The principal aim of the study is to examine the relationship between collective and individual identities and the production and consumption of hospitality. The thesis develops an ecological approach to hospitality that is simultaneously social and spatial; hospitality is understood as both process and context where social relationships and identities are articulated. It is argued that different ecologies of hospitality represent specific social orders and networks of relationships where hosts and guests simultaneously produce and consume their hospitality spaces. The study re-evaluates the experience of hospitality through a critical examination of the potential roles and/or functions of the hosts and guests. Drawing on an extended ethnographic case study, and a series of illustrative cases, the thesis develops four lines of inquiry: First, because commercial venues are characterised by fragmentary occupation, the study examines the basis for association and disassociation among hosts and guests through the notion of proximity. Second, the study illustrates how common understandings (myths) are produced through performative and semiotic strategies inside and outside the hospitality contexts. These myths act as the ideological focal points around which potential participants gather but are also part of exclusionary practices that reflect social positions and practices of identification. Third, the thesis examines the specific roles of hosts and guests in producing hospitality ecologies. This is simultaneously concerned with the performative strategies of hosts and guests within the hospitality context and the potential roles of guests as marketing agencies. Specific emphasis is placed on the power relationship between hosts and guests in producing a social order within hospitality space. Lastly, I argue that boundaries and exclusion are an essential part of hospitality production and consumption. The thesis illustrates the significance of exclusionary practices of potential participants, and those dissenting, in producing hospitality ecologies.

While it is widely accepted that people travel not for the sake of travel, but in order to do various things, the relationship between travel and everyday practices is not well understood. My research project investigates the underexplored and dynamic relationship between everyday practice and travel, focusing in particular upon how the multiple mobilities of people, objects, images and skills condition and constrain performances of practices. In this work, I incorporate and extend concepts from theories of practice (Schatzki, Bourdieu, Reckwitz, Shove), the new mobilities paradigm (Sheller and Urry), anthropology (Ingold) and time-geography (Hagerstrand). Drawing upon semi-structured qualitative interviews and participant observation of bird watching and patchwork quilting, as well as literature on leisure walking and Ashtanga yoga, I explore the interactions between situated performances of leisure and the circulation of the elements that-make up each practice, showing for instance how the objects of leisure change participants' networked travelling. In addition to offering compelling proof of how people do not independently choose, but are rather compelled to travel. this thesis demonstrates how travel is the collective product of people and practices. and confirms the importance of relational arid practice-specific understandings of travel. By theorizing travel as not only general movement through objective space, but also networked circulations of practice-specific elements, this research provides concepts and approaches that can be taken up in the future to re-frame the challenges of curbing unsustainable travel and widening participation in socially desirable practices. This research has been gratefully supported by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom, British Sociological Association Support Fund, Lancaster University F ASS POR Conference Travel Fund, William Ritchie Travel Fund Grant, and Lancaster University Department of Sociology Travel Grant.

Various research studies have analysed the relationship between film and tourism and the effect of film on destinations and destination image. Destination managers are aware of the potential of film on destination awareness and promotion. Films can offer destinations a promotion viewed by millions in worldwide audiences in a short period of time. As film provides enhanced images through special effects and picture-perfect camera angles, as well as the effect of movie stars, it can be extremely powerful in creating and developing destination image, and potentially attracting people to visit a place. In semiotics, film is made of signs which are in different forms (visual, sound, lighting, the use of camera, and editing) in order to create meanings. However, whilst people see the same film, they may or may not make the meaning in the same way. This study attempts to use Peirce's semiotics theory in order to analyse the potential meanings of filmic signs (visuals, sounds, lighting, and the use of camera) and codes (film editing) and the consequent effect on destination image. Three films are selected that are shot in and represent Thailand, and an exploration is made of individuals' interpretation of the films using a semiotic approach applied in two rounds of qualitative interviews. The first round of interviews (IR1) is conducted in the field with participants who have experience of visiting Thailand, and the second round (IR2) is conducted with participants who have not visited Thailand The findings of this research show that the three selected films have an effect on destination image in three different stages (generating new images; highlighting existing images; and shaping existing images) and different dimensions (cognitive and affective image; positive and negative image; and unique image). Additionally, the factors that influence the perception of destination image are influenced by cultural background, personal experience, and vicarious experience through the characters. Lastly, with regard to behavioural intention to visit Thailand, the research shows that the films do not have strong influence on decision making to visit Thailand among the participants from IR1. On the other hand, the participants from IR2 are particularly attracted to visit Thailand by unique images they perceive from the films. The results of this study contribute to academic understanding , methodology and practice. From the theoretical point of view, this research contributes to the study of destination image. From the methodology perspective, the research contributes to the application of semiotics study in tourism. Lastly, the findings of the research suggest practical contributions for policy makers in Thailand

This study interrogates a number of issues in the knowledge field of destination image. In particular, conventional practices of deconstructing destination image arc challenged, and the tourist-centric focus of previous literature is also questioned in its neglect of the resident population as one of the core stakeholder groups at the destination. Thus, this study attempts to investigate destination image from a fresh perspective. London is chosen as the researched location where mental perceptions of international tourists and local resident; of the city as a leisure destination are examined. Although London has well-communicated images on the global stage, subtle differences between the two populations are identified. The inquiry of destination image as a subjective topic is emphasised in this study. This represents the challenge to duly reflect the perceptions of the researched populations. Therefore, this study implements a mixed-method research strategy with the use of Q-sort as a tool for advancing the development of image scales. The results help to strengthen the validity and reliability of the questionnaire survey in second phase of the research In terms of data analysis, factor analysis is employed in this study to identify the underlying dimensions of London's destination image. One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is also used to compare the significance of the results among social-demographic sub-groups. Moreover, Independent Samples t-Test is conducted to detect whether significant image differences exist among the tourists and the residents. The findings to issues raised by the study can be grouped into three. First, in Methodological terms, the study demonstrates a manageable technique that is able to reflect the subjectivity of research respondents in relating to destination image. Secondly, the findings identify subtle yet important similarities and differences between the images of the destination held by international tourists and local residents. Thirdly, the study points out the significance that destination image has for people's support for tourism.

Is everything political? Is 'the political' the ground on which we establish laws and policies? Ever since Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political (1922), these questions concerning 'the political' have dominated the debate in political philosophy. This dissertation begins with this debate by studying the totalising and unsustainable political metaphysics of Schmitt. By operating a displacement, the question of the possibility of an 'outside' in the political metaphysics of Carl Schmitt is transformed when reading the two French philosophers Gilles De1euze and N1ichel Foucault. Deleuze and Foucault help us to move away from the political voluntarism found in Schmitt to what we call 'involuntary politics'. In chapter 2, we revisit Heidegger's question 'what is called thinking?' that was so essential to Deleuze but find that Deleuze and Heidegger answered the question differendy. While Heidegger answered this political question by the statement 'we are not yet thinking' and that it is the duty of philosophers to 'think', for Deleuze, thinking can happen in many -different spheres (in cinema for instance) as well as in politics. A politics of thinking is for Deleuze, for instance when he claims that the Left wants people to 'think', a way to be disposed to receive the event. This involuntary politics does not imply a resignation to the status quo: stupidity is both the absence of thought as well as the origin of all thought for Deleuze. In chapter 3, we demonstrate that Michel Foucault's politics was already developing in his early writings on literature, and that we cannot ignore the literary debt that Foucault's political theory owes to his conceptualisation of the role of literature in society. For Foucault, literature is capable of creating a space that reflects, diagnoses and subverts politics; therefore, while literature enjoys a position external to politics, it is however not autonomous from politics. Finally the thesis turns to the problem of travel; the hypothesis guiding this last part is that travel presents itself as an almost all-too-obvious example (or a paradigm) of the outside of the political. Yet travel meets anthropology, and the questions of contemporary tourism that inhabit our modernity are also the subject of many anthropologists (Marc Auge, Jean-Didier Urbain, Rachid Amirou). But anthropologists also ask questions about nature and culture that find resonance in the project of travel, and one cannot fully understand the purpose of travel and tourism without taking seriously the idea that the anthropologist is a professional traveller. In chapter 4, we deconstruct the commonly accepted opposition between travel and tourism to find in contemporary critical anthropological thought, in chapter 5, the conditions of possibility of contemporary travel. The interesting element of travel is that it is symptomatic of our contemporary social world, to the extent that the following question haunts the thesis: is travel the outside of politics? In chapter 5, Descola's controversial table of the four ontologies allow us to conclude this dissertation with both concrete (since it is based on ethnographic works) and speculative arguments about ontological breaks, both the difficulty and the richness of an individual voyage from one ontology to another as well as the transformation of a single ontology, since these ontologies are far from being stable, ahistorical and fixed. What are the political consequences of thinking the world as being composed of a multiplicity of worlds? This raises problems about cultural and ontological relativism that will be discussed in the conclusion of chapter 5.

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This thesis is a comparative study in a type of town. In it, two factors are of outstanding importance, the distribution of non-resort population and the presence or absence of unified land-ownership, and development. The first factor largely accounts for the distribution and size, of resorts and the relative importance of(a)the residential and holiday resort functions and(b)period and day visitors. The second factor accounts for the survival of the majority of 'select' resorts, and for their, form and land-use pattern. Nineteenth century town planning is probably best represented in the seaside resorts. The commercial core of resorts is characteristically located immediately behind the 'frontal strip'. Its precise form and location has been greatly influenced by the pre-resort road and settlement pattern, and by the site of the railway station. Several resorts possess a better/poorer side structure which is reflected in their residential and accommodation patterns and in the form and functional differentiation of the core. Distinctive growth features are (a) separate estate development along the coast, (b) linear development along the coast, and (c) a common looseness of form up to 1850. The pre-resort settlement pattern and topography have greatly influenced the shape of resort In the analysis of accomodation patterns, a fundamental distinction must be made between early villas and terraces that were not necessarily tied to the sea front and later hotels and boarding houses that were. Estate boundaries often form significant divides in the accommodation pattern. Post office statistics are used to show the size and rhythm of the holiday season, also the varying relative importance of the holiday and residential resort functions. The resort is characterized by its Front. In this respect the presence or absence of frontal trading is highly significant.

A complete view of cultural tourism requires perspectives on both its economic aspect and its cultural dimension. This thesis presents the first cultural tourist taxonomy in the literature, which classifies the various types of cultural tourists by using fundamental distinctions based on economic theory. It also explains the necessity of classifying cultural tourists into those six well-defined categories, and why it should only be six. Building on McKercher and du Cros (2002), it models the causes and measures the consequences of cultural tourism, and develops a framework for evaluating the economic and cultural impacts caused by cultural tourist attractions. The method of evaluating the economic impact of cultural tourist attractions is based on the causal chain model, and it has improved the approach used in Femandez-Young and Young (2008) and Young et al (2010), which attributes to an attraction the amount of tourist expenditure at the destination caused by the existence of the attraction. The method of measuring the cultural impact is a new contribution to the literature, as this study provides a way to quantify the complex concept of cultural impact, using the ideas of meta-preferences and preference formation (Sen, 1977; 1983; 2002). This research has succeeded in developing a theoretically-based and practically applicable method for measuring and combining the economic and cultural impacts of cultural attractions. The methods have been applied to two cultural attractions in Nottingham: Nottingham Contemporary and the Galleries of Justice. The collected empirical results have demonstrated the feasibility and practicability of the evaluation method based on the new taxonomy. The combined evaluation method enables policy-makers to evaluate comprehensively the overall impact of each attraction and locate the attraction in the cultural space by taking both economic and cultural impacts into account.

The growth of mass tourism has placed great pressure on British seaside destinations, and has contributed to the social costs experienced by the resident population via symptoms of changing perceptions, attitudes and behaviour towards tourism, and the presence of higher crime rates. This thesis examines the social reality experienced by residents, and determines the impacts of tourism-related crime upon two tourist communities which are experiencing high levels of crime. The comparative study of a British seaside resort and a coastal town reveals that tourism communities are influenced by individual resident opinions. Simultaneously these communities influence resident perception and behaviour towards tourism-related crime, and it is through this exchange process, that evidence of destination specific criteria has emerged. The research established that the resort community found commonality through the mutual gaze, whilst the coastal community formed closed perceptions of deviant activities through discord and the local gaze. The study concludes by arguing that a destination offering a hedonistic lifestyle will not necessarily have higher crime rates than other safer destinations. This is due to the widespread implementation of crime prevention methods in the resort, and the lack of deterrents established in the coastal town. Therefore there may be nothing criminogenic about these particular destinations. Instead, collective community perception, digressed through crime talk, has influenced community crime interpretation and individual resident evaluation of the tourism industry.