Teaching about sustainable tourism

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Teaching about sustainable tourism?

• Professor Pete Burns
• With
• Dr Marina Novelli
• Centre for Tourism Policy Studies
• University of Brighton

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multiple perspectives on tourism (i)
Performance1 acting out the tourist gaze and
seeing there
Mobility2 people on the move and going there
Co-presence3 temporary relationships of being
there
1 Coleman, S. and Crang, M. eds. 2002 2 John
Urry (various dates) 3 Shangyang Zhao (2003)
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Two areas of sustainability

• Sustainable livelihoods (community-based tourism,
  local clusters and networks)
• Environmentally sustainable futures (primarily
  climate change)

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Whose side are YOU on?

• Tourism production and knowledge are not value
  free
• Tourism knowledge develop in an institutional or
  environmental vacuum
• The traditional binary divide of tourism as
  business or problem is not sufficiently
  nuanced

1 2 From an idea by Michael Hall 2005)
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Tourism education

• CENTOPS explicitly frames tourism within social
  sciences theory and reflects on how tourism
  knowledge is used
• Tourism production is predicated on human
  interaction with the natural environment
• Introducing environmental concerns raises issues
  of equity, social justice and security as well as
  environmental sustainability

2 3 From an idea by Michael Hall 2005)
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Sustainability linked to ethics values

• tourism uses and (abuses?) landscapes,
  townscapes, culturescapes, and the lives of
  others (ethnoscapes) as part of its core product
• Such relationships require sensitive individual
  social responsibility and complex corporate
  social responsibility

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Specifics content/ approaches

• Community based tourism
• Development studies/ anthropology/ visual
  sociology
• Tourism as vector and victim of climate change
• The UG brochure for SSM is the only UoB UG course
  that specifically refers to sustainable
  development the overarching theme of
  sustainability explores the socio-cultural
  economic and environmental issues and impacts
  related to tourism

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More specifics

• 32 of SSM modules claim to encourage adoption of
  a different value/ attitude towards others/ the
  future
• In SSM tourism students talked in detail and
  enthusiastically about what sustainable
  development means to them as members of the local
  community, in their work and family lives and as
  future professionals

Jenny Elliots research into ESD at UoB)
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(ESD) Quotes from tourism students

• You never know what it really means so you cant
  really get the concept and apply it to something
  that really makes sense
• I think one of the main problems with this
  sustainability thing is that many people use it
  as a buzzword but they dont really do anything
• Companies tend to use it sort of as an advert
  because it sounds good and people believe them
• They put it in their annual reports and all this
  as companies, but they dont really do
  anythingthey dont distribute wealth in a
  sustainable manner
• Its not just companies, its every level of
  society. The government does it all the time,
  sets unobtainable goals for 50 years time
• If I go on holiday now, to some remote place,
  Ill make sure I dont just drink a can of coke,
  cos the money will just run off somewhere else,
  Ill try and buy something locally sourced just
  try and help out

Jenny Elliots research into ESD at UoB)
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Quote about the students

• the focus groups (particularly SSM) revealed
  sustainable reflection on behalf of students
  concerning ways in which sustainable development
  challenged their own values and social and
  environmental behaviours as well as decision
  making on behalf of other stakeholders

Jenny Elliots research into sustainable
education at UoB)
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Be careful what you wish for

• we would welcome a good, deep, bloody recession
  for 12 to 18 months. We need one if we are going
  to see off some of this environmental nonsense
• Michael OLeary, CEO, Ryanair (2008)

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Literature tells us If we want things to stay
as they are, things will have to change
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo (The
Leopard) 1958