Accumulation by Symbolic Dispossession: Tourism Development in Advanced Capitalism

Bio

Diane M. Martin is a Professor of Marketing at RMIT  University, Melbourne, Australia. Her doctorl dissertation, Women, Work, and  Humor: Negotiating Paradoxes of Organizational Life, was honored with the  prestigious International Communication Association W. Charles Redding  Outstanding Dissertation Award. She is the recipient of the 2011 Outstanding  Scholarship Award at the University of Portland, the 2016 Gerald E. Hills Best  Paper Award of the American Marketing Association Entrepreneurial Special  Interest Group and the 2019 RMIT College of Business Award for Research Impact.  Prior to joining RMIT, she served as an Associate Professor at both Aalto  University and the University of Portland, and as visiting professor at the  University of Gothenburg. She is a Senior Fellow of the American Leadership  Forum. Her research employs ethnographic methods in relationships between  consumers, communities and culture. She is also researching marketing as a  source of solution to the problem of sustainability. Her scholarship is  published in numerous journals in marketing and communication, including Consumption,  Markets and Culture, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Journal of Applied Communication  Research, and Journal of Consumer Research. Diane is an Associate Editor  for the journal Consumption, Markets and Culture and co-author of the book Sustainable Marketing.

Abstract

This research examines the development of  tourism in the Lofoten Islands in the north of Norway to show how the operation  of symbolic capital transforms the political economy of space. For this  transformation to occur in advanced developed societies we argue that forms of  dispossession must be instituted, whereby existing economic, social and  cultural resources are transformed for the requirements of international  tourism. The resulting theory of accumulation by dispossession includes  symbolic dimensions, showing how the operation of symbolic power develops  international tourism markets. Symbolic power can be observed through ways that  different communities define territory intended for tourism development.  Considerations about the natural environment are drawn upon to justify  particular types of professionalised tourism development under the guise of  environmental protection and visitor safety. Symbolic power legitimises new  forms of commodification of both time and space to make  way for the possibility of marketized and professionalised tourism futures.