A Conference Tourist and his Confessions: An Essay on a Life with Conference Tourism, Aeromobility and Ecological Crisis

Abstract

This essay focuses on conference tourism, aeromobility and ecological crisis. It is mostly based on the author's own diary notes—participatory observations—from many years of travelling to and fro and participating at international research conferences. Conference tourism is in this context mainly considered to belong to leisure time, a view elaborated on in the article. Crucial concepts are: grobalization, aeromobility, life in corridors, something-nothing continuum, all analysed and conveyed within a humour–tragedy tradition, much used in Norwegian ecophilosophy. The essay claims conference tourism to be as globalized as most other major forms of tourism; it is part of the globalization of academia, and it serves to make academics players in the processes of grobalization, which is the sociologist George Ritzer's term. Conference tourism is a global industry where competition on a global market is an important factor. Along a something–nothing continuum, it belongs to the nothing end, as the grobalization it is part of. Still, it definitely leads to something, in the ecological systems. The corridors of aeromobility are closed to the sides in every respect, also regarding the possibilities to experience effects on ecology. A claim made in the essay is that there is no other form of mobility bringing with it a similar seriousness of ecological problems, not the least regarding climate change. Few other human activities entail larger differences in ecological impacts between the highly mobile global elite and the vast relatively immobile majority of the world population.