The research group “Modalities of Territorial Systems and Tourist Systems” (M2ST) studies territorial systems, including the challenge of its different acceptations, as a strong element of co-viability. This group provides the vision of a territorial system that postulates the existence, at relatively local scales, of coherent, partially autonomous organized complexes based on the interactions between elements of multiple nature (such as natural vs. anthropogenic), complex systems that in turn qualify the areas concerned as territories. It contributes to the theme of co-viability by placing itself at the crossroads of the work on the notion of touristic system and the notion of territorial system. A territorialized tourist system is a territorial system whose dominant functionality is the tourist activity.

It is therefore above all to study the question of territorial system, in the full thematic diversity of its elements and dimensions with a dominant touristic focus. The objective of this group also aims to analyze emerging alternative forms of tourism in rupture with a dominant tourism model, towards a viability of the integrated society-environment system. This would encompass both the dominant and the alternative and the marginal, as well as possible tensions between co-existing modalities. The main study sites are Asia and France, and can extend to islands and coastlines.