The geography of tourism: an analysis of the United Kingdom’s bibliographic production since 1960

Abstract

Given the volume and dispersion of published material on the topics of tourism and recreation, the bibliography included is necessarily selective rather than exhausitve. Moreover, in view of the close relationship which the subject bears to other disciplines, the analysis has not been limited only to texts by geographers or in geographical sources. In fact, the inherently interdisciplinary nature of recreation studies is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the United Kingdom.

The analysis resumes the different topics of study, thus making it possible to trace the evolution of the subject of recreation from a descriptive and analytical approach in its infancy in the 1960s to a more synthetic one combined with a search for the understanding of processes and a body of theory to explain recreation patterns and facilitate predictions on the one hand, and the emergence of methodologically opposed perception studies on the other.

The annotated bibliographic list includes reviews of leisure and recreation studies, full-length general texts, publications of value for their methodological and theoretical implications or contribution in terms of insight, publications which contribute to the cataloguing of recreation resources and demand, and to recreation planning, pioneer studies, and publications on rural, coastal, urban, winter recreation and overseas topics.

Important gaps -especially in terms of concept and theory- still exist, and the situation is complicated by the constraints of agency dominated research, which have undoubtedly restricted and channelled progress in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. In fact, geographical experts in the field are pessimistic about achieving research goals and goso far as to suggest that the geographical contribution to recreation and leisure studies and policy is in jeopardy, unless a reassessment of the role and the approach of geography is undertaken in order to incorporate it adequately in the multidisciplanary field of leisure study.