Territory, commodification of nature and tourism in Córdoba, Argentina

Abstract

Increasingly tourism experiences a continuous expansion and diversification, becoming one of the fields of the largest economy and growth worldwide. In this context, the province of Córdoba, one of the most important tourist regions of the country, has diversified its offer through the incorporation and promotion of different modalities, many of them linked to ecotourism and adventure tourism. It is argued that the incorporation of new tourist practices linked to ecotourism, are based on processes of commodification of nature and enclosures that facilitate the organization, in defined areas, of tourism products linked to the idea of "contact with nature ". The aim of the paper is to analyze two case studies linked to enclosure processes that constitute tourism destinations will be addressed, in order to account, on the one hand, that the production of the territory as a tourist is explained by various socio-economic processes that they involve not only the place of destination but also the place of origin; and on the other, that the new modalities in general involve instances of commodification of nature.