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Creative Outposts: Tourism's Place in Rural Innovation

The aim of this paper is to investigate the dynamics of local tourism innovation in order to see how tourism development benefits tourism stakeholders including the local community. The paper is concerned with the social impacts of tourism and contends that there is a latent positive social capital in rural communities. Some “creative outposts” manage not just to survive but to thrive, and tourism often acts as a catalyst for innovative local development. Examples of tourism innovation can be new and better interactions among tourism stakeholders as well as changes in institutional arrangements. Entrepreneurs and institutional stakeholders are interviewed to investigate the dynamics of local tourism innovation. The social dimension in which tourism stakeholders operate is poorly understood and this paper presents a case study of Jokkmokk village with results showing tourism has a subtle yet palpable positive social role in the community. Themes emerging from the interviews are: the tourist office and tourism firms co-evolve over time, tourism networks are loose and project-based, tourism is a desirable diversifier, and tourism contributes to the local leisure space. Particular focus is given to the fact that this is an Arctic rural community, and the research provides a basis for understanding tourism innovation systems in this context. Tourism development is found to be complementary to rural coping strategies in “creative outposts”.