Int. J. Tourism Anthropology, Vol. X, No.
Y, xxxx 1
Towards new paradigms in tourism fields: an
anthropological perspective
Maximiliano E. Korstanje
Department of Economics,
School of Business, University of Palermo,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Email: [email protected]
Abstract: The present notes of research centres on the problem of
fragmentation, which is experienced by tourism applied research in the recent
years. Echoing the original claims issued by John Tribe -followed by many
others scholars-, we discuss further on the socio-economic factors that
prevented tourism its maturated and stylised form. Though we introduce a
materialist viewpoint, echoing David Harvey, no less true is that the point is
open to further debate -incorporating cultural viewpoints-. The impulses and
bursts of interest received simultaneously from social science but also by the
theory of scientifisation coined by Jafar Jafari did not suffice to gain purchase
over a maturated discipline. Even if followers of Jafari envisaged that the
maturation of tourism hinged on the proficiency and prolificity of published
works, this obscured more than it clarified. Nowadays, the epistemology of
tourism is facing a serious crisis which needs immediate attention.
Keywords: epistemology of tourism; truth; reality; fragmentation;
postmodernism.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Korstanje, M.E. (xxxx)
‘Towards new paradigms in tourism fields: an anthropological perspective’,
Int. J. Tourism Anthropology, Vol. X, No. Y, pp.xxx–xxx.
Biographical notes: Maximiliano E. Korstanje is a reader at Economics
Department, University of Palermo. He serves as book series editor in advances
in hospitality, tourism and the service industry, IGI Global Hershey
Pennsylvania and an Associate Editor for studies and perspectives in tourism,
CIET Argentina. He is a foreign member of AMIT – Mexican academy for the
study of tourism as well as advisory board of important academic publishers as
Routledge, Springer, Cambridge Scholar Publishing and IGI global. His recent
books include ‘The rise of Thana capitalism and tourism’, Routledge,
‘Terrorism, tourism and the end of hospitality in the west’, Springer Nature,
and ‘Mobilities paradox: a critical analysis’, Edward Elgar among others.
This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled [title]
presented at [name, location and date of conference]. Comment [t1]: Author: If a previous version of
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1 Introduction
Over the recent decades, tourism research led towards what Jafari (2001) dubbed as ‘the
scientifisation of tourism’. Per his viewpoint, tourism experienced different stage, which
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2 M.E. Korstanje
oscillated from a precautionary towards a scientific-centred paradigm paving the
pathways for the rise of an objective understanding of tourism. Though Jafari was quite
clear enough respecting to the limitations of accepting ‘the scientifisation of tourism’ as
an unquestionable truth, his followers – to our end – assumed mistakenly that the
maturation of a discipline depended on the number of publications such as Ph. Doctorate
dissertations, books, specialised journals and so forth (Weaver and Opermann, 2000;
Botterill, 2001; Holden, 2004; Darbellay and Stock, 2012). By toying with the belief that
psychoanalysis is a discipline, it is important to mention that it was consolidated within
fifteen years. Likewise, tourism-related scholars precluded that during considerable lapse
of time, tourism research will reach its maturation. In this respect, Tribe (1997, 2009,
2010) recently alerted not only on the caveats of Academy to monopolise the produced
knowledge but also in an ever-increasing fragmentation of produced knowledge
preventing the maturation of tourism as a serious option. For the sake of clarity, This
process was called by Tribe as ‘the indiscipline of tourism’. Equally important, although
Tribe adamantly devotes his time in unpuzzling the reasons behind such a fragmentation
he makes a wrong diagnosis posing The International Academy for the Study of Tourism
as one of the key factors. As Korstanje puts it, many of the disciplines created through the
middle of twentieth century lacked of a shared epistemology because they face serious
problems to agree ‘an object of study’. Psychoanalysis, after few years, reached its zenith
because Freud fleshed out the object of study, adjoined to a clear epistemology. With the
benefits of this hindsight, the fragmentation of knowledge not only is not limited to
tourism but also affects other disciplines as well (Thirkettle and Korstanje, 2013;
Korstanje et al., 2016).
This begs two important questions, what are the sociological reasons that explain the
fragmentation of knowledge-production?, why despite almost four decades of good
investigation, tourism is not considering a science?
In this short notes of research we held the thesis that epistemology and economic
production are inextricably intertwined. While the means of production as well as the
economic background experienced a radical shift, after 70s, tourism and other emergent
disciplines failed to forge a unified epistemology. This moot-point will be discussed
critically in next section.
2 Tourism, economy and the sense of reality
At some extent, some voices lament the role of the academy and its indifference for other
publications than written in English as well as the limitations to set a clear-cut agenda for
professional fieldworkers and researchers (Harrison 2007; Tribe, 2010; Dann, 2011;
Chambers and Rakic, 2015). In view of the limitations a note of research shows, we have
to limit the discussion to some voices alone. As an object of study, tourism has
historically captivated the attention of other disciplines as sociology, anthropology,
economy or even geography among others. It triggered a hot debate revolving around the
interdisciplinary nature of tourism which far from being resolved still remain open (Coles
et al., 2006; Sharpley 2011). Darbellay and Stock (2012) argue that the complexity of
tourism as an object of study has not resolved but some attempts to define tourism from
an all-encompassing way can be traced back to the first studies in Switzerland. By this
way, a second stage of fragmentation is found when others disciplines centred on
Towards new paradigms in tourism fields 3
tourism-research. While the different involving disciplines have not constructed a shared
episteme of tourism, it created a dispersion in the obtained knowledge.
3 The facets of science
One might speculate that in spite of the volume of studies and published works, two main
contrasting poles converge, tourism management and tourism-as-social-institution. At a
closer look, the former signals to the study of the best practices to protect the interests of
stakeholders or profit-maximisation ends whereas the latter alludes to tourism as a
relational and social phenomenon. Particularly both positions have cultivated proponents
and detractors but leaving behind that further calibrations of what is the object of study of
tourism-related researchers is at least needed. To our end, tourism should be typified as a
rite of passage, or in terms of Krippendorf, a mechanism of escapement self-oriented to
revitalise the frustrations happened during daily-life (Krippendorf, 1982). In this respect
MacCannell (1976) argues convincingly that the idealised figure of totem – in tribal
minds – sets the pace to tourism as the architect of a new stage of capitalism where
denizens are subject to exchanged forms of cultural consumption. In so doing, the
archetype of staged-authenticity explains not only how discrepancies and inter-class
rivalries are suspended but how the society keeps united. With the benefits of hindsight,
British geographer David Harvey observes that the conception of spaces, as well as the
sense of reality are social construes. What is known as ‘epistemology’ is no other thing
than a material projection of the means of production that rule each society. While the
means of production remain with some stability, the idea of reality is presented as an
all-pervading entity. Instead, when the logic of production suffers some changes, the
epistemological conception of reality is accordingly altered. Harvey (1989) anticipates
the turning point of the epistemological fragmentation in the Oil Embargo happened in
1972 just after the Arab-Israeli war. This event not only placed the Western system of
production in jeopardy but also pressed capitalist nations to abandon the scale production
towards more decentralised forms. The introduction of segmentation in disciplines as
Marketing or Management departs from the needs of finding new sources for the
produced merchandises. From that moment on, the replicability of the production
processes at industrial scale sets the pace to new decentralised models which tailored to
the individual needs of consumers.
In consequence, through the mid of 70s decade, West appealed to segmented forms of
consumption which resulted in more fluid liberated forms of relations. Whether the
enlightenment envisaged ‘reality’ as an immutable entity, postmodernity developed a
more decentralised version of reality, which can be very well adjusted to what people
desire. Not only epistemology suffers serious fragmentations but also scholars abandon
the shelter of all-encompassing models, in view of an ever-increasing phenomenology
leading towards relativism.
As the previous argument given, in these notes of research we find science,
epistemology and economy has faced three different facets. The first stage, which
oscillates from ancient times to Middle Age, is characterised by interrogations about an
apollonian sense of wisdom connecting the lives of people with cities. It is safe to say,
scholars understood the reality as an all-pervading entity which can be deciphered by
man through the exercise of reasoning. Since the economy of these human organisations
was purely of subsistence there was a strong connection of man and its territory. Not only
4 M.E. Korstanje
such a tie is expressed in the kinship or ethnic-related lineage but in tradition-centred
prone towards religiosity. Those disciplines born in these days were philosophy,
astrology, medicine and astronomy among others. During the Middle Age, Europe enters
in a second stage, dubbed as ‘the secondary production of knowledge’, which is triggered
by Cromwellian revolution and the derived industrial logic. The relations of production,
at this facet, experienced some grounding alterations where the notion of kinship sets the
pace to paid-work. The trust in God and the City, cultivated by man, was replaced to
more fluid and mobile forms of relations finely-ingrained into the discourse of calculation
and instrumentality. The reality was envisaged as an rational interplay of effects, which
are articulated in previous decision making processes. At the same time, European
empires not only built a infrastructure to index non-western economies but also
flourished travels and expeditions as valid sources of information for science to be
consolidated. The classic disciplines that pivoted at the academic circles by this age was
psychology, sociology and anthropology. The economy of subsistence proper of former
centuries enthusiastically embraced a new standardised way of expansion to a scale-
production. Likewise, positivism ruled as the main epistemological wave during nineteen
and whole of twentieth century. Last but not least, a third facet baptised as
‘postmodernism’ upsurged after 1972 when Western sources of energy tottered. The
Arab-Israeli war resulted in an oil embargo that pressed Europe and the United States to
adopt new forms and means of production. The scaling-standardised production was
discarded by more decentralised forms while relativism was introduced in epistemology
as the centrepiece of science. This means that in former stages, reality was an fixed
entity, situated just there to be grasped by human mind, in postmodernity, reality was
only a cultural constructions, previously determined by subject’s inner-world. The sense
of reality was no other thing than a simple projection of what individuals feel, or hope.
As a result of this, the already existent epistemological models grapple with a much
deeper crisis where there are no revealed truths nor any principle of reality as
psychoanalysis originally formulated. The current state of fragmentation, which rests on
the divergence of theories and hypotheses of tourism research, seems to be originated in
those academic postmodern disciplines. Although Tribe made the correct diagnosis
describing how scholars failed to unify the same theoretical corpus in order for the
discipline to be crystalised, he does not explain the reasons why this happens. This short
piece aims to fulfil this gap widening the horizon for the correct understanding of this
much deep-seated issue.
4 Conclusions
After further examination, we have toyed with the idea that the indiscipline of tourism,
far from being connected to the role of the international academy for the study of tourism,
stems from a similar economic background other recently-born disciplines as
management, journalism, communication and tourism share. Of course, needless to say,
this is not a question of time, but unless by the fact that those disciplines emerged during
postmodern times showed serious limitations to forge a coherent epistemology and
methodology to grasp their object of study. Henceforth this explains not only why
tourism is facing serious fragmentation in the produced knowledge, but also the rivalries
between academic circles to impose their own interpretations regarding what tourism
means. The all-encompassed paradigms as they were imagined by the Enlightenment
Towards new paradigms in tourism fields 5
turned into an atomised World where subjectivity and aesthetic prevail. While some
already-settled options as sociology or Medicine suffered minor shifts to the arrival of
postmodernity, tourism -like others postmodern disciplines- engendered a scattered
conceptual platform that paradoxically prevented its maturation.
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