The global spread of mass tourism is often understood in terms of the diffusion of practices first developed by English tourists and driven by the seemingly universal processes of urbanization and industrialization. This article offers a postcolonial critique of this approach, arguing it fails to appreciate the political and cultural dynamics of local adoption and remains blind to the role of alternative, indigenous practices. Moreover, as mass tourism practices are often viewed as expressions of modernity, societies are understood as modern only to the degree that they adopt northern European styles of leisure. Using Spain and Tunisia as examples, the article shows how the spread of beach tourism to the Mediterranean was shaped by geopolitical factors and imposed cultural and architectural expressions of modernity ill-suited to local contexts. Suggesting the value of alternative approaches, the article discusses forms of domestic coastal tourism in Morocco that express a modern hybrid Moroccan identity, in which a popular Islamic traditional ritual is performed and reinvented within the space of leisure beach tourism.

A major limitation of most political economy studies of globalisation is that they view globalisation almost exclusively in terms of deterritorialisation. This essay, in contrast, emphasises how increases in the transnational mobility of people, capital and information can also result in reterritorialisation, which is the increased relevance of location and characteristics of place for global economic activity. In contrast to the erosion of the territorially based powers of nation-states often associated with deterritorialisation, the reterritorialisation of economic activity can increase the power and regulatory influence of state, societal and transnational agents who are able to exert control over territorial assets and the reterritorialisation process. The essay uses the concepts of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation to develop a framework to analyse the changing political economy of one of the most understudied aspects of globalisation, the international tourism economy. With a focus on the development strategies of states in the Middle East and North Africa, the essay explores efforts to generate 'experiences of place' for tourists and territorial-based economic rewards for firms and their political consequences.It would seem that there may be no better place from which to observe the process of globalisation than watching the rush of passengers through the transit terminal of an international airport. As travel writer Pico Iyer reports, airports are 'the new epicenters and paradigms of our dawning post-nationalist age'. 1 Viewed from this perspective -amidst the business lounges, foreign exchange booths, and duty free shops -flows of people, currencies and commodities from around the world seem to glide effortlessly across the globe unconstrained by the geographies of distance or the territorial boundaries of national economies. At a glance, this perspective reflects a common trope in the popular and academic discourses about globalisation: increases in the transnational mobility of capital are eroding the territorially based capacities of nation-states to regulate economic activity, insulate their national economies and promote economic development. 2 As Kiren Aziz Chaudhry explains,

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