Producing rural spaces for consumption: proper states of mind

Abstract

By drawing from rural, tourism, and working life studies, this article constructs a framework for understanding the concurrent processes of production and consumption in a rural space. In the specific context of the Finnish countryside, the article investigates the practices of the self-employed who run firms providing rural spaces for practising dog sports. Firms' customers are typically busy urbanites who seek an invigorating leisure experience. Those practising dog sports, in particular, seek functional spaces, adapted to their needs to train dogs and spend their leisure time. In addition to providing this physical resource, the entrepreneurs in this study, as service-sector workers, must also provide their customers with a certain state of mind. Using interviews and observations of six firms, this article demonstrates how space and state of mind are produced simultaneously and, consequently, entrepreneurs' personalities are entirely invested in their labour, challenging theoretical assumptions of rural areas as places of specific types of consumption only; it selectively transfers academic research about new service work to research on rural tourism.

Entrepreneurship in rural hospitality and tourism. A systematic literature review of past achievements and future promises

“…This limitation has also been noted by some of the studies in our sample (van Rooij and Margaryan, 2019). Due to the nature of the rural areas and research participants, it may be difficult to obtain reliable Schmitz and Lekane Tsobgou (2016), Kubickova and Campbell (2020), Doh et al (2017), Marcouiller and Westeren (2019), Liang and Bao (2018), Wang and Man (2019), Ngoasong and Kimbu (2016) Demand-side barriers to RHT Cucari et al (2019), Marcouiller and Westeren (2019), Reichel et al (2000), Hsu et al (2013), Fissi et al (2020, Di Domenico and Miller (2012), Ikonen (2016)…”

“…4.1.2 Demand-side barriers. The tourist side, that is, the demand side of the hospitality and tourism equation has a significant impact on how RHT enterprises function (Ikonen, 2016;Marcouiller and Westeren, 2019). The chief objective of RHT is the commodification of tourist destinations, used here to refer to the packaging of rural experiences for tourist consumption.…”

How hiking reinvented rural areas: social transformation and leisure activities in Brittany during the 1970s

“…Valley floors were drained or gradually abandoned and became wooded areas. Their reallocation for hiking was based on evolving trail use and the valorisation of a new state of mind, 16 created by the development of leisure activities. More than just a mere location, paths became a channel for political engagement, as well as a potential influence on lifestyles that were torn between modernity and tradition.…”