EXPLORING THE CONSTITUTION OF RESILIENCE IN PLACES: A MEDIA PLACE APPROACH TO TOURISM STUDIES

Abstract

Resilience in tourism studies has mainly departed from a socio-ecological system-theory approach and has developed knowledge in relation to different tourism contexts. This approach has consequences for the conceptualization of resilience and sets limits. Calls for theory development on resilience see a need to take account of, for instance, politics and power relations, and conflicts over resources. As a response to this call, this conceptual article discusses the ontological underpinnings of resilience in tourism studies from an interdisciplinary approach and argues for a media place approach to resilience. From a general socio-ecological system approach a tourist place is ontologically constituted as a subject with clear boundaries even if it has interactions, relations, and dependencies. The tourism place is therefore constituted as a fixed entity in its essence, even if equilibriums can be positioned differently. However, tourism resilience is a complex issue that calls for additional perspectives. The proposed interdisciplinary media place approach follows changes and dependencies between mediatization of tourism places and changes in the resilience of tourism places. The role of mediatization and its significance for changes in places are put at the centre of the analysis. The approach assumes that a tourist place is constituted as a verb that is constantly created and recreated in a process. Additionally, resilience in places must also be conceptualised ontologically as a fluid concept that evolves over time. To understand sudden and long-term changes in tourism place resilience, special attention must be given to nodes or flows of information that connect the media systems and constitute places. Further, the article concludes that resilience is moulded by the politics of media practices. An interdisciplinary approach brings new answers to complex questions that cannot be solved from a single disciplinary perspective.