Introduction

Rural tourism represents a merging of perhaps two of the most influential yet contradictory features of modern life. Not only are the forces of economic, social, cultural, environmental and political change working to redefine rural spaces the world over, but broad global transformations in consumption and transportation patterns are reshaping leisure behavior and travel. For those concerned with both the nature of change in rural areas and tourism development, the dynamics and impacts of integrating these two dramatic shifts are not well known but are becoming increasingly provocative discourses for study.

While many students of tourism have assessed its qualities and developments, both positive and negative, at the local and global level (see for instance, Smith, 1989; Inskeep, 1991; Haywood, 1993; Hunter & Green, 1995; Hunter, 1997; Murphy, 1998; Mowford & Munt, 1998; Hall & Jenkins, 1998; Fuller & Reid, 1998; Var & Ap, 1998; Robinson, 1999; Yu & Chung, 2001; Barthel-Bouchier, 2001; McIntosh et al. , 2002; Urry, 1990, 1995) and many students of rural change have done the same (see for instance, Mormont, 1987; Halfacree, 1993; Bryden, 1994; Shucksmith, 1991; Ray, 2001) the purpose of this book is to bring these two discourses together. We aim to link changes at the local, rural community level to broader, more structural considerations of globalization in order to allow for a deeper, more theoretically sophisticated consideration of the various forces and features of rural tourism development.

While several authors (Murphy, 1985; Gunn, 1985; Blank, 1989; Pearce et al. , 1996; Reid et al. , 2001) highlight the importance of community involvement in planning tourism and rural community development, our collective experience as instructors, practitioners, students and authors of tourism and rural community development, tells us that there has been both a lack of grounded research in this area as well as any larger overarching theoretical interpretations.