Chris Ryan and Michelle Aicken

This book emerged from the conference Taking Tourism to the Limits that was hosted by the Department of Tourism Management at Waikato University in December 2003. The theme was an ambitious one and delegates were invited to consider it from a number of perspectives. The potential range of approaches that might be adopted is illustrated by Table 1.1 which lists twelve possible interpretations of the theme. At least two immediate impressions emerge from this list, and they are 1) the apparent paradoxical ones of both how disparate they appear, and 2) just how much they are linked in a dialogic process of questioning and answer. From the perspective of the practical site owner or destination planner, concepts of liminality or the marginal might appear interesting, but abstract, and of limited applicability. Planning is, arguably, to a large degree based upon a modernist, deductive approach derived from the rationalism of the eighteenth century enlightment, and much of the tourism planning literature is still premised within the paradigm, as is illustrated by the work of Gunn (1988, 1993). Deductiveness has maintained its own boundaries, one of which is the distinction between theory and practice; and if there exists any form of duality it is that the purpose of theory is to inform, define and subsequently shape "good practice." The ghost of Bentham and J. S. Mill's utilitarianism survives into the early 21st century even if the advocates of modernism are more reticent about the construction of...