SLOW TOURISM: EXPERIENCES AND MOBILITIES

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temporary forms of tourist practice will inspire further scholarly accounts about the relationship between tourism and technology. Tim Edensor: Geography and Environmental Management, Manchester Metropolitan University, Chester Street, Manchester M1 5GD, UK. E-mail Assigned 27 April 2012. Submitted 7 August 2012. Accepted 8 August 2012 doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2012.11.003 Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 40, pp. 444–446, 2013 Printed in Great Britain

SLOW TOURISM: EXPERIENCES AND MOBILITIES Edited by Simone Fullagar, Kevin Markwell and Erica Wilson. Channel View Publications 2012, xvi + 233pp. Price £23.96 Pbk. ISBN: 9781-84541-280-7 Dennis Conway Indiana University, USA This collection provides a mixture of viewpoints and empirical substantiations on the twin notions of slow tourism and slow travel. They are an alternative set of mobilities to the mass tourism juggernaut that advanced capitalism continues to favour. One quality of this collection is its global reach, in which contributions from ‘‘down-under’’ bring a much needed diversity and enrichment to the literature. The editors fulfill their goal that ‘‘this collection will add to the body of knowledge concerning this emerging tourism phenomenon’’ (p. 7). Chapter 1, by the editors, ‘‘Starting Slow: Thinking Through Slow Mobilities and Experiences’’ touches on the conceptual origins of the slow movement, including slow food, slow cities, and slow travel, but it perhaps assumes too much that readers will already be familiar with the notions. This minor concern aside, this introductory foray into slow tourism, slow travel, and sustainable tourism ideas and their overlapping themes as ‘‘alternative tourisms’’ does its job well, succinctly covering the topic. The structure of the book is described by the editors, together with brief synopses of the chapters in the remaining four sections. Titled ‘‘Positioning Slow Tourism’’, the first set of contributions dwells upon how slow mobilities are alternatives to fast, pressured lives and the frantic pace of contemporary living. Christopher Howard and Kevin Moore, respectively, reflect critically upon temporality and time-space constraints of daily living by evoking issues of wellness, well-being, and pleasure that surround slow travel, slow journeys, practices, and experiences. Pilgrimages are specifically brought into the picture as examples. Then, rounding out this section, Stephen Wearing, Michael Wearing, and Matthew MacDonald bring eco-tourism into their assessment of the commoditization of time and space, and of leisure, as global capitalism has come to rule everyone’s lives and livelihoods. To these advocates, slow eco-tourism has the

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potential to be a particularly appropriate genre of slow tourism that can link tourists and host communities and realize sustainable goals. The second set of papers deals with ‘‘Slow Food and Sustainable Tourism’’ in which Michael Hall leads off with a detailed and critical analysis of the slow food movement and its paradoxes in a globalizing world that is still in denial over the need for people to find sustainable solutions for the tourism and hospitality sectors. Two empirically-grounded contributions follow. Fabio Parasecoli and Paulo de Abreu e Lima, is a Brazilian case study situated in the coastal town of Paraty, which features a locally-organized ‘‘sustainable gastronomy program’’ in which slow tourists as visitors, guests, and co-producers can enjoy themselves more fully and comprehensively. Next, Margo Lipman and Laurie Murphy document an Australian case in which they focus upon the case of ‘‘Willing Workers in Organic Farms’’ (WWOOFers) to demonstrate that there are unconventional ways to connect sustainable food production with environmentally-friendly ways of slow travelling and slow living. The next set is entitled ‘‘Slow Mobilities’’, in which Simone Fullagar portrays women’s cycle touring in Australia as an alternative, hedonistic slow tourism experience, empirically substantiating her arguments with ethnographic observations. Marg Tiyce and Erica Wilson expand the Australian focus by documenting longterm travelers as ‘‘wanderers’’ in search of a slower pace that is more likely to offer senses of meaning, well-being, and life experience taken over lengthy periods of contemplation and self-satisfaction. The abandoned practice of hitch-hiking that flourished in Europe and North America in the 1960s and 1970s is revisited and viewed as a resurgent genre of ‘‘alternative mobility’’ by Michael O’Regan. Modern-day hitch-hikers appear to greatly value mobility as a means for making connections with like-minded others who are self-made, risky, relatively anarchic, and not at all sanctioned and regulated by conventional authorities or institutions. Julia Fallon returns to the theme of slow mobilities, documenting the fit between slow tourism and canal travel. With its narrow boats, multiplicity of locks, and the slow and gently paced experiences of relaxation, narrow boating and walking along canals delivers a ‘‘slow’’ experience. The final set, ‘‘Slow Tourism Places’’, has five chapters, each one dealing with a remote or peripheral context, yet emphasizing different characterizations of the slow tourism experience that might be enjoyed, or embraced in such distant locales. The contextual and spatial identification of this set as place-related do not help this set’s coherence of message, however. They are a potpourri rather than a coherent set. Still, there are interesting insights on slow tourism’s potential for unique, peripheral, and out-of-the-way places. Suzanne de la Barre writes about the marketing of ‘‘Yukon time’’ and questions the appropriateness of slow travel’s portrayal as indigenous quaintness in northern Canada. This is followed by Meiko Murayama and Gavin Parker’s look at rural tourism’s needs in its assessment of slow and fast Japan. Dawn Gibson, Stephen Pratt, and Apisalome Movono focus on the ‘‘Tribewanted’’ project on the Pacific island of Vorovoro in Fiji, and examine how tourists experience sustainable food and consumption practices while participating in ‘‘slow community-building’’ with their hosts. Esther Groenendaal examines why Dutch tourism-lifestyle entrepreneurs have relocated to rural France in the hope of personally achieving a better fit between their own search for slow living, and the creativity, environmental suitability, and cultural ambiences there. Sagar Singh explores the significance of traditional and modern derivative forms of slow tourism such as pilgrimages and yoga tourism within Indian culture, and raises the time-honored question about Western misconceptions of Eastern practices such as yoga. A rather weak last Chapter 17, only six pages in length, is by the editors. It does not do the collection justice because it was not written as a concluding set of

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generalizations and findings. Readers, therefore, are deprived of the editors’ collective insights and thoughts. Despite this relatively minor concern, this collection is to be commended for its conceptual debates and widening of the optic, and for its recognition that slow tourism is an emerging tourism phenomenon with genuine promise and potential. Commendably, there are several exceptional contributions to be found here. Dennis Conway: Department of Geography, Student Building 301, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. E-mail Assigned 22 May 2012. Submitted 3 October 2012. Accepted 10 October 2012 doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2012.11.002 Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 40, pp. 446–448, 2013 Printed in Great Britain

TOURISM AND AUSTRALIAN BEACH CULTURES: REVEALING BODIES Christine Metusela and Gordon Waitt. Channel View Publications 2012, xxxi + 156pp. (figures, tables, maps, references). US $35.95 Pbk. ISBN: 978-1-8451-285-2 Douglas Booth University of Otago, New Zealand Products of cultural, political, economic, and social relationships, Australia’s beaches underwent profound changes around the beginning of the twentieth century. In Tourism and Australian Beach Cultures, Metusela and Waitt examine these changes in the Illawarra region of New South Wales. The pair makes a valuable contribution to the literature, especially in their analysis of the sexual presentation and public performances of surfbathers and sunbathers as they transformed the colonial beach, where bathers hid from public view, into a modern, sexually visible form. Tourism and Australian Beach Cultures is an attractive narrative of change. It begins in the nineteenth century when bathing for leisure was a private affair in which bathers sought secluded beaches or visited sex-segregated ocean baths. Segregated baths accustomed the public to semi-naked bathing while discourses of sport, health and medicine legitimized the practice. Local authorities defined Illawarra’s beaches as public bathing reserves in the early twentieth century and constructed them to discipline sexualized bathing bodies. Trains and motor vehicles facilitated mass tourism to the Illawarra, but tourism was not on the agenda of local councillors. They imagined the region as an industrial heartland and by privileging the coal and steel industries they reduced Illawarra’s beaches to sites for loading coal and disposing of sewage. The burgeoning surf lifesaving movement redefined Illawarra beaches. Surf lifesavers gave ocean bathing credibility and respectability and in so doing paved the