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Following the adage that “an image is worth ten thousands words,” this chapter will use ethnographic pictures to illustrate two main ideas. First, tourism should be analyzed as one of the names of power. It is so because tourism fractures the continuum of reality differentiating the elements; it constantly names and arranges them into cultural categories. It also channels the relations among those elements and engenders a distinctive time-space binomial (Bakhtin, 1937) that renders these relations meaningful to people. Tourism gives a peculiar sense to the social life of groups in destinations and, consequently, orientates their daily life practices. The second idea is that tourism is probably the most sophisticated elaboration of capitalism. It is a new historical mode of managing reality. It contributes to perpetuate the center–periphery exploitation system and makes feasible the conversion of any place into a desirable destination. It not only provides with the necessary materiality of transport, room and board, and entertainment for customers, but it also commercializes the intangible and produces new meanings. Thus, to study tourism implies to analyze that complex set of sociotechnical practices and devices that, linking the desirable and the feasible, enable certain social groups to spend their leisure time away from their quotidian, including what they do in those places and the social processes induced at their destinations.

Purpose – The main aim of this chapter is to analyze Spanish internal and external territorial conflicts, mostly associated with the border effect between two continents with different economic and cultural systems. We assess the impact that the emergence of the new economy, represented by new technologies, R&D, privatizations, and foreign direct investment, has had in South-Spain, particularly in Andalusia, throughout the period 1995–2010. Special attention has been paid to the dynamics of convergence–divergence processes in terms of per capita income with respect to its neighboring different economic and cultural areas: Europe and the Maghreb.

Methodology – For the aforementioned purposes, we suggest applying the game theory approach to solve domestic secessionist conflicts, and the method followed by Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) to address economic conflicts by means of promoting convergence with Europe. We propose economic competition between cities as a way to deal with external territorial conflicts concerning neighboring countries.

Findings – The main results obtained from econometric applications indicate that privatization processes, foreign direct investment, research and investment, and investment in new technologies allow for the real convergence of Spain and Southern Spain with European economies.

Research limitations – This chapter does not address smaller conflicts.

Social implications – Conflicts resolutions promote peace in both continental borders.

Originality – This chapter analyzes the most relevant domestic and external Spanish conflicts. The most important domestic conflicts are the linguistic and cultural conflicts in bilingual regions. The major external Spanish conflicts analyzed herein are both territorial conflicts between Spain and Morocco and Muslim immigration.

This chapter examines the historical relationship between Honduran Lenca worldview and how ecological resources are managed through ritual practice. The way in which the Lenca conceive of the biophysical environment is an active process of meaning-making that takes place through their interaction with the environment. The Lenca codify this relationship in the compostura, a complex set of ceremonial performances linked to economic practices that mediate human needs and desires with those of the ancestors who animate the landscapes surrounding households and communities. Through an examination of contemporary, historical, and archeological cases in western Honduras, this chapter explores how ritual economy shapes, and is shaped by, environmental worldview.