Most tourism theory focuses on the second level - Halong bay Vietnam

Lefevbre asserted that space is all-pervasive in society and not just an empty container for the important aspects of social life continuing within it. For example, all activity is spo- ken of in spatial terms; thus we are confronted with a multitude of spaces, each one piled upon the next, which need to be unpacked and the configurations between them worked out, to uncover the ‘truth of space’. Halong bay Vietnam begins by outlining the fundamental link between spatial relations and political and historical processes of production and capitalism: “Few people today would reject the idea that capital and capitalism ‘influence’ practical matters relating to space” (1991, p. 9). This is followed by a refute to Kantian conceptions of space: “Could space be nothing more than the passive locus of social relations, the milieu in which their combination takes on body, or the aggregate of the procedures employed in their removal? The answer must be no” (p. 11). Space plays an active role as knowledge in action, for in the existing mode of production there are contradictions. Halong bay Vietnam distin- guishes between three distinct conceptual groupings or users in the production of space. First is the notion of spatial practice. These are the spaces of the everyday, the ordinary social actor and the routes and networks that connect places of home, work and leisure. This is the space of the everyday, the mortal. The second order is represented spaces, those places appropriated by planners and technocrats who wish to impose meaning upon places and govern the social structure of planning and the use of space. Finally, there are representa- tional spaces. These are spaces of artists and philosophers and can include any other types

of spaces but are re-imagined, transformed through the art of pure description into some- thing metaphysical. Most tourism theory focuses on the second level in interpreting the social production of space. Tourism theory argues that the tourism industry represents and misrepresents places of tourism destinations in so much that the industry selectively picks out certain images and characteristics about the physical space of destinations and turns them into ‘resorts’ — spaces for active and engaged (or partisan) consumption. Places are constructed in such a way so as to alert potential visitors of the types of behaviour which can be expected within them. The representation of space as tourism destination is also intrinsically culturally conceptualised and interlinked. Tourism Halong bay Vietnam researchers argue that the representation of place through tourism brochures displays the inherent hegemonic power relations between the centre and the periphery (Tresidder, 1999), the neo-colonial appro- priation of the developing world by the developed world (Mowforth & Munt, 1998; Morgan

& Pritchard, 1998) or the socio-cultural domination of one group over another (Dann,

1996). These are all good common sense and therefore powerful theoretical observations. Yet we argue that the process of place representation is more complex.

Lefebvre argues in the final category that representational spaces are particularly spe- cial. Representational spaces are spaces that are

¼ directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users’, but also of some artists and perhaps of those, such as a few writers and philosophers, who describe and aspire to do no more than describe. This is the dominated — and hence passively experienced — space, which the imagination seeks to change and appro- priate. It overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects. Thus representational spaces may be said, though again with certain exceptions,

to tend towards more or less coherent systems of non-verbal symbols and signs.(Lefebvre, 1991, p. 39)