Qualitative Methodologies in Tourism Studies: Disrupting and Co-creating Critical Research

Disruptive and creative research methodologies proposed in this book are designed to dismantle neoliberal narratives deployed in tourism studies and wider social sciences. Progressing criticality in tourism studies, this volume showcases cutting-edge contributions ranging from reflexivity, subjectivities, and dreams; to messy emotions in auto-ethnographic accounts of fieldwork; ‘motherhood capital’ accessing Inuit communities; collective memory work; ethnodrama and creative non-fiction, amongst others.

Disruption and creativity are the two ideas around which tourism geographers challenge and begin dismantling hegemonic ideologies in tourism studies. The chapters in this book provide a vantage point from where to disrupt first, before tourism geographers can engender progress and transformation within and outside of the field. In tourism studies in general, and tourism geography in particular, the years of the 2000s have witnessed an emphasis on qualitative methodological research, both in terms of the topics addressed and the types of methodological tools. In many ways, this legitimisation of qualitative work mirrors developments in other areas such as human geography, sociology and anthropology, in which this book is anchored. The authors debate in more depth how tourism studies offer multidimensional, multilogical and multi-emotional approaches to research design.

The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Tourism Geographies.

Milka Ivanova is a qualitative researcher who focuses on the ways ‘non-dominant’ narratives are re/created through tourism in the cases of dissonant and communist heritage. As such, Milka published her research in The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Tourism, Tourism Culture & Communication, and Sustainability of Tourism: Cultural and Environmental Perspectives.

Dorina-Maria Buda conducts interdisciplinary research focusing on the interconnections between tourist spaces, people and emotions in times and places of socio-political conflict. She conducts ethnographic work in such places of on-going conflicts and turmoil like Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. She is the author of Affective Tourism: Dark Routes in Conflict.

Elisa Burrai offers robust and thought-provoking critiques of concepts such as volunteer tourism and responsible tourism developed through ethnographic, critical, and qualitative methodological approaches that explore power and research methodologies, reflexivity, and positionality. Her work is published in Tourism Geographies, International Journal of Tourism Research, and Journal of Sustainable Tourism.