Tourism as a way of mobilizing hope against neoliberal logic

Faced with crises that have led to a decrease in tourism and weakened the narrative with respect to its benefits, tourim is now being proposed by neoliberals as a solution to rural problems. This commodification of new peripheries of pleasure opens up a new range of types of tourism, ostensibly more sustainable and responsible, but still tending to ignore idiosyncrasies of place and ways of life as well as any conflicts associated with the neocolonising process. The objective of the present paper is to identify platforms, organisations, and social movements mobilised against “touristification” of rural contexts, also highlighting (whenever appropriate) alternative forms of tourism that have arisen to produce significant change in defiance of the demands of capital. We examine and link these movements through the notion of tourism-‐activism, applying Protest Event Analysis (PEA) as a research method. We argue that collective actions in rural destinations in the ‘developed’ or ‘Western’ world can trigger the rise of true social movements, channeled through tourism, that transform tourist destinations into places of hope