the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

places' for the rich and fashionable gentry, and with the development of rail travel,
as day-trip destinations for the urban working classes. Rises in the real value of
wages, and the introduction of statutory holidays which eventually were also paid,
resulted in the majority of the urban population in the industrialised countries having
both the time and means to take a holiday during the year (Meethan, 2001).
The seaside resorts were clearly demarcated from the world of work both spatially,
temporally, as well as in terms of the activities that could be pursued within them.
The established pattern that holidays were taken in the summer months, in places
which were removed from the world of work, and involved the conspicuous
consumption of leisure was therefore inextricably linked to the development of
capitalism, and mirrored the social divisions of the time (Meethan, 2001). The
development of a specific tourist space can therefore be viewed as a consequence
of the differentiation inherent in modernity, of splitting the sphere of work from the
sphere of leisure in conceptual, temporal and spatial terms (Meethan, 2001).
3.2.3 Restructuring Space
As previously stated, resort areas developed as a result of modernity, and are linked
to the processes of urbanisation and industrialisation, and the creation of both mass
markets and mass consumption. As such, they were both literally and symbolically,
spatially demarcated from the spaces of manufacturing. However, during the 1970s
a downturn in industrial manufacturing across the developed economies and a
sectoral shift into the service economy began to occur, and this, together with the
globalisation of information technology led to the emergence of new forms of spatial
organisation which in turn gave rise to new forms of tourist space (Meethan, 2001).
Harvey (1989; 1993) summarises many of these changes. Firstly, the relative
locations of places within the capitalist system became altered, places such as the
former manufacturing areas were not as secure within this new system as they were
previously. Secondly, reduced transport costs led to both production and marketing
becoming more spatially mobile than had previously been the case, so that
opportunities for investment were no longer as tied to particular localities. Investors
could thus take advantage of differences in resource qualities and costs between
places. Thirdly, this increased competition between places for mobile capital to the
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