TOURISM IN TURBULENT TIMES — TOWARDS SAFE EXPERIENCES FOR VISITORS by Jeff Wilks, Donna Pendergast and Peter Leggat (eds), Elsevier, Oxford, UK, 2006. No. of pages: 382. Hardbound GBP 58.99; EUR 84.95; USD 92.95, ISBN; 0-08-044666-3.

Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the ancient Quiché Maya, notes the existence in the Quiché language of the verb meaning ‘to die suddenly on the road’. There was indeed a time when ‘travel’ was widely associated with ‘travail’, a risky enterprise, expected to be long and arduous, and carrying the possibility of no return. With the industrialisation of travel and tourism, millions now travel ever more frequently and ever further afi eld, for both business and rec-reational purposes, and, arguably, there has never been a safer time to travel. Tourism in Turbulent Times seems, therefore, something of a misnomer for the title of this book — it is not the turbulence of our present era that is unprecedented, but rather our changing attitudes to risk, the assumption that even the most risk-taking behaviour will not have consequences, combined with the rise in liability litigation. As Wilks notes in his chapter reviewing current issues, ‘Tourism is about selling dreams’. One might ask whether it is not this that is the real problem and question whether or not it is respon-sible, ethical or wise for the travel and tourism industries to continue to promote this aim and the view of the world it implies.

This is not a question with which Tourism in Tur-bulent Times engages. Organised into four sections, the 21 chapters review current issues and practices in the areas of health, safety and security, adventure tourism, and government and industry initiatives, and draws heavily on Australian experience and expertise, although there are contributions from

11 countries all told. Many of the contributors are tourism industry practitioners and there is a strong emphasis on the practical steps to be taken in relation to risk assessment and risk mitigation. One problem with this is that the quality of the chapters is rather uneven. While it is useful to have some statistical breakdown of types of sickness and causes of acci-dents among tourists, some of the chapters suffer from information overload, when what is needed is more analysis and thought. One notable exception is Annelies Wilder-Smith’s chapter on ‘Tourism and SARS’, which offers a fascinating case study of the globalisation of an epidemic and tourism’s implica-tion in the events surrounding it.

The book’s main strength is as a reference work summarising the range of actors, instruments, pro-tocols and practical steps available to tourism prac-titioners at an operational level. At the strategic level, however, the book suffers from its failure to examine the underlying orthodoxy on which it is premised; that is, the view of tourism as standing outside of global geopolitical relations and as subject to external threats for which technical management solutions can be found. This emerges most explicitly in Peter Tarlow’s chapters on terrorism and crime, which replicate the assumptions of Huntingdon’s Clash of Civilizations thesis and treat them as fact. That there are dangers inherent in adopting such a position as the basis for tourism policy and practice should be self-evident. Understanding what these dangers are requires a degree of self-critical analy-sis that, notwithstanding the wealth of information given in this book, is, unfortunately, lacking.

Julie Scott London Metropolitan University

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCHInt. J. Tourism Res. 10, 289–291 (2008)

Book ReviewsEditor: Dimitrios Buhalis