Course
Critical Tourism Studies - 3 ECTS
Through the democratization of travel, transport technology developments, ubiquitous internet use and growing global affluence, international tourism is booming despite temporary setbacks. Globetrotting tourists are seen as part of the frictionless flow of capital, information, culture and goods and most places on the planet are meant to be competing in a global marketplace to entice these. As such tourism is generally promoted as a motor for economic growth and regularly cited as the world largest industry, employing one in ten people of the planetary workforce. Under these terms there is a need to tend to the diverse relations through which tourism places and spaces emerge, and thus define tourism development successes from a broader perspective than merely as measurable economic growth.
This year, the spring school will be run in tandem with Spring School Political Ecologies of the Countryside: agrarian roots, environmental transformations and capitalist conflicts, running from 2-11 April at WUR (see here)
Introduction
The course will enable PhD students to unravel the multiple relations surrounding tourism and its development in a range of settings refracted through their own on-going research. The course will equip students with a nuanced appreciation of the socio-material and cultural dimensions of power manifest in tourism destination development, in tandem with an appreciation of the production and mobility aspects of tourism. These will be embedded with an understanding of the forces of structural power that characterize twenty-first century capitalism, empire and globalization.
Moreover, this graduate workshop is to engage graduate scholars of tourism in thinking about a plurality of tourism futures. The course is organised around theories that move beyond dichotomous understandings of tourism, such as good/bad tourism, global/local, production/consumption and mass/alternative. It will equip the student with the conceptual tools to transgress highly abstracted and often idealised notions of tourism development. Tourism is mainly constructed through grounded socio-material, cultural, and economic practices and bound together by accepted participants, labelled ‘stakeholders’, whose roles are prescribed under the idealised conditions of tourism development and dynamics. In this course we will explore and scrutinise these power geometries and unravel alternative tourism capacities for inducing a positive change to destinations and in the context of individual research projects. Moving beyond tourism defined as an industry based only on a particular economic logic derived from perceived structures and essence of a society sui generis, is the leitmotif of the course. We are3 all tourists all the time is the point of departure and thereby the workshop will explore how tourism grows through relations and the act of being-with others, more-than/non-humans and the earth itself. Therefore, it is imperative that our conceptual frameworks assist in critically engaging with the realities tourism performs.
The course is organized around theories that link tourism with Marxian, poststructuralist, relational and political ecology scholarship. The course thus moves beyond theories on tourism as a social construct and industry. It offers students a solid theoretical basis to problematize the relation between tourism and its cultural and socio-material setting. Faculty contributions draw on different disciplines (history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, political ecology, geography, economics) to rethink the relation between tourism and the world. The various sessions in the course combine the reading of foundational texts with readings of more recent academic work from critical tourism studies.
Learning outcomes
During the course, participants develop a conceptualization of tourism relevant to their research questions and setting. Participants will engage directly with foundational texts on critical tourism studies and link these to the manifold ways in which tourism unfolds in a range of settings. Participants learn to see how tourism development trajectories are created and maintained and what are the impacts on their research projects and on their research population.
After successful completion of this course, participants are expected to be able to:
- Identify core theoretical frames to rethink the ways in which tourism and development are linked
- Understand the importance of historical, abstract and theoretical texts and apply them to contemporary debates on critical tourism studies
- Critically reflect on the implications of different theoretical framings for their research projects
- Develop a conceptualisation of tourism for his or her own research project.
Activities
Being a graduate workshop, more demands will be made on reading, self-study, active pre-class preparation, reflections and development of own research project and in-class dialogue. Tutorial sessions take place every morning setting the tone for the day and reflecting on previous days. Thereafter two lectures take place, one before lunch and one after lunch and after these scope is provided for team work with focus on individual projects. The workshop concludes with a presentation symposium wherein members of the Tourism@WUR cluster and other invited faculty will join and engage with talks/presentations from each of the participants on how their project developed with input from the graduate workshop. Readings will be provided at least two weeks before the start of the course.
Participants are expected to read the literature, and send in questions and points for discussion to the teacher no later than 08.00 am the day of the session!
- Session one will serve as an introduction into the topic and set-up of the course. We will allow participants to get to know each other, briefly discuss each other’s research projects, set the overall theme, and align expectations.
- The literature-based lectures will discuss foundational texts and relate these to contemporary work that addresses the relation between tourism and theory. Where appropriate we discuss how the specific literature of that day is applied in empirical research. The sessions will introduce the literature based in engaging lecture format. The active contribution of participants to bring in their observations and reflections is encouraged.
- The final day of the course is a is a symposium with tourism scholars of the Tourism@WUR cluster. Throughout the day participants present their research in relation to the different perspectives discussed in the course. In the afternoon, the school will be rounded off with some drinks and pleasantries.
Assessment
The assessment consist of 1) an evaluation of the student’s participation in the sessions and 2) a short essay (3-5.000 words) in which participants will reflect on the ways in which aspects of critical tourism studies affected their PhD research.
- Preparation through reading all required literature in advance, labelled ‘readings’.
- The active participation in class is assessed through the submission of at least one question for debate and comments on the reading.
- In the final essay, students are asked to work with the theory of one or two sessions and make a connection between the theoretical debates and their own research.
Assumed prior knowledge
This course gives a thorough introduction to important debates in the social and environmental sciences and cultural studies on tourism
theory and development. Participants are expected to have a basic level of knowledge about debates in the broader sciences. Please contact the course coordinator in case of doubt about the required entry level.
Course fees
| WGS PhDs with TSP | €300 |
| a) All other PhD candidates b) Postdocs and staff of the above mentioned Graduate Schools | €640 |
| All others | €900 |
Cancellation conditions
Participants can cancel their registration free of charge 1 month before the course starts. A cancellation fee of 100% applies if a participant cancels his/her registration less than 1 month prior to the start of the course.
The organisers have the right to cancel the course no later than one month before the planned course start date in the case that the number of registrations does not reach the minimum.
The participants will be notified of any changes at their e-mail addresses.