ABSTRACT
Recent contributions to the debates on tourism and leisure geographies have started to articulate discourses of so-called ‘non-representational’ ways of encountering space (Coleman and Crang 2002; Cant 2004; Kayser-Nielsen 2003; Larsen 2004; Pons 2003; Urry and Sheller 2004; Crouch 2001; Crouch and Desforges 2003). This chapter builds on these insights in order to try to progress the ‘structure of power’ debate considered through this volume. This particular power debate tends to have elucidated successfully the institutional frameworks through which tourism and leisure operate, and are operated (Oakes 1997, 2004; Meethan 2001, 2003; Britton 1991). Yet the debate has tended to open up the complexity of institutional participation with much room left to explore another layer of complexity interwoven across it. Rather than argue against a version of power situated in institutions (and for example a ‘mediated culture’), this chapter calls for an engagement of a more institutional process of power and the potentialities for the participation in power processes by individuals. Here the possibilities of participation by individuals are considered from debates concerning the encounter. In the concluding commentary directions and concerns that such an engagement might involve are sketched.
