Global Coordination and Regulation of Tourism: Radicalizing Kant’s Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

Tourism is a complex phenomenon in scale and scope. Interrelated with other systems (ecological, social, economic, political) from the local to the global, its impacts and effects transcend borders, making coordination and regulation highly challenging. Global mobilities (both physical and virtual) and neoliberal globalization further complicate enabling just and sustainable tourism. New forms of governance are needed to address global threats like climate change and pandemics. This paper explores Immanuel Kant’s transcendental perspective on “perpetual peace” and traces his evolving cosmopolitanism over a decade of essays. We then turn towards what appears to be a contradictory, immanent posthumanist approach from Gilles Deleuze. Radicalizing Kant using Deleuze leads to a different concept of ‘normativity’, grounded in an ideal of perpetual self-critique and self-creation. Such a critical, affirmative ethic opens possibilities for situated approaches to cosmopolitan rights and global justice, rather than global regulatory structures to coordinate effective and proactive actions.