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Living the space of constraints: small tourism organizations in the Magdalen Islands facing the effects of climate change

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12:00 PM, Friday 4 Aug 2023 (30 minutes)

Climate change tends to be framed in long timescales by institutional actors. However, some territories are already facing the effects of climate change, particularly in island environments. As tourism plays an important role in these spaces, it is important to understand how humans and their tourism organizations are dealing with the effects of climate change (Scott & Gössling, 2022). To study the responses of tourism actors to these transformations, we intersect Henri Lefebvre's theory of the production of space (1974) with Bruno Latour's perspectives (2004, 2015, 2018, 2020). The first author allows us to deconstruct the production of a tourist space in three moments (lived space, conceived space, and perceived space). The second allows us to update Lefebvre's ideas by adding a moment that we call the space of constraints, where the agency of non-humans is realized. This theoretical approach enables us to take a critical look at the social dynamics in the production of tourist spaces, while highlighting the transformation of the critical zone that humans inhabit. An ongoing living lab project in the Magdalen Islands (Québec, Canada), the PACCT, made it possible to meet several people who work in tourism through semi-structured interviews and micro-workshops. Their islands are facing accelerated erosion, the disappearance of winter ice packs and an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The stories of these actors reveal the magnitude of these transformations, which are deeply affecting their professional and personal lives. Their experiences, their words and their emotions translate the space of constraints in the real world. We would like to present our theoretical framework and the preliminary results of our action research.

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