ABSTRACT
This book is a contribution towards better understanding the complex interconnectivity of folklore, people, and place, across a range of different cultural and geographical contexts, and in particular with how they intersect with a constantly developing market for global tourism. In compiling these chapters together we hope to engage in a critical conversation about the ways that folklore can influence human behaviour in certain landscapes, and to explore how tourism and land use decisions can be geared towards the protection and preservation of these places by adopting a folklore-centric perspective. In addition, we hope to explore how folklore can help to change attitudes and behaviours towards the natural environment for local people and visiting tourists alike, to act as a tool for the transfer, dissemination, and improved understanding of ecological and traditional cultural knowledge for the benefit of the human and non-human world. In this introduction we aim to map out some of the conceptual territory explored in the chapters that follow.
