Advancing visitor management research in protected areas: a sensory ethnographic approach
通过感官民族志方法，研究挪威约通黑门国家公园的游客管理政策如何影响游客与保护区的互动，发现当前政策阻碍了空间正义旅游，挑战了基于地图的游客管理实践。
Jotunheimen [Home of the Giants] National Park holds the tallest mountains in Northern Europe and is one of the most visited parks in Norway. This paper presents an ethnographic examination of visitor management policy and how it influences visitors’ relations to Norwegian protected areas and the beings residing in these places. The national branding strategy for protected areas intends to attract more visitors while mitigating the spiralling environmental impacts by steering visitors’ movements and experiences. Looking at manifestations of the national strategy in Jotunheimen, such as Sognefjellet viewpoint, this study interweaves a sensory ethnographic understanding of place with posthuman relational theory and critical cartography, contributing to a discussion of epistemic privileging in policy and science. Through a relational understanding of space and the concept of boundary-making practices, findings show how current visitor management policy hinders spatially just tourism along relational principles of posthuman affirmative ethics. As a result, its findings challenge visitor management practices based on the cartographic distribution of area use and environmental impact. There is a need to stop visitor management from becoming a policy loophole for infrastructure development and dedicate resources to approaches that affirm vitality of protected areas and spatial justice in tourism.