Analysis about tourism, at least from the social sciences field, usually have a very recurrent point: one that establishes relations among the forms in which modernity colonized everyday life by establishing areas of specialization clearly differentiated. Thus, it separated work from leisure, in time and space. The period of leisure and vacations was reserved for a time of the year -summer- at clearly established places. For social agents, both experiences were clearly divided; chores and activities that took place in every space and time differred substantially.

This model has become decadent in hands of the process of undifferentiation the we’re going through. Progressively, the areas of knowledge that in modernity and fordism were clearly separated, have gained a tendency to mix. The processes of labor flexibilization and the new forms of specialization allow for employees to take vacations at any time and gives them a multitasking function. At the same way, touristic spaces are getting closer to those destined to the same everyday tasks. Tourists use the same spaces than workers and employees.

Anyways, we have to avoid being too categorical on these appreciations. It’s one thing that social theory had emphasized the topic of undifferentiation even further, and another that these processes became strictly new. Paris, for example, has always been a city were quotidian and tourism aspects have always been together. Despite this, we can observe a qualitative profounding of this process in the last 25 years. Part of this process of ‘touristification’ of city spaces go together with strategies of recovery of certain parts of urban spaces, impulsing the creation of districts specialized in gastronomy or amusement, a tendency well marked in the last decade -in Buenos Aires it has, as main exponents, zones such as Las Cañitas or Palermo Hollywood.

Also, by the way, there are very interesting relations between the growing mobility of capital and production -with manufacturing going to third parties, such as China- and the processes of change and reconversion of tourism of ex-industrial cities -a topic we’ve discussed in this and this entry.

As you can see, the topic of the relation between changes in the conception of space, time and production in fordism and postfordism can be linked to the general changes in the touristic market. But, since it’s a complex and fairly extense topic, we’ll continue to develop it along the next entries.