The Sphere of Tourism Resilience

Abstract

The concept of resilience offers a coherent interpretation of linked human and environmental processes, and is increasingly accepted as a framework for understanding world systems. Resilience theory was developed in the early 1970s to model fluctuations in ecological systems, and was later applied to linked social-ecological systems. It has been explored in a range of anthropogenic contexts, including recent applications to tourism. Resilience is related to vulnerability approaches, popular amongst development practitioners, and has roots in complexity science. Tourism is a good example of a complex adaptive system and, as Farrell and Twining-Ward (2004) remarked, lends itself to the integrative, interdisciplinary and non-linear approach to interpreting the world which is fundamental to resilience. Applied to tourism systems, resilience explains the deeper forces underlying Butler's ‘Tourism Area Life-Cycle’, proposed in 1980 when tourism destination development was thought to progress in a linear fashion. Later versions of the model proposed a ‘rejuvenation’ stage, but the resilience concept goes further in explaining the cyclical and complex nature of systems, based on recovery from perturbation and the accumulation of various forms of capital which allow faster renewal and stronger structures. This paper explains the cycle and applies it to tourism in Asia, drawing on research into World Heritage Sites, community-based tourism and recovery from the Asian tsunami. Although resilience and complexity science are inherently anti-reductionist, factors underlying resilient systems are identified in order to link the conceptual discussion to a real world realm and formed into a model termed ‘the Sphere of Tourism Resilience’.