Emerging Themes in Contemporary Tourism Research Symposium (original) (raw)
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8.-eRTR_BKRVW_Vol.13-No3.4_Tourism-Research-Frontiers (1).pdf
A Book Review: Tourism Research Frontiers: beyond the boundaries of Knowledge * In only eight chapters and 165 pages, this book discusses the needs of introducing new themes of investigation in the specialized literature of tourism research. Likely, this globalized world looks pretty different from a couple of decades back, when the discipline was founded. New times, new horizons and new challenges need new thinking. As a part of prestigious Emerald Series, Chambers and Rakic present an edited book, oriented to expand the epistemological boundaries of tourism research, imagining not only new themes and issues to explore but new problems. Based on the legacy of Jafar Jafari, the editors worked hard to compile different voices, dotted of different arguments, into a shared viewpoint. In the first chapter, the editors introduce the concept of frontiers as the fringe between the known and unknown. The fieldwork suggests that we shed light on some issues while others remain unchecked. The legitimacy of academic disciplines rests on their explanatory capacity. These borders, far from being stable, are in continuous renegotiation. Though tourism-research has been consolidated as a promising academic option for graduate and postgraduate students, a radical turn undermines the dominant understanding of tourism as it has been formulated by the founding parents. Most certainly, beyond tourism, critical scholars unveiled a commoditized discourse where the " Other " is subordinated to a ruling class of developed countries. As something else than a peace-making industry, tourism covers racialized allegories which lead to control of the periphery. This paradigm sees in tourism an alienatory mechanism of surveillance. Nonetheless, this book proposes an alternative way. Instead of proclaiming the dismantling of epistemological borders of tourism, the editors suggest a shift offering a fertile ground to shore up new paradigms. Through the second chapter, Gyimothy et al, discuss the ebbs and flows of popculture tourism which represents an extension of cultural behaviour in a globalized and multiculturalist universe. In chapter 3, Mondoca presents a study case based on the relationships of stakeholders in Ilha do Grande, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). Those communities
2009
Jafari points to the importance of his friendship with Bob McIntosh. More importantly, key events were scheduled and networks were formed at moments that can almost be seen as takeoff points for the field. Many of the group attended and refer to the significance of the 1974 meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Mexico City. Graburn refers to it as ''Valene Smith's epic AAA meeting'' (p. 103) and Smith herself recalls how ''everyone seemed to feel that we, in one day, had opened the door to a new field of research with vast implications'' (p. 185). From this point, networks strengthen with Swain explaining how she ''found community in tourism studies'' (p. 197). Co-authorships evolve, visiting positions and collaborations provide opportunities and the whole field seems to take on air of confidence. Key texts emerge as milestones in the development of the field notably Smith's Hosts and Guests, MacCannell's The Tourist, Lanfant's Les Théories de Loisire, Nash's Tourism as a form of Imperialism, van den Bergue's Tourism as Ethnic Relations, Graburn's Tourism-The Sacred Journey and Cohen's A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences. The field settles into a period of institutionalization. Tourism research gets established at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) (Lanfant and Picard). Tourism carves out a niche in the International Sociological Association with the formation of the Research Committee on Tourism (RC-50). Annals became firmly established (Jafari) with many of the informants on its editorial board, and the International Academy for the Study of Tourism is formed, again with many of the informants as members. Of course, a number of setbacks are recorded (particularly the difficulties in attracting research funds). Interestingly, Nash here points to the methodological weaknesses in some of the early studies as a possible reason why research grants were not forthcoming but van den Berghe ''strongly suspect[ed] political intervention'' (p. 218) in one case. However, many of the scholars (e.g. MacCannell) note that there is some benefit to lack of funding in greater independence. The histories and Nash's analytical chapter show a revealing story. The initial picture is one of a series of largely lone scholars with their atomized outputs working against a largely indifferent academy. The end point is the emergence of tourism studies as an established field of study. The journey between these positions
Journal of tourism-studies and research in tourism [Issue 23]
Most scholars portray tourism as a concept foreign to 'natives' and brought about by leisure seeking relatively rich foreigners. This conceptualisation gives the notion of a 'real' tourist being someone who is foreign to any destination. This is contrary to post-modern theorisation that conceptualises tourism as an engagement and experience. This problematizes the conventional WTO definition of a tourist. Content analysis of literature marshals evidence of existence of a knowledge gap and an opportunity for Third World destinations to mainstream domestic tourism as a panacea for sustainable tourism development.
The SAGE handbook of tourism studies
2009
This is the strongest overview I have encountered of the scope and the current state of research across all the fields involved in advancing our understanding of tourism. For its range of topics, depth of analyses, and distinction of its contributors, nothing is comparable. It will be greeted enthusiastically as an indispensable reference source' -Professor Dean MacCannell, University of California, Davis Tourism Studies developed as a sub-branch of older disciplines in the social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology and economics, and newer applied fields of study in hospitality management, civil rights and transport studies. This Handbook is a sign of the maturity of the field. It provides an essential resource for teachers and students to determine the roots, key issues and agenda of tourism studies.
While all reasonable efforts have been made to gather the most current and appropriate information, the editors do not give any warranty as to the correctness, completeness or suitability of the information, and disclaims all responsibility for and shall in no event be liable for any errors or for any loss or damage that might be suffered as a consequence of any person acting or refraining from acting or otherwise relying on this information.
Contemporary themes and challenges in tourism research
2004
As comprehensive and far-reaching as this volume has been, in many ways it only scratches the surface of the geographic approach to understanding tourism. It is not a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of tourism geography, let alone tourism studies. It was also not an attempt to delineate the complex evolution of tourism studies, nor to define an agenda for research. Finally, it was not an attempt to provide a rationale for the way tourism is, or should be, structured for academic study.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2020
Tourism affects the lives of an increasing number of people across the world and has been growing and diversifying immensely since the turn of the 21st century. Anthropological approaches to tourism have also expanded from the early contributions of the 1970s, which tended to focus on the nature of tourism and its “impact” on peripheral host communities. These first interventions see anthropologists theorizing tourism as a “secular ritual,” studying its workings as a process of “acculturation,” and countering macroeconomic views of tourism’s potential for the economic development of peripheral societies by underscoring instead its neocolonial and imperialist features. Tourism is linked to the exacerbation of center-periphery dependencies, seen as an agent of cultural commoditization and responsible for the promotion and dissemination of stereotypical images of people and places. Moving beyond the impact paradigm, which has the disadvantage of portraying tourism as an external, disembedded, and imposed force on a passive population, constructivist approaches highlight its creative appropriations and integral role in the reinvention of culture and traditions. Anthropologists pay attention to the varied range of actors and agencies involved in tourism, accounting for the multi-scalar dimensions of this phenomenon and the uneven circulation of images, discourses, and resources it engenders. Tourism exerts a powerful global influence on how alterity and difference are framed and understood in the contemporary world and contributes to the valorization and dissemination of particular views of culture, identity, and heritage. Tourism is increasingly intertwined with processes of heritage-making, whose study helps advance anthropological reflections on cultural property, material culture, and the memorialization of the past. A key source of livelihood for a growing number of people worldwide, tourism is also becoming more and more associated with development projects in which applied anthropologists are also enrolled as experts and consultants. The study of the tourism-development nexus continues to be a key area of theoretical innovation and has helped advance anthropological debates on North–South relations, dominant responses to poverty and inequality, and their entanglements with neoliberal forms of governance. Given its diffuse and distributed character, tourism and touristification have been approached as forms of ordering that affect and restructure an ever-growing range of entities, and whose effects are increasingly difficult to tease out from concomitant societal processes. The ubiquitous implementations of tourism policies and projects, the influx of tourists, and the debates, reactions, and resistances these generate underscore, however, the importance of uncovering the ways tourism and its effects are being concretely identified, invoked, acted upon, and confronted by its various protagonists. Research on tourism has the potential to contribute to disciplinary debates on many key areas and notions of concern for anthropology. Culture, ethnicity, identity, alterity, heritage, mobility, labor, commerce, hospitality, intimacy, development, and the environment are among the notions and domains increasingly affected and transformed by tourism. The study of tourism helps understand how such transformations occur, uncovering their features and orientations, while also shedding light on the societal struggles that are at stake in them. The analysis of past and current research shows the scope of the theoretical and methodological debates and of the realms of intervention to which anthropological scholarship on tourism can contribute.
Bridging Tourism Theory and Practice
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364 About the Authors expertise to communities and businesses worldwide on sustainable tourism development and implementation. Her research primarily focuses on sustainable tourism development, partnerships, stakeholder management, and community capacity development. Stephanie Haskell oEmail: steph@ catchlight. co. nzW is Business Development Manager at Catchlight Design Ltd in Christchurch, New Zealand. With a background in marketing, brand development, and copywriting, she is especially ...