Building a Gateway to the Arctic: A Political Economy Perspective on Tourism Development and Conservation in Finnish Lapland

Abstract

Research on gateway communities conventionally focuses on micro-level aspects that emerge in the nexus of environmental conservation, tourism development and local livelihoods. However, the embeddedness of places and the local tourism sector in the modes of production, consumption and capital circulation of contemporary capitalism remains oftentimes unaddressed. This chapter, therefore, adopts a political economy perspective and examines the macro-frameworks that condition tourism development in Finnish Lapland, in tandem with attempts to consolidate its gateway position to the Arctic. The aim is to encourage a more nuanced view on gateway status in regions where tourism development is driven by multi-scalar stakeholder interests and embedded into competitive regional development initiatives. While the devastating effects of climate change and human induced pollution on the fragile terrestrial and maritime Arctic ecosystems are well recognized, the spatial reimagination of Lapland in the Arctic represents another neoliberal step towards the total commodification of the environment.