not social” (Smith 1984,p. 30). Since then, human geography and cog-nate fields have produced an outpouring of re-search on the social construction—both materialand discursive—of nature and of the apparentlynatural. As Noel Castree and Bruce Braun pointedout in 2001, the denaturalization of nature has“allowed geographers to move away from askingworthy, if limited, questions about what society‘does’ to nature (and vice versa), towards morefundamental questions such as ‘who constructswhat kinds of nature(s) to what ends and withwhat social and ecological effects?’” (Castree andBraun 2001, p. xi). Now, 25 years after Smith’sprovocative claim, the publication of Technona-tures may be taken as a reflection of how schol-arship has moved beyond the critique of natureto embrace a more positive sense of the possibil-ities of social nature.

The term “technonatures” is deployed in thisvolume as “an organizing myth and metaphorfor thinking about the politics of naturein contemporary times” (p. 6). A thoroughly

indeterminate concept, “technonatures” denotesa suite of newly emerging political and cul-tural sensibilities and subjectivities arising froman awareness “that knowledges of our worldsare . . . ever more technologically mediated, pro-duced, enacted, and contested, and further-more, that diverse peoples . . . perceive themselvesas ever more entangled with things—that is,with technological . . . cultural, urban, and ecolog-ical networks and diverse hybrid materialitiesand non-human agencies” (p. 6). Technonatures—both the sensibility and the book—thus moveswell beyond an environmental politics foundedon nature–culture dualism. Following on develop-ments in environmental justice and political ecol-ogy, it suggests a new wave of revisionism in en-vironmental studies.

Such an indeterminate “organizing myth andmetaphor” as “technonatures” offers a means ofassembling an extraordinarily wide range of dis-ciplinary and theoretical approaches between thecovers of a single book. This collection includescontributions from American studies, anthropol-ogy, architecture, business-and-the-environmentpolitical science, and sociology, as well as fromcritical human and environmental geography. Apartial list of theoretical orientations reflected inthe various contributions includes the sociologyof networks and flows, ecological modernizationtheory, historical materialism, science studies,relational–associational ontologies (e.g., actor-network theory, hybridity), the sociology of ev-eryday life, critical political ecology, and socialecology. Bringing such a broad range of per-spectives between the covers of a single bookproduces, as the editors admit, “many pointsof tension” (p. 20) among the various contri-butions. For example, differences regarding thespecificity of hybridity, the question of who hasagency in worlds of heterogeneous associations,and the incompatibilities that arise out of differ-ent scales of analysis enliven the technonaturalconversation.

Perhaps the strongest identifiable theme inthis emerging conversation is the need and thepotential for developing a progressive politicsof the post-natural. Certainly, an understandingof nature as ever more technologically medi-ated demands a positive alternative to the de-clensionist discourse and constraining politics ofenvironmental degradation, which necessarily



flow from the dichotomized vision of nature–society, organic–synthetic, human–animal. Tech-nonatural sensibilities give rise to the view, asWhite and Wilbert suggest, that “politics mightbe thought . . . with a buoyant sense of possibil-ity, a delight in intellectual speculation aboutopenings” (p. 24). One of the “openings” identi-fied in this collection includes the radical demo-cratic politics of technonatural change advocatedby Erik Swyngedouw in a chapter that presentsurbanization as “a process that fuses the socialand the natural together to produce a distinct‘hybrid’ or ‘cyborg’” (p. 76). Similarly, in a chap-ter that addresses the production of noxious ma-terial environments, Timothy Luke calls for “atruly public ecology with new organizations, in-stitutions, and ideas [suitable to] the hybridizedtechnonature of twenty-first-century life” (p. 198).

Other contributions move from these rathermore human-centred political solutions to themore cosmopolitical imaginings inspired byontologies of heterogeneous associations. SteveHinchliffe and Sarah Whatmore, for example, ad-vance an urban “politics of conviviality” that is“enacted by beings-in-relation that may be betterthought of as becomings that enfold humanand non-human mappings” (p. 110). A chapterby Fletcher Lindner draws on ethnographicresearch on bodybuilding in southern Califor-nia to suggest how the cyborgian built-bodyprovides opportunities “to productively engagewith the cyborg in the hope of forging viableenvironmental futures in technonatural times”(p. 160). And through a case study examiningthe development and application of the artificialestrogen diethylstilbestrol (DES) in human andanimal bodies, Julie Sze shows how embracingthe cyborg and the hybrid as “emblematic cul-tural figures” can be consistent with “a politicsand ethics” that militates against “technologicallypolluted bodies” (p. 142).

Yet another realm of political “openings” pre-sented in this volume is suggested by embrac-ing post-industrial and post-scarcity futures ina manner similar to Murray Bookchin’s earliersocial-ecological visions (e.g., Bookchin 1980). Inthis vein, a particularly encouraging chapter byBrian Milani addresses the possibilities of ex-ploiting the more-than-material productive forcesunleashed in the post-industrial green economy.Milani’s concluding chapter perhaps best rep-

resents the sense of opportunity and hope inthe face of the crisis that is presented by thetwenty-first-century environmental problematiquethat all the contributors to this volume seek toidentify in one way or another.

References

Bookchin, M. 1980. Towards an ecological society. Montreal,QC: Black Rose.

Castree, N., and B. Braun, eds. 2001. Social nature: Theory,practice and politics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Smith, N. 1984. Uneven development: Nature, capital and theproduction of space. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.

Jamie Linton

Queen’s University

Parks and protected areas in Canada: Planningand management (3rd ed.)

edited by Philip Dearden and Rick Rollins, Ox-ford University Press, Don Mills, 2009, xxi + 496pp., paper $76.95 (ISBN 978-0195427349)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2011.00413.x

Edited by Philip Dearden and Rick Rollins, Parksand protected areas in Canada is a comprehen-sive textbook on the planning and managementof Canadian protected areas. While previous edi-tions of this text (Dearden and Rollins 1993;Dearden and Rollins 2002) emphasized Canadiannational parks, the third edition has broadenedits scope significantly to include more types ofprotected areas in their nationwide context.

The book begins with an overview of nationalparks and protected areas with contributionsfrom Dearden, Rick Rollins, and Kevin McNamee.A new chapter about provincial parks by ChrisMalcolm discusses the varying levels of protec-tion by province. With contributions from Jean-nette Theberge and John Theberge, the book un-folds into a discussion about the various ideasand theories that are useful in protecting parklandscapes. Stephen Woodley’s chapter on eco-logical integrity and active management is fol-lowed by an account of social science in nationalparks by Mark Needham and Rollins.



A detailed look into visitor satisfaction and itsrelation to visitor management and interpreta-tion is especially timely as Parks Canada is start-ing to shift its focus to improving visitor ex-perience. Contributions for these chapters comefrom Needham and Rollins; Wolfgang Haider, andRobert Payne; Glen Hvenegaard, John Shultis, andJames Butler. Pamela Wright and Rollins skilfullylink the preceding material in a holistic chapteron managing national parks. This is followed bya case study of Banff and Bow Valley provided byJoe Pavelka to illustrate the delicate balance be-tween ecological integrity and visitor experience.

A new chapter, Northern Parks and ProtectedAreas, by Harvey Lemelin and Margaret Johnstonbrings additional focus to the issues and chal-lenges experienced in the establishment and de-velopment of protected areas across the north.Rollins, Paul Eagles, and Dearden shed lightonto the issues associated with tourism and eco-tourism of protected areas in a new, timely chap-ter. Scott Slocombe and Dearden’s contributionreminds the reader that “no park is an island”and challenges the reader to consider the im-portance of regional stakeholders in ecosystembased management.

The book continues with a brief account of therole of Aboriginal people in national parks, con-tributed by Dearden and Steve Langdon. Chang-ing gears, the book provides a detailed discus-sion of marine protected areas in Canada byDearden and Rosaline Canessa. Jessica Dempseyand Dearden describe different aspects of stew-ardship and its emerging new role in protectedareas. A brief chapter examining the issues ofprotected areas in developing countries was con-tributed by Dearden. The book concludes with alook at future challenges of parks and protectedareas in Canada contributed by Rollins and Dear-den.

With the development of new national parks,marine conservation areas, and a new round ofstructural reorganization, Parks Canada has seenmany changes since the second edition of Parksand protected areas in Canada was printed in2002. However, these changes are not fully re-flected in the third edition. The increase of na-tional parks from 39 to 42 and the increasinglycomplex details of this ongoing establishmentprocess were not discussed. The book states

that there are not any established National Ma-rine Conservation Areas, yet Lake Superior Na-tional Marine Conservation Area was establishedin 2007. In addition, the Parks Canada Agencyhas changed the traditional park warden role,and that specific job title is now limited to asmaller selection of employees who exclusivelycarry out law enforcement duties. This organi-zational shift has considerable implications forthe Agency and its operations that are not yetfully understood. Chapter authors acknowledgethat this change occurred, however, they still re-fer to “wardens” throughout the book in the tra-ditional context. The development of an ExternalRelations branch in 2005 and the re-organizationof the External Relations and Visitor ExperienceDirectorate in 2008 are recognized, but the sig-nificant shift of Parks Canada to focus on visitorexperience is not discussed. Linking the new di-rection of Parks Canada as described in The na-tional performance and evaluation framework forengaging Canadians (Parks Canada 2005) to thenew chapter about ecotourism would have beenworthwhile.

In summary, the third edition of Parks andprotected areas in Canada is a useful andsubstantive update of this textbook. As ParksCanada is shifting its focus to engaging Cana-dians, this book addresses many timely is-sues such as ecotourism and sustainability,and the effectiveness of interpretation. With abroader scope than previous editions, Deardenand Rollins maintain the depth and detail thatmakes this book a “must read” for park man-agers, protected area professionals, and schol-ars in tourism and recreation or natural resourcemanagement.

References

Dearden, P., and R. Rollins, eds. 1993. Parks and protectedareas in Canada. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Dearden, P., and R. Rollins, eds. 2002. Parks and protectedareas in Canada. 2nd ed. Don Mills, ON: Oxford UniversityPress.

Parks Canada. 2005. National performance and evaluationframework for engaging Canadians: External communi-cations at Parks Canada. http://www.pc.gc.ca/docs/pc/rpts/rve-par/eval archive e.asp.

Caitlin Mroz

University of Saskatchewan


Documents

Tourism in the USA: A spatial and social synthesis by Dimitri Ioannides and Dallen J. Timothy