Rapid commodification of the human-environment relationship and the accompanying touristification, displacement, and dispossession have generated considerable outrage and protests in various spatial contexts in the recent past, creating increasing political pressure for action. Media attention, however, has only reflected in geographic tourism research and political ecology with a delay.
We are witnessing times of multiple crises -first the global financial crisis of 2008 and now overlapping crises such as pandemics, wars, and climate change- that have generated a profusion of accounts of the social and economic benefits and advantages of nature. The discursive framing of the commodification of the environment and nature has turned a cause into a presumed solution. This is in contrast to the fact that the disruptive speed of the dynamics in e.g. nature conservation and tourism result in displacement and dispossession and resistances show that this raises urgent social questions. The scientific community has responded with catch-up discourses, and the field has since diversified without resolving key research questions. The overlapping current crises could represent another turning point and bring about an intensified commodification of the environment and nature, especially by revitalizing economic growth through tourism. This explicitly addresses both material and immaterial aspects of the human-environment relationship.
The session will take up this theoretical problem and socio-spatial processes and implications and discuss the following questions at the intersection of geographic tourism research and political ecology:
– To what extent do previous approaches to displacement and dispossession help to critically grasp and reflect on the multi-layered facets of the commodification of the environment for and through tourism?
– What perspectives and tools frame and shape the process of commodification?
– What approaches and tools support alternative pathways to environmental and natural commodification?
– What methods help operationalize commodification empirically?
– What role does tourism play in the commodification of the environment and nature?
-What can we learn from protests against the commodification of the environment for and by tourism in theoretical terms, what new views of social justice do they express, and how do these find their way into new policy ideas for managing tourism?
We invite contributions that address the issues of the commodification of the environment and nature outlined above from theoretical, conceptual, or empirical perspectives. Contributions from different regions and perspectives and especially related to tourism research and political ecology are welcome We plan a 90 minutes session with four presentations (15 minutes each) followed with Q&A and a final discussion.

Angela Hof (1); Nora Müller (2); Fernando Sabaté-Bel (3); Alejandro Armas-Díaz (4)
(1) Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg (Austria), (2) Universitat de les Illes Balears (Spain), (3) Universidad de La Laguna (Spain), (4) Universität Leipzig (Germany)

 
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