THE EVOCATIVE POWER OF TOURISM STUDIES: POSITIVE INTERRUPTION, INTERDEPENDENCE, AND IMAGING FORWARD TODAY

Abstract

In this third of three cousin manuscripts on the call for disruptive qualitative research approaches, further treatment is proffered on the concerns and irritations that ‘soft science’ / 'subtle science' social scientists (and humanists, and posthumanists) are troubled by today. While the opening paper (by Hollinshead, Suleman, and Nair here in Tourism, Culture and Communication *) laid out the general case for the fit of disruptive qualitative research advances cum dissident interpretive research overtures in Tourism Studies to help atone for the field's long-recognised biases towards highly-economic / linear / empirical outlooks, the second paper (by Hollinshead, Suleman, and Vellah **) constituted a consolidation of the advanced social justice orientations being aired across the trio of manuscripts. In this third of the three bedfellow articles, the authors (Hollinshead, Suleman, and Lo) now provide further critique on the soft science constructions and the subtle science thinking that have been promoted within the landmark text on advanced qualitative and interpretive praxis by Brown, Carducci, and Kuby (entitled Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry). In this third manuscript, the need for such dissident developments within Tourism Studies is provided with respect to a number (ten) of common ontological issues encountered in research into tourism/travel today, such as the difficulty in researching the shadowy and indistinct 'unique ways' in which foreign peoples differ from each other. At the end of this third manuscript, a further fifteen terms are made manifest for the cumulative glossary being developed across the three companion manuscripts. These terms include ‘critical ethnography' (vis-a-vis the revised cognitive practices of tourism) and 'unsettlement' (vis-à-vis the rhetorics of futurity of tourism). This third paper — like its two predecessors — is notably Deleuzian in hue, although readers should spot the conceptual mark of (Arturo) Escobar (and considerations of pluriversality which emanate from 'The South') in places. * The Unsettlement of Tourism Studies: Positive Decolonisation, Deep Listening, and Dethinking today (Hollinshead, Suleman, and Nair [In Press: TCC])** The Reimagination of Tourism Studies: Positive Renewal, Restoration, and Revival Today (Hollinshead, Suleman, and Vellah [In Press: TCC])