^aInternational Institute for Culture Tourism and Development, London Metropolitan University, Stapleton House, 277-281 Holloway Road, London N7 8HN, UK. Tel: 020 7133 3308; Fax: 020 71333 3082; E-mail: r.bianchir@londonmet.ac.uk; Website: http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/research-units/iictd/

¹is senior research fellow in the International Institute for Culture Tourism and Development at London Metropolitan University. He specialises in the sociology and anthropology of tourism development and heritage and has a particular interest in the politics of tourism, the international political economy of tourism, and the cultural politics of heritage.

Received 6 June 2006; Revised 6 June 2006.

Abstract

International tourism represents the apotheosis of consumer capitalism and Western modernity, based on an apparently seamless harmony between the free movement of people, merchandise and capital. However, as the growing insecurities engendered by the globalisation of terrorism and military interventionism, as well as targeted attacks on foreign tourists in certain parts of the world illustrate, the liberal calculus of unhindered mobility, political stability and the unfettered expansion of the market, which underpins the 'right' to travel, is, however, increasingly mediated by heightened concerns of risk and security. This paper will examine how the geopolitics of security and the neo-liberal expansion of the global market have begun to radically reshape the parameters of mobility and the environments in which tourism operates. In doing so, it analyses the manner in which international tourism has become intertwined with restricted notions of freedom associated with the intensification of market relations and consumerism upon which the expansion of contemporary tourist mobilities often depends.