Representations and identities in tourism map spaces

Tourism mars remain underexamined in geography. Despite recent trends in cr itical cartography and tourism studies that redefine the relationship betwe en space and representation, these geographic texts are rarely explored for their intertextual relationships with the spaces they claim to represent. In this article, we argue that tourism maps and other representations play an important role in the production of tourism spaces. We begin with an exa mination of the parallel trends in critical cartography and tourism studies and then push these intial theoretics further by integrating theories of i dentity, space and representation. We define tourism maps, spaces and ident ities as inter-related processes rather than final products. The creation o f maps as processes inevitably includes the ambiguities introduced in the p roduction of spaces and the formation of identities by changing social cont exts. These ambiguities are readable in maps and they permit us, and potent ially other may readers, to understand the spaces and identities of tourism in ways not fully circumscribed by a may's immediate production context an d purpose. To explore this theoretical argument further we read one tourism may for the inter-related, ambiguous and therefore contested processes rep roducing, but never fully fixing, tourism spaces and identities.