The Critical Turn in Tourism Studies Innovative Research Methodologies

New approaches to tourism study demonstrate a notable ‘critical turn’ – a shift in thought that emphasises interpretative and critical modes of tourism inquiry. The chapters in this volume reflect this emerging critical school of tourism studies and represent a coordinated effort of tourism scholars whose work engages innovative research methodologies. Since such work has been dispersed across a variety of tourism-related and other research fields, this book responds to a pressing need to consolidate recent advances in a single text. Adopting a broad definition of ‘criticality’, the contributors seek to find ‘fresh’ ways of theorising tourism by locating the phenomenon in its wider political, economic, cultural and social contexts. The collection addresses the power relations underpinning the production of academic knowledge; presents a range of qualitative data collection methods which confront the field’s dominant (post)positivist approaches; foregrounds the emotional dynamics of research relations and explores the personal, the political and the situated nature of research journeys.The book has been divided into two parts, with the essays in the first part establishing a context-specific framework for engaging philosophical and theoretical debates in contemporary tourism enquiry. The second set of essays then present, discuss and critique specific methodologies, research techniques, methods of interpretation and writing strategies, all of which are in some sense illustrative of ‘critical’ tourism research. Contributors range from postgraduate students to established academics and are drawn from both the geopolitical margins and the ‘powerbases’ of the tourism academy. Their various relationships with the English-speaking academy thus range from relative ‘outsider’ to well-positioned ‘insider’ and as a result, their essays are reflective of a range of locations within the complexly spun web of academic power relations and social divisions.

Editors’ introduction: Promoting an Academy of Hope (Irena Ateljevic, Nigel Morgan, Annette Pritchard) Part 1 The critical school of tourism studies: Crafting the epistemological grounds De-centring Tourism’s Intellectual Universe, or Traversing the Dialogue Between Change and Tradition. (Annette Pritchard and Nigel Morgan); Critical Tourism: Rules and Resistance (John Tribe); Structural Entanglements and the Strategy of Audiencing as a Reflexive Technique (Candice Harris, Erica Wilson, and Irena Ateljevic); Resisting Rationalisation in the Natural and Academic Life-world: Critical Tourism Research or Hermeneutic Charity? (Tazim Jamal and Jeff Everett); Marking Difference or Making a Difference: Constructing Places, Policies and Knowledge of Inclusion, Exclusion and Social Justice in Leisure, Sport and Tourism (Cara Aitchison); Gender Analysis in Tourism: Personal and Global Dialectics (Margaret Swain and Derek Hall); Interrogating the ‘Critical’ in Critical Approaches to Tourism Research (Donna Chambers); A Realist Critique of the Situated Voice in Tourism Studies (David Botterill); The Problem With Tourism Theory (Adrian Franklin); Tourism, Materiality and Space (Rene van der Duim); “Worldmaking” and the Transformation of Place and Culture: The Enlargement of Meethan’s Analysis of Tourism and Global Change (Keith Hollinshead)Part 2 Methodologies, innovative techniques, methods of interpretation and writing strategiesGrounded Theory: Innovative Methodology or a Critical Turning from Hegemonic Methodological Praxis in Tourism Studies (Gayle Jennings and Olga Junek); Immersing in Ontology and the Research Process: Constructivism the Foundation for Exploring the (In)Credible OBE? (Tomas Pernecky); The Beauty in the Form: Ethnomethodology and Tourism Studies (Scott McCabe); From Principles to Practices in Feminist Tourism Research: a Call for Greater Use of the Survey Method and the Solicited Diary (Bente Heimtun); Unresolved Power for Feminist Researchers Employing Memory-work (Jennie Small); Enhancing the Interpretive and Critical Approaches to Tourism Education Inquiry Through a Discursive Analysis (Maureen Ayikoru and John Tribe); What Lies Beneath? Using Creative, Projective and Participatory Techniques in Qualitative Tourism Inquiry (Sheena Westwood); Pursuing the Past: using oral history to bring transparency to the research process. (Julia Trapp-Fallon); The Contribution of Biographical Research in Understanding Older Women’s Leisure (Diane Sedgley); The Language(s) of the Tourist Experience: An Autoethnography of the Poetic Tourist (Chaim Noy); Re-peopling Tourism: A ‘Hot Approach’ to Studying Thanatourist Experiences (Ria Dunkely); Processes of becoming: Academic journeys, moments and reflections (Stephen Doorne, Stephanie Hom Cary, Graham Brown, Jo-Anne Lester, Kathe Browne, Tomas Pernecky, Susana Curtin, Martine Abramovici, Nigel Morgan).

Irena Ateljevic, Annette Pritchard, Nigel Morgan