Reflections on Research Paradigms

The journey of Collaboration for Sustainable Tourism Development has aimed high by keeping heads in the clouds and feet on the ground, to visit critical and optimistic possibilities for what sustainable tourism development was, is, and may become. This chapter gives substance to the potential of collaboration for sustainable tourism development by indicating the significance of imagina- tion. Envisaging tourism futures implies that tourism researchers, students, practitioners, policy makers – all stakeholders – engender other kinds of relationships, interactions and conversations to imagine what could be. It is a feasible process of designing with as an ethical, ongoing involvement of others through a respect for their ways of being in the world, their sense of values and aspirations for better tourism futures in a better world. In this chapter, we do so by leveraging the variations of interpretation represented in the making of this book and the previous fourteen chapters. This book encompasses philosophical, conceptual and empirical research to expose conditions, empirical circumstances and underpinning values. The contributions meet in the application of the concept of collaboration to uncover what sustainable tourism development was, and presently is, and signposts how unknown futures can be imagined. Imagining collaborative tourism futures is predicated on epistemological and mutually shared responsibilities. These obligations cannot alone be captured by academics engaged in a persistent quest for knowledge, critical dialogue and thinking tourism into the future. Responsibilities are intimately connected to a holistic understanding of collaborative engagements with the wider world in shaping desirable futures. Imaginations of collaborative tourism futures are a response to current limitations of sustainable tourism development, where we charter the contours of tourism futures to tackle wider societal problems.