PERSONAL TOURIST EXPERIENCE AS THE BASIS OF SCIENTIFIC WORK

Abstract

Tourist travels of professional geographers are not only recreation and entertainment at leisure, but also important work. By travel, the author understands multi-stage movement with alternation of different activities in the process of movement. Visiting various territories is still necessary for popular geographical descriptions, problem identification, sociological research. Also, necessary for theoretical models of the environment. Travel provides material for geographical descriptions, immersion in the landscape. Besides, it helps to identify and evaluate facts, which are important to characterize the territory. Travel creates conditions for sociological observations through a specific method — «reading society according to landscape». Geography studies spatial (territorial) structures and gives material for geometric modeling of space using territorial areas and networks. Tourist travels of a professional geographer is the «productive consumption» necessary to create a new scientific product.