Geographical-cultural contributions to the study of tourism in local communities

Abstract

Considering the discussion about the effects of tourism upon communities and their local culture, this study has as its main goal to identify possible contributions of cultural geography. This issue may be discussed academically in tourism studies, and in doing so contributing with both theoretical and practical reference to future researches about tourism transformation on local communities. The research methodology was based upon bibliography on cultural geography, humanistic geography, geography representations, and on the area of tourism knowledge in its epistemological interface. The preliminary results present studies that try to clarify the epistemological discussion inherent to tourism as well as the opening to other currents of scientific thought such as the phenomenology, which appears also in the epistemological references of cultural geography and will be the common link to the analyses hereby planned. In second instance, some aspects of the development path of cultural geography studies and its theoretical and methodological currents are presented; afterwards reflections about possible contributions of the geographical dimension to the study of tourism. The contribution of cultural geography to this paper signals the need of emphasizing the studies of humanistic phenomenological basis and its developments in the researches on the perceptions of residents of places where tourists are received, in relation to their living spaces.