Christina CAVALIERE , Colorado State University Human Dimensions of Natural Resources , United States
Julia BRANSTRATOR , Colorado State University Human Dimensions of Natural Resources , United States
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused evidence of bioregional power redistribution. Infinite growth in a finite system is impossible and thus regenerative tourism is unattainable within neoliberal growth paradigms. Connections between time-space compression and climate change within dominant tourism models have spurred societal and ecological ills demanding social change (Cavaliere, 2017). The COVID-19 pandemic has unearthed radical potential for challenging neocolonial power dynamics of time and space within tourism systems to realign bioregional realities through biomimicry of Earth's capacities. Thus, this research proposes the future of sustainable tourism may embrace re-expansion of time and space within planning as necessary for regeneration.
Situating concepts of time-space re-extension (Dickinson & Peeters, 2014) and degrowth (Milano et al., 2021), we pose a movement of decomposition in tourism embodying radical restructuring of planning for times of reprieve in destination life cycles. Just as farmers lay fields to fallow, social-ecological regeneration follows planning time and space for decomposition. Biomimicry, reflecting nature’s design, may normalize such principles modeled after social-ecological and decolonial theory (Stinson, 2021) in tourism planning.
Decomposition in tourism opens an area of research aligning with diverse degrowth economic models for tourism planning and appropriate destination life cycles (Cavaliere & Ingram, 2021). We position degrowth and decomposition as aligned with post-pandemic destination management if restructured and reconceptualized to embrace time-space re-expansion for social, economic, and ecological rest. By accepting and actualizing nature’s cyclical and bioregional principles into planning and management, the authors pose decomposition in tourism takes a bold step in confronting and decolonizing tourism by dismantling neocolonial time-space compression and growth paradigms.
Mots clés : regenerative|decomposition|degrowth|biomimicry|decolonization
A103463CC