SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Ecotourism is one example of a new networked pattern of social life indicative of increasing global mobilities. Through global travel, and the extension of ecotourism, destinations in the global periphery are being transformed into global places to play. The ways that places in the South are redefined and recreated as global leisure sites are clear in how visitors from the North talk about their chosen destinations and the multiple roles that they perform while on vacation.1 The global places to play examined here can be seen as discursively constituted through ecotourist talk, and recreated through tourists’ performances and practices. It also highlights the multiple narratives of nature and culture contained within the ways ecotourists talk about their chosen destination and host culture (see Macnaghten and Urry 1998).