From: list-owner@mail.atlas-euro.org [mailto:list-owner@mail.atlas-euro.org] On Behalf Of James Johnson
Sent: mardi 13 janvier 2015 12:09
To: list@atlas-euro.org
Subject: ATLAS list
With the usual apologies for cross-posting
Members with an interest in tourism and transportation. We would like to invite the submission of abstracts for the following session at the Royal Geographic Society- Institute of British Geographers Annual International Conference 2015, 1st – 4th of September, Exeter. Please send abstracts of 200 words to james.johnson@sunderland.ac.uk by Tuesday the 12th February 2015.
“An ontology of tourism transport.”
ABSTRACT
An ontology of tourism transport.
Keywords: Tourism, transport, landscape, materiality, perception
With reference to the mobility turn in social sciences (Sheller and Urry, 2006), this tourism focused seminar will critically engage in cultural geography and spatial-cultural theory to discuss the morphology of diverse transport devices as socio-technical forms. The aim of the session is to raise a number of ontological questions as a collaborative debate, but will begin by unpacking how the embodied mobility of travelers can lead to enchantment, a sense of belonging and a search for the sublime in spaces demarcated for leisure purposes. This existentialist dialectic therefore seeks to dissect the nature of the quasi-cyborg as participating tourists engage in 'meaningful' mobility (Cresswell, 2006) with a device. It also acknowledges the prosthetic affect that kinesthetic relations between the body and object hybrid have during acceleration and arrest. By synthesizing the networks involved in the practices of mobile pleasure seeking thus, a critique of the traveler’s perception of motion based pursuits in tourism will be executed to develop new narratives around the social science of leisure transport. To echo Wylie ( 2009, p 284) on air travel: ‘The world was still an immense ball to which I was chained, but now it felt as if I could be un tethered, to float and fly…And this was because, for a time up there, it seemed I had never felt such love- such loss – before.’
To explore the ontology of tourism transportation in some depth, the seminar attention will not preclude looking at obvious means of mobility such as the naturally constrained liberties of running, walking and swimming, but moreover seeks to encourage a dialogue about the contemporary means by which post human travelers can now increase their speed, agility and skill using technological enhancements. By interrogating human connections with skiing apparatus, pulled rickshaws, wingsuits, space flight, bungee jumping, hydro cycles, gondolas, hangliders, snowboarding, cycling, hot air ballooning and so on, the consequences of the dynamic relationships that tourists have with the mobilizing object will be unpacked.
To conclude, due to the diverse practices of mobility that have emerged as a contemporary practice, this multi-disciplinary session will invite contributions from diverse schools of thought to explore the sensual, imaginative and material practices of movement.
Regards
James Johnson & Sharon Wilson