NS29 Session 4

29th Nordic Symposium on Tourism and Hospitality Research
Shaping mobile futures: Challenges and possibilities in precarious times

21-23 September 2021

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Title: Circular Economy, Circularity Paradigm, and Local Space

Organisers: Lucia Tomassini and Elena Cavagnaro 

Affiliation: NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences

Description

The global crisis we have been experiencing due to the COVID-19 emergency is challenging our perception of the global and local context in which we live, travel, and work. This crisis is spreading novel uncertainties about the future of our world but – at the same time – it is also setting the ground to rethink the future scenario of local and global mobilities. We explore how the COVID-19 global crisis has been prompting us to rethink the space inside and outside tourism and hospitality by re-focusing on the local dimension. In this session we aim at exploring the role that the local dimension, circular economy, and circular regenerative processes can play in the future of tourism & hospitality and mobilities. The idea of ‘circularity’ is an ancient archetype that human beings have used through the centuries to make sense of life on Earth, of the biological processes of our ecosystem, and of the cyclic nature of material and spiritual life. The Circular Economy – together with the circularity paradigm - appears a promising driver for critically rethinking the sustainability and the future of tourism, hospitality, and mobilities. The presence of a Circular Economy in the socio-relational space of tourism and hospitality activates circular regenerative processes that create a multiplicity of novel relations, connections and networks among stakeholders. In tourism destinations, a Circular Economy approach can stimulate forms of green mobility as well as design tourism experiences grounded in the local dimension and in the geographical proximity. The future development of a Circular Economy in tourism and hospitality can prompt the re-thinking of the whole structure of services creating value via multiple inclusive regenerative loops, taking place in the dimension of the ‘local’. 

Abstracts