Los agentes sociales y la política urbanístico-turística: Percepción y performatividadEl caso de las directrices de ordenación del territorio y del turismo de Canarias

Abstract

Common approaches about restructuring policies in mature tourism destinations tend to assume, explicit or implicitly, that the restructuring process is guided by bureaucratic rationality. From this point of view, restructuring policies emerge from a technocratic diagnose of the stagnation situation at the destination. Departing from this diagnose, some neutral expert-assessed remedies are adopted to turn the situation around. This work follows the trend of Economic Sociology, assuming that definitions of socio-economic reality (as the ‘competitive situation’ of a tourism destination) are performative and not neutral: defining a ‘reality’, they somehow contribute to make it real. Therefore, the analysis of the perceptions of the main agents involved in the restructuring policies (administration, business and environmental lobbies and other organized civil society parts) is also the analysis of how the position of each agent in the field allows her to influence the institutions and obtain laws favorable to her interests. The paper applies this conceptual framework to the case of the Canary Islands Law of Directives for the Land Planning and Tourism (also known as Moratoria). Research results show that the legislative process final result (promulgated and applied norms) stems out from strategic actions of some groups to improve their position. The Moratoria Law produced a new state of the situation with losers and winners agents with different perceptions.