Call for Papers
Special issue on
Tourism Mobilities, Health and Wellbeing
Health, wellbeing and tourism are important components of the UN sustainable development goals while health, medical and wellness tourism have seen substantial market growth. The relationships between different types of touristic mobilities, wellbeing and health as well as its research status, development trends, opportunities and challenges require further examination. Although there is a growing academic interest in this topic, many studies are descriptive and lack a clear theoretical basis. There is therefore a need to explore the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of tourism mobilities in different geographical contexts in relation to health and wellbeing. This special issue takes the mobilities perspective (Hannam et al 2006) to understand the relationship between tourism, wellbeing and health. The mobilities turns in medical and health geographies, and cultural geography can provide some insights. In traditional health and medical geography studies, it has been recognized that place plays a crucial role in health and wellbeing. Early studies have focused on how place characteristics, understood as the compositional and contextual effects (Duncan et al., 1998), influence health and wellbeing (Michael et al., 2006). Recent studies have argued that instead of considering the place as a static, an activity based approach is promoted (Kwan, 2009). Research has further argued that wellbeing is relational, mobile and contested (Schwanen and Atkinson, 2015). Similarly, in cultural geography, the idea of therapeutic landscapes, as proposed by Gesler (1993) to explore the holistic connections between nature, self and health has drawn academic attention, resulting in significant research in the last two decades. Gatrell (2011, 2013) utilised the mobilities approach to re-examine the concept of therapeutic landscapes in terms of activity, sociality and context. This special issue therefore would like tourism geographies researchers to consider these recent studies in relation to novel touristic contexts. We invite contributions from a variety of disciplines and fields to submit the studies to this issue. The special issue will cover but not is limited to the following related topics:
1 Healthy environments, resilience, sustainability and tourism mobilities; 2. Wellness and spiritual tourism mobilities 3. Lifestyle mobilities and the care of the self 4. Mobile health practices of walking and cycling 5. Smart health technologies and mobilities 6. Relations with non-human mobilities in health travel 7. Medicalisation and the mobilities of health care 8. Aging and mobilities Key References
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Author Instructions
Abstracts proposals of 400-600 words containing (1) full author/s details (affiliation + email address), (2) five-six keywords and (3) around six guiding theoretical references are required:
Abstracts should be sent to Prof. Xu Honggang The School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-sen University [email protected] and Prof. Kevin Hannam The School of Tourism Management City University of Macao [email protected] Key Dates:
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