commodification and adventure in new zealand tourism（新西兰的商品化和冒险旅游）.pdfVIP

Commodification and Adventure in New Zealand Tourism Paul Cloke University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol BS8 1SS,UK Harvey C. Perkins PO Box 84, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand This paper discusses the ways in which the commodification of adventure in tourism has increasingly become implicated in the production and consumption of tourist places. It examines the notion of adventure in tourism and the changing nature of commodification in postmodern and ‘post-tourist’ times. The rise of adventure tourism in New Zealand is used as an example of how adventure has been commodified. A survey of tourist brochures for adventure tourism attractions in New Zealand reveals some of the particular characteristics of adventure which are being incorporated into commodity form for tourists. These characteristics include place, spectacle, embodied experience and memory. Although aware of the limitations of using textual evidence from brochures, the paper concludes that Best’s (1989)society of the commodity and the society of the spectacle are clearly significant in New Zealand. Sign exchange is also important in the commodification of adventure although it is concluded that places and practices are as yet rarely eclipsed by adventure signification. Introduction: The Importance of Commodified Adventure The ‘moulding [of] culture for tourism and tourists, and [the] moulding of tourism and tourists for culture’ (Craik, 1997: 122) has become a very significant nexus in the study of the economic and cultural transformation of places. This paper focuses on a particular facet of these moulding processes: the ways in which the commodification of adventure in tourism is increasingly implicated in the (re)production and consumption of tourist places. We argue that new forms of commodified adventure have become a crucially important part of contemporary tourism in some places. Using adventure tourism in New Zealand as