Doing the Right Thing in Tourism: a Finnmark Case Study

Abstract

This thesis considers how conflicting ideas of the acceptable and unacceptable in tourism are conceptualised by tourism actors. A flexibly designed, meaning-based case study of a small-scale tourism business in a peripheral area of Finnmark is developed in successive stages. Theoretical consideration is given to tourism’s present meaning(s) relative to past understandings, and how tourism worlds can be imagined through opposing stories that both connect with, and diverge from, one another. This leads on to questions of how the structured consequences of tourism actors’ position in the world determine how they see the world. The implications of how place and identity meanings can change for tourism actors are considered. This study concludes by identifying how place and identity mean- ings can shift for tourism actors. It also identifies how meanings that may seem to conflict are interrelated and (re)produced. Key words: conflict, meaning(s), (un)acceptable, story, world(s)