Circuits of Tourism: (Re)producing the Place of Rotorua, New Zealand

• Main Author: Ateljevic, Irena
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: ResearchSpace@Auckland 1998
• Subjects: New Zealand; Pacific; Northern Finland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/858

Restricted Item. Print thesis available in the University of Auckland Library or may be available through Inter-Library Loan. The creation of meaning and experiences is becoming a key avenue for capital accumulation, with leisure and tourism at the forefront of this trend. The identities of geographically defined places, namely tourist destinations" are endlessly (re)invented, (re)produced, (re)captured and (re)created by the simultaneous coexistence of global and local forces. The culture of consumption is commodified for capital gain, as places around the globe compete with each other in order to construct difference and attract now extremely mobile capital and consumers who, with as little as two weeks of vacation and only a few thousands dollars to spend, ean get anywhere from the Santa Clause Village in Northern Finland to 'exotic' beaches somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. In so doing, tourism activity not only gives shape to the land but also produces meanings and different representations. Tourism promotional literature creates and projects powerful social, cultural and psychological meanings of place, increasing and reproducing its value. For their part, consumers collect, read, interpret, compare and communicate these meanings (re)producing processes of place (re)construction. This dialectic between the production of consumption and the consumption of production which is enabled by processes of negotiated (re)productisn is considered in terms of 'circuits of tourism'. Restricted Item. Print thesis available in the University of Auckland Library or may be available through Inter-Library Loan.