Relational economic geography and its use in tourism clusters studies

Abstract This paper presents the evolution of the theory of Relational Economic Geography (REG) as a theoretical framework for the regional analysis and tourism destinations analysis. It discusses the origin, foundations, conceptualization trends, and criticism of this perspective. It also contextualizes through a comparison between the analyses of tourism destinations based on productive clusters (networks, districts, clusters, and local productive arrangements) and analysis from the REG perspective. It is a qualitative study, of theoretical and conceptual review, whose objective is to verify if REG is either a complementary perspective to the classic studies of productive agglomerations or a perspective that can substitute them, addressing the gaps that have been pointed out by the researchers. The findings suggest that REG can be used in tourism destination studies, regardless of the territorial/ productive organization. Also, the REG approach can generate tools to translate the relational thinking, taking it out of abstraction and bringing this theoretical concept into the practice of territorial management of tourism destination.摘要 本文系统阐述了关系型经济地理学（Relational Economic Geography, REG）作为区域分析与旅游目的地分析理论框架的演进脉络，探讨了该研究视角的起源、理论基础、概念化发展趋势与学界批判观点。本文还通过对比基于产业集群（网络、园区、集群与地方生产组织形式）的旅游目的地分析与REG视角下的分析，对该理论进行了情境化解读。本研究为理论与概念综述类质性研究，旨在验证REG究竟是经典产业集聚研究的补充视角，还是可替代经典产业集聚研究的全新范式，并回应研究者们已指出的相关研究空白。研究结果显示，无论地域或产业组织形式如何，REG均可应用于旅游目的地研究；此外，REG研究范式可生成落地工具以转化关系性思维，使其脱离抽象层面，将这一理论概念融入旅游目的地的地域管理实践之中。