Contemporary directions in tourism sociology

Dr Scott Cohen

Head of Doctoral ProgrammesResource Editor in Sociology – Annals of Tourism

ResearchSchool of Hospitality and Tourism Management

University of Surrey, United Kingdoms.cohen@surrey.ac.uk

The centrality of tourism sociologyBenckenendorff, P. & Zehrer, A. (2013). A network analysis of tourism research. Annals of Tourism Research, 43, 121-149.

• “Tourism research continues to be inter-disciplinary but is largely being driven by sociology, anthropology, psychology, geography and consumer behavior perspectives”

• “Collective body of sociology and anthropology work with a strong postmodern emphasis as a major cluster of influence for tourism researchers”

• Research strongly concerned with “tourism as a modern social and cultural phenomenon”

Co-citation/network analysis of most cited authors (Benckendorff & Zehrer 2013)

Black nodes= sociology, anthropology & psychology theme

Co-citation/network analysis of most cited works (Benckendorff & Zehrer 2013)

Overview

• Theoretical trends in tourism sociology – focus on the mobilities paradigm and Eurocentrism

• Some key problem-based issues – focus on social justice and environmental sustainability

Main foundations for this presentation

Cohen, E. and Cohen, S.A. (2012). Current sociological theories and issues in tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(4), 2177-2202. DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2012.07.009

Cohen, E. and Cohen, S.A. (2013). Beyond Eurocentrism in tourism: A paradigm shift to mobilities. 13th Academy Conference of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, Algarve, Portugal.

Theoretical trends in tourism sociology

Tourism and modernity• 20th century sociology of tourism focused on relationship between tourism and modernity (e.g. MacCannell 1973; Wang 2000)

• Salient issue was authenticity as a cultural motive in tourist experience

• MacCannell’s staged authenticity:– Moderns seek authenticity outside modernity and locals stage it for them

– But is authenticity a universal or culturally determined motive for tourism? THE TOURIST?

The fracturing of authenticity• Discourse turned to the multiple meanings of authenticity

• Sub-discourses emerged around Wang’s (2000) three types– Objective, constructed and existential

• Others declared authenticity dead in the wake of postmodernism

• Some tried to ‘re-invest’ in it: Knudsen & Waade (2010) – performative authenticity

Authentication• Our recent work argued for a turn from tourist experience to the social processes of how attractions are authenticated (Cohen & Cohen 2012 - Authentication: Hot and cool – Annals of Tourism Research)

• Turns focus to who has the power to authenticate and how authentication takes place and is contested– through what social processes does authenticity come into being?

• Puts spotlight on the politics associated with authenticity

Shifting away from authenticity• But the centrality of authenticity has declined recently under two main forces:– Postmodern turn in the study of tourism– Rise of tourism in emergent world regions

• Existence of ‘originals’ denied (Baudrillard 1994); Fun and enjoyment replaced authenticity as dominant tourist motivation (Ritzer & Liska 1997)– ‘Post-tourists’ supposedly enjoy simulacra in a world devoid of originals

• Tourism from expanding middle classes of emergent economies driven by motives other than authenticity (e.g. Mkono 2013 on Africa and aesthetics)

Thames Town near Shanghai

Modelled after an English village: do we still need the ‘real thing’?

Discussion points• Several authors suggested authenticity is not an important motive for Chinese tourists (ie Arlt 2006, Nyíri 2006, Shepherd 2009)

• How relevant is authenticity for you in your tourism experiences?

• Are you satisfied to visit reproductions? Will reproductions motivate you to visit the ‘real’ thing?

THE TOURIST?• Motivations, perceptions and practices are not universal; they are culture bound

• The Tourist (MacCannell) contributes to Eurocentrism that has resonated through the sociological study of tourism in its early decades

• Raises the question of how applicable sociological theory in tourism is to tourism from emergent world regions such as Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America?

Modernist sociology of tourism• Taken-for-granted assumptions of a modernist sociology of tourism– Tourism is a modern Western phenomenon, born in the West and spread to the rest of the world

– Dominant geographical pattern of international tourism is North-to-South or West-to-East (to pleasure periphery)

– Westerners are the international tourists and the people of the destinations are hosts or tourees

– Tourists travel in quest of difference, authenticity and/or the exotic ‘Other’

• But this is clearly Eurocentric

Eurocentrism in tourism studies• Tourism academy only recognised its Eurocentrism in the last decade

• Prompted by growth in tourism demand from emergent world regions, especially expanding Chinese middle class

• Eurocentrism recognised in the power relations of the academy itself (Ren et al. 2010; Tribe et al. 2012)- especially among its gatekeepers!

• Xiao & Smith (2006) called for Chinese research communities to be critical of tourism research knowledge generated in the European and Anglosphere world regions

The tourist gaze• Another key theoretical opening in an earlier sociology of tourism

• Urry introduced Foucault’s ‘gaze’ into tourism discourse, but without focus on power and surveillance

• Prioritised visual sense and focus on landscape– Criticized for ignoring the body and other senses and reducing tourism experience to a universalised masculinised view (Obrador Pons 2003)

• Spurred a turn towards an interest in the body and other senses (from ocularcentric to multisensuous)– An appreciation of the many different ways that tourism is experienced

– And of the many different bodies that participate (or not) in tourism!

Reorienting the social sciences• Tourism sociology is now reacting to a broader meta-theoretical reorientation in contemporary sociology and philosophy

• Reflects late/postmodern social trends (Bauman 2000 on ‘liquid modernity’)– World has become highly fluid and pluralised through processes of globalisation and rapid technological changes

• First, change in emphasis from:– Permanence to flux– Being to doing– Structure to agency– Sedimented social patterns to the process of their emergence

– Focus on more stable fixtures of social life to the mobilities linking them

Reorienting the social sciences• Second, to:

– A de-differentiation of social domains

– The breakdown of conventional binary concepts

– The interpenetration between formerly opposite categories

– The blurring of the border between the physical and the digital

• This reorientation has profound implications for foundational concepts in tourism sociology!

The mobilities paradigm• Most significant theoretical development in last decade reflecting this meta-theoretical reorientation

• Arguably lacks the Eurocentrism implicit in a modernist sociology of tourism – does not assume the ‘West’ as a centre or point of departure

• Instigated as a framework to deal with the social changes Bauman described as characteristic of liquid modernity– Inspired by anthropologists such as Clifford (1997) and Bruner (1995) on global/local interfaces; developed programmatically in sociology by John Urry (2000)

The mobilities paradigm• Alleges a paradigm shift whereby the theoretical focus moves from the sedentary or the fixed to the mobile– Foregrounds movement as opposed to stasis

• Claims social science has been sedentarist– Reaction to movement being trivialised or ignored (Sheller & Urry 2006)

• Accounts for movement of: – people, capital, objects, information and wastes (Hannam et al. 2006)

– corporeally, imaginatively and digitally (Urry 2002)

The mobilities paradigm• Introduced a radical shift in sociological perception of societies

• Rather than made of bounded entities, societies are perceived as merged in boundless network of diverse flows, interconnected by nodes/moorings– Tourism (as a flow) enmeshed spatially, temporally and socially with other forms of mobility (Hall 2005; Williams 2013)

• Viewed as post-disciplinary by tourism scholars (e.g. Coles, Hall & Duval 2006)– Resonating in other areas of social sciences such as geography (Adey 2009; Cresswell 2006; 2010) and migration studies (Glick Schiller & Salazar 2013)

Advantages of the mobilities paradigm• Fresh perspective on tourism as entangled with other kinds of mobilities– e.g. pilgrimages, VFR, 2nd home commuting, diasporic “old home” visits, travel for education, medical purposes, work and various forms of migration

• Tourism is viewed as an everyday activity, rather than as an extraordinary bounded practice (Franklin & Crang 2001; Larsen 2008)– Uncoupled from the quest for the exotic ‘Other’, a quintessential motive of modernist ‘Western’ tourists

• Takes account of blurred boundaries of local, national and corporeal movements– Captures well more localised ‘tourisms’ at the domestic and regional scales, which are often ignored in favour of international tourism, despite being more voluminous (Ghimire 2001)

Breakdown of foundational conceptsMobilities paradigm destabilises some of the binary concepts on which modernist tourism sociology was grounded• The ‘tour’ – distinction between ‘home’ and ‘away’, with tour as a circular trip of home-away-back home is weakened by ICTs and multi-locality– Feeling ‘home’ while ‘away’ through ICTs

– Increased labour and residential migration, 2nd homes, lifestyle travel and other forms of neo-nomadism

– Trips ‘home’ as a form of tourism

Extraordinariness• Contrast between the ordinariness of everyday life and extraordinariness of tourism (e.g. distinction of everyday-holiday, comparable to secular-sacred) is becoming blurred

• Tourism increasingly part of the everyday and is de-exoticised– Tourism less contained in specific locations and set aside periods (Franklin & Crang 2001)

– Everyday routines and conventions inform tourist performances (Larsen 2008)

Hosts and guests• Cornerstone social relationship of the tourist system, host-guest, is being contested (Sherlock 2001)

• ‘Hosts’ are frequently ‘guests’ themselves– Migrant workers often assume the role of host through tourist employment in other countries (e.g. Janta et al. 2011)

Even tourism!?• Process of social de-differentiation weakens divide between distinct domains– work and leisure; study and entertainment; and reality and fantasy

• Blurring of boundaries between different mobilities provoked some to claim ‘the end of tourism’ (Gale 2009; Jensson 2002)• e.g. tourism blurred with forms of migration, commuting, VFR, medical travel, events, volunteering…

Criticisms of the mobilities paradigm• Over elevating the fluidity and flows of movement

• Too much emphasis on international mobilities by the relatively elite

• Under-emphasising the significance of various obstacles to mobility (Glick Schiller & Salazar 2013)

• More attention now being paid to differential access to and the politics of mobilities (Cresswell 2010; Richardson 2013)

Inter-related theoretical developments• A performativity approach and actor-network theory (ANT) share the perspective of this meta-theoretical re-orientation of sociology

• Performativity focuses on how performative acts “do things” to reflect reality-in-becoming rather than a social structure

• Social entities are dynamic products of performances

• “Place” is viewed relationally as not just a connection of parts, but as a convergence of performances at a moment in time (Anderson 2013)

• Implications of this for ‘destinations’ and ‘attractions’ still needs developing

ANT• ANT denies the existence of a stable ‘social’ domain of reality (Latour 2005)

• Focuses on how the social is actually produced– social as a movement of re-association and reassembling; a sociology of associations

• Moves beyond the social to encompass non-human as well as human influences (Tribe 2010), such as objects, technologies, machines

• Networks or associations depend on continuous performance of relations and are constantly in flux

• This approach has opened up new perspectives in tourism sociology, particularly for its focus on materiality (van der Duim et al. 2013)

Moving forward • The theoretical approaches of mobilities, performativity and ANT are mutually supportive and offer some fresh routes in tourism studies

• Some tourism research has been done using these approaches, but primarily in Western contexts– Question of their universal significance remains

• Their applicability in Asian contexts, amongst others, is still largely untested…– This is a crucial question as tourism research shifts towards the rise of tourism from emergent world regions

Some key problem-based issues at

the intersections of tourism and contemporary

society

Social justice• Growing concern in tourism studies with issues of social justice

• Advocacy oriented work that seeks to politicise research and transform society to a more equitable state

• This aim underpinned the development of a ‘hopeful tourism’ perspective (Pritchard et al. 2011)

• Reflects the recent introduction of the critical school of thought to tourism studies

Hopeful tourism• “In our contemporary moment, the sole pursuit of instrumental tourism knowledge becomes less justifiable” (Pritchard et al. 2011)

• Suggests a values-led research agenda

• Reaching for emancipation for “underserved life worlds”– e.g. disabled persons, older people, issues of social class and exclusion, poverty reduction

– Issues of gender, race, sexuality and ethnicity

Social tourism• Social justice influenced the rise of work on social tourism

• Concerned with the provision of tourism for economically weak groups

• Asks question: should tourism be a luxury or a human right? (Minnaert et al. 2009)– Recent work examines the relationship between tourism and subjective well-being (McCabe & Johnson 2013)

• Supporters of social tourism seek a more fair distribution of tourism experiences across all sections of society

Social justice• Hopeful tourism and social tourism research are still at early stages– Remains to be seen whether research driven by an agenda of social justice will attract a critical mass and go ‘mainstream’

• Should tourism research have a political agenda aimed at social justice or should it be business or curiosity driven? Is there space for all?

Environmental sustainability• Like social justice, research on environmental sustainability challenges a neo-liberal economic growth model of tourism

• Rising in importance – takes JOST’s new IF as evidence!

• Underpinned by ethical considerations of the society-environment nexus– Thus related to ethical consumption

• Holden (2009) questions whether twenty plus years of advocacy work for more sustainable tourism has actually improved the situation!

• Nonetheless, social research on environmental sustainability of tourism is an on-going topic of importance

Climate change and tourism• The impacts of tourism upon climate change are problematic, and tricky– Often viewed as an abstract problem as the impacts are dispersed globally

• Of particular concern are the impacts of the transport systems on which much tourism depends

• Tourism’s largest contribution to emissions is by far from air travel

A recent research example• An example of how my own collaborative research has applied tourism sociology to issues of environmental sustainability

• Cohen, S.A., Higham, J.E.S. & Reis, A. (2013). Sociological barriers to developing sustainable discretionary air travel behaviour. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. DOI: 10.1080/09669582.2013.809092

Additional recommended readings• Cohen, E. & Cohen, S.A. (2012). Authentication: Hot and

cool. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(3), 1295-1314.• Cohen, S.A., Higham, J.E.S. & Reis, A. (2013).

Sociological barriers to developing sustainable discretionary air travel behaviour. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. DOI: 10.1080/09669582.2013.809092

• Cresswell, T. (2010). Towards a Politics of Mobility. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28, 17-31.

• Franklin, A., & Crang, M. (2001). The trouble with tourism and travel theory?. Tourist Studies, 1(1), 5–22.

• Glick Schiller, N. & Salazar, N.B. (2013). Regimes of mobility across the globe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39(2): 183-200.

• Hannam, K., Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). Editorial: Mobilities, immobilities, moorings. Mobilities, 1(1), 1–22.

• Pritchard, A., Morgan, N., & Ateljevic, I. (2011). Hopeful tourism: A new transformative perspective. Annals of Tourism Research, 38(3), 941–963.

• van der Duim, R., Ren, C. & Johannesson, G. T. (2013). Ordering, materiality, and multiplicity: Enacting actor-network theory in tourism. Tourist Studies, 13(1), 3-20.

Contemporary directions in tourism sociology

Dr Scott Cohen

Head of Doctoral ProgrammesResource Editor in Sociology – Annals of Tourism

ResearchSchool of Hospitality and Tourism Management

University of Surrey, United Kingdoms.cohen@surrey.ac.uk