Tourism As Geopolitical Strategy: State Action, Soft Power and Ordinary Practices and Repertoires in International and Domestic Tourism

Tourism is a major issue in our contemporary - post-industrial, post material and globalized - societies. Traditionally tourism has been linked to development. It was an attractive to peripherical economies in their state-building process because of the low level of investment required and its capacity to generate jobs. In developed countries tourism deals with a complex system crossing over different layers and levels, where no more the State is the sole (or privileged) actor to perform geopolitics. A more diffuse process takes place and different actors, practices, discourses are mixed in order to create a narrative regarding the geopolitical process of tourism, shifting from the Nation-State context to a more fluid and ordinary context of daily life. Considering the post covid adjustments, the Ukraine war, and all the implications and challenges of the current globalized economies and societies, this session aims to discuss the role of international tourism in the contemporary context, particularly focusing on how tourism is used by developing countries to connect world system economy. To accomplish this task, are welcome papers which deal with one of the following topics:

• Classical geopolitics, state-building, state actors and public policies on tourism;
• Critical geopolitics, ordinary practices and discourses, non-state actors and imaginaries and soft power on tourism;
• Multi-level approach, different scales, spaces and crossing over systems, actors and institutions on tourism geopolitics;
• Wars, crisis, borders, unsafety and disruptive contexts and practices on tourism geopolitics.