This article outlines a conceptual framework and research agenda for exploring the relationship between tourism and degrowth. Rapid and uneven expansion of tourism as a response to the 2008 economic crisis has proceeded in parallel with the rise of social discontent concerning so-called "overtourism." Despite decades of concerted global effort to achieve sustainable development, meanwhile, socioecological conflicts and inequality have rarely reversed, but in fact increased in many places. Degrowth, understood as both social theory and social movement, has emerged within the context of this global crisis. Yet thus far the vibrant degrowth discussion has yet to engage systematically with the tourism industry in particular, while by the same token tourism research has largely neglected explicit discussion of degrowth. We bring the two discussions together here to interrogate their complementarity. Identifying a growth imperative in the basic structure of the capitalist economy, we contend that mounting critique of overtourism can be understood as a structural response to the ravages of capitalist development more broadly. Debate concerning overtourism thus offers a valuable opportunity to re-politicize discussion of tourism development generally. We contribute to this discussion by exploring of the potential for degrowth to facilitate a truly sustainable tourism.
1We applied an intermediate disturbance-complexity approach to the land-use change of cultural 2 landscapes in the island of Mallorca from c. 1850 to the present, which accounts for the joint behaviour of 3 human appropriation of photosynthetic capacity used as a measure of disturbance, and a selection of land 4 metrics at different spatial scales that account for ecological functionality as a proxy of biodiversity. We 5 also delved deeper into local land-use changes in order to identify the main socioeconomic drivers and 6 ruling agencies at stake. A second degree polynomial regression was obtained linking socio-metabolic 7 disturbance and landscape ecological functioning (jointly assessing landscape patterns and processes).
The outbreak of the Great Crisis in 2008 has awakened the interest in the role of crisis within social sciences. Nevertheless, broadly speaking, tourism studies have given very little attention to the moments of crisis. In the case of the Balearic Islands, while there are important works on the historical evolution of the tourist space, those tend to consider crises as blank moments. For this reason, this article focuses on the role played by crises in the production of the Balearics’ space, by analyzing both moments of destruction and restructuring of the political economy. From the understanding of the different crises, from the Civil War to the present, we can conclude that the booms of the Balearic Islands are the indisputable fruit of those crises.
The colonization of Mallorca gave rise to a late-feudal agrarian society that evolved towards capitalism based on large estates owned by noblemen who hired large numbers of wage labourers from among smallholders living in agro-towns, the dispossessed remnants of a formerly wealthier peasantry. These well-off peasants originated from when the colonization frontier was open in the 13th and 14th centuries, but had been defeated when three peasant-plebeian revolts were crushed. Afterwards, Mallorca followed a latifundist transition towards agrarian capitalism similar to southern Italy or Spain, in sharp contrast with the middle-peasant paths seen in Catalonia or Valencia. The land rent rose, while agricultural wages fell from 1659 to 1800. Peasant families could not survive, and had to supplement wages with the products of their own plots. This set a socio-agroecological limit to growth in this agrarian class structure. The agrarian crisis at the end of the 19th century bankrupted the Mallorcan nobility. Bankers bought much of the land and sold it on as small allotments. This expanded the intensive cropping formerly limited to agro-town belts, giving rise to a new "peasantization". Despite their subordination, Mallorcan peasants had survived and created complex agroecological landscapes endowed with a rich biocultural heritage.
This article outlines a conceptual framework and research agenda for exploring the relationship between tourism and degrowth. Rapid and uneven expansion of tourism as a response to the 2008 economic crisis has proceeded in parallel with the rise of social discontent concerning so-called "overtourism." Despite decades of concerted global effort to achieve sustainable development, meanwhile, socioecological conflicts and inequality have rarely reversed, but in fact increased in many places. Degrowth, understood as both social theory and social movement, has emerged within the context of this global crisis. Yet thus far the vibrant degrowth discussion has yet to engage systematically with the tourism industry in particular, while by the same token tourism research has largely neglected explicit discussion of degrowth. We bring the two discussions together here to interrogate their complementarity. Identifying a growth imperative in the basic structure of the capitalist economy, we contend that mounting critique of overtourism can be understood as a structural response to the ravages of capitalist development more broadly. Debate concerning overtourism thus offers a valuable opportunity to re-politicize discussion of tourism development generally. We contribute to this discussion by exploring of the potential for degrowth to facilitate a truly sustainable tourism.
This chapter analyses the processes behind the restructuring of the retail landscape in the city of Palma, the capital city of Majorca (Spain), where tourist visitation is of nearly 12 million annually. Here, the transformation of retail shops is linked with the occurrence of overtourism and its contribution to commercial gentrification. First, it is hypothesized that Majorca's changing commercial structure and the impacts of overtourism have materialized in the form of (i) gentrification; (ii) the boutiquing of the main streets; and (iii) extending the boundaries of gentrification into the side and secondary streets. The second hypothesis is that a double phenomenon is occurring in these secondary streets. On the one hand, there is disinvestment and closure of local retail shops; and, on the other, reinvestment is converting them either into new gentrified shops or into dwellings.
Since the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis, Majorca has experienced an increase in tourism, which has been made possible partly by the expansion of short-term renting. Research on short-term rentals is a growing field in critical urban and tourism geographies. This paper contributes to these fields by examining the structure of actors involved in the development of short-term rentals and their power relations. Our case study focuses on the municipality of Pollença (Majorca, Spain). Pollença was chosen due to its status as one of the most noteworthy airbnbificated places in Europe and because of the number of holiday rentals in the municipality's rural areas. While a great deal of research has focused on rent gaps and gentrification caused by short-term rentals in cities, the rentier coalition associated with short-term rentals has been comparatively overlooked. We address who the rentiers of short-term rentals are, the power relations that lie behind short-term rentals, and how these rentiers form part of a locally based coalition that has the ability to adapt planning regulations to suit their own interests. We used mixed methods, including quantitative spatial analysis and qualitative analysis in the form of interviews with those who benefit locally from short-term rentals. Our qualitative approach further included in-depth fieldwork and activist research. We conclude that a powerful rentier growth coalition has corrupted democracy because the regulatory framework has been adjusted to satisfy their interests and the conversion of properties into holiday rentals has been done either illegally or on the verge of legality without strong legal consequences.
The unlimited economic growth that fuels capitalism's metabolism has profoundly transformed a large portion of Earth. The resulting environmental destruction has led to an unprecedented rate of biodiversity loss. Following large-scale losses of habitats and species, it was recognized that biodiversity is crucial to maintaining functional ecosystems. We sought to continue the debate on the contradictions between economic growth and biodiversity in the conservation science literature and thus invite scholars to engage in reversing the biodiversity crisis through acknowledging the impacts of economic growth. In the 1970s, a global agenda was set to develop different milestones related to sustainable development, including green-blue economic growth, which despite not specifically addressing biodiversity reinforced the idea that economic development based on profit is compatible with the planet's ecology. Only after biodiversity loss captured the attention of environmental sciences researchers in the early 2000s was a global biodiversity agenda implemented. The agenda highlights biodiversity conservation as a major international challenge and recognizes that the main drivers of biodiversity loss derive from economic activities. The post-2000 biodiversity agendas, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the post-2020 Convention on Biological Diversity Global Strategy Framework, do not consider the negative impacts of growth-oriented strategies on biodiversity. As a result, global biodiversity conservation priorities are governed by the economic value of biodiversity and its assumed contribution to people's welfare. A large body of empirical evidence shows that unlimited economic growth is the main driver of biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene; thus, we strongly argue for sustainable degrowth and a fundamental shift in societal values. An equitable downscaling of the physical economy can improve ecological conditions, thus reducing biodiversity loss and consequently enhancing human well-being.
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