Liminal Landscapes

Ideas and concepts of liminality have long shaped debates around the uses and practices of space in constructions of identity, particularly in relation to different forms of travel such as tourism, migration and pilgrimage, and the social, cultural and experiential landscapes associated with these and other mobilities. The ritual, performative and embodied geographies of borderzones, non-places, transitional spaces, or 'spaces in-between' are often discussed in terms of the liminal, yet there have been few attempts to problematize the concept, or to rethink how ideas of the liminal might find critical resonance with contemporary developments in the study of place, space and mobility. Liminal Landscapes fills this void by bringing together variety of new and emerging methodological approaches of liminality from varying disciplines to explore new theoretical perspectives on mobility, space and socio-cultural experience. By doing so, it offers new insight into contemporary questions about technology, surveillance, power, the city, and post-industrial modernity within the context of tourism and mobility. The book draws on a wide range of disciplinary approaches, including social anthropology, cultural geography, film, media and cultural studies, art and visual culture, and tourism studies. It brings together recent research from scholars with international reputations in the fields of tourism, mobility, landscape and place, alongside the work of emergent scholars who are developing new insights and perspectives in this area. This timely intervention is the first collection to offer an interdisciplinary account of the intersection between liminality and landscape in terms of space, place and identity. It therefore charts new directions in the study of liminal spaces and mobility practices and will be valuable reading for range of students, researchers and academics interested in this field.

Hazel Andrews is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism, Culture and Society at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Les Roberts is a research associate in the School of the Arts at University of Liverpool, UK.

1. Introduction: Re-Mapping Liminality Part 1: Navigating Liminality: Theory, Method Strategy 2. Revisiting Liminality: The Danger of Empty Spaces 3. Places Remember Events: Towards an Ethics of Encounter 4. Border Crossings: Practices for Beating the Bounds Part 2: Gleaning and Liminality: Edgelands, Wetlands, Estuaries 5. Walking the Edges: Towards a Visual Ethnography of Beachscapes 6. The Dynamics of Liminality in Estonian Mires 7. The Sands of Dee: Estuarine Excursions in Liminal Space Part 3: Urban Liminalities: Ritual, Poesis, Experience 8. Spinning Lhasa: Ritual Circumambulation Routes as Liminal Urbanscapes in China's 'Western Treasure-House' 9. Urban Exploration as Adventure Tourism: Journeying Beyond the Everyday 10. Another Place or Just Another Space? Liminality and Crosby Beach Part 4: Liminality and Nation: Marginality, Negotiation, Contestation 11. Shifting Borders and Dangerous Liminalities: The Case of Rye Bay 12. 'Danger Zones': The British 'Road Movie' and the Liminal Landscape 13. Threat and Suffering: The Liminal Space of 'The Jungle' 14. Shards in the Landscape: The Dispersed Liminality of Contemporary Slaveries in the UK 15. Afterword