Tourism and the Spectre of Unlimited Change

Book excerpt: This insightful volume forms a sequel to Living with Tourism: Negotiating Identities in a Turkish Village, tracking the tourism development and associated social change in the small town of Göreme, in Turkey’s Cappadocia region, within the last two decades. Carefully crafted chapters explore the significant changes in the tourism forms, place identity, and social relations in the town. On one level, tourism business and Göreme’s ‘living with tourism’ has matured and thrived: the place has, due largely to its booming hot-air ballooning sector, become an ‘Instagram sensation’; some Göreme families have become very wealthy; and tourism has enabled many local women, as well as men, to ‘craft new selves’. On another level, new inequalities and tensions constantly emerge: some families remain poor; gentrification and hotel developments in the older ‘cave-house’ neighbourhoods have led to the disintegration of community; and many people, including those who are now wealthy, talk often with a sense of nostalgia and regret about what Göreme has become. This book is a groundbreaking longitudinal account, recounting the story of the place and people of Göreme ‘still living with tourism’ after 40 years, showing how broader contemporary tourism trends, such as changes in tourism markets and use of digital technology, and increased security fears, manifest at the local level in tourism destinations. This book provides new insights for scholars of tourism, anthropology, geography, and social studies, who wish to gain a deeper understanding of this global phenomenon in the contemporary world.