CRACKING THE CANYON WITH THE AWESOME FOURSOME - REPRESENTATIONS OF ADVENTURE TOURISM IN NEW-ZEALAND

The authors focus on the rise of adventure tourism in New Zealand and suggest that the growth of adventure-tourism attractions is related to important transformations in the sociocultural geographies of the pla ces concerned. Three issues are addressed: first, the increasing impor tance of adventure-tourism facilities, practices, and subcultures, whi ch have interconnected with the social spatialisation of places and la ndscapes; second, the ways in which adventure tourism transcends the m etaphor of the tourist 'gaze', and suggests attention to the embodimen t of tourist practice; and third, the implications for an understandin g of nature-society relations inherent in representational texts used to advertise adventure tourism.