FRAMING TOURISM GEOGRAPHY: NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND

• Reviews contemporary tourism geography within the context of knowledge circulation, production and reading processes.
• Links debates and issues in tourism geography to those in geography, tourism studies and higher education.
• Examines issues of academic marginality at various scales.

Tourism geography is a significant contributor to the study of tourism, yet is generally perceived as marginal to geography. The review frames contemporary tourism geography by examining it in the context of geographical knowledge processes, changes to the environment within which it is situated, issues of marginality, and the ongoing significance of major binaries in geographic thought including physical/human geography and applied/theoretical geography. These frames are relevant to the wider domain of tourism studies as well. Although noting the dangers of invented disciplinary traditions and heritage as a result of the writing of reflective reviews and texts, the article argues that tourism geography has been a significant contributor to the bringing together and hybridity of geographic binaries, especially in the development of more critical applied geographies of environmental change.