Contemporary currents in tourism sociology
Dr Scott Allen Cohen
School of Hospitality and Tourism Management
Faculty of Business, Economics and Law
University of Surrey, United Kingdom
The centrality of tourism sociology
• For more than 50 years sociology has been a central informant to the development of tourism studies
• “Tourism research continues to be inter-disciplinary but is largely being driven by sociology, anthropology, psychology, geography and consumer behavior perspectives” (Benckenendorff & Zehrer, 2013)
• “Collective body of sociology and anthropology work with a strong postmodern emphasis as a major cluster of influence for tourism researchers” (Benckenendorff & Zehrer, 2013)
Co-citation/network analysis of most cited works (Benckendorff & Zehrer, 2013)
Black nodes= sociology, anthropology & psychology theme
Why are developments in the sociological study of tourism important?
• Crucial to stay on top of contemporary currents in the sociological study of tourism
• Understandings of the changing social world should filter through to practical applications
• Implications for consumer behaviour, marketing, management, development and planning
Two primary developments we must come to grips with
• The increasing overlap and blurring of tourism with other forms of mobility
– Contributes to a breakdown in fixed binary concepts we’ve used to understand tourism, such as ‘host’/’guest’
• An implicit Eurocentrism that underpins the majority of past tourism studies
– With the rapid rise of tourism from emerging world regions, our knowledge on tourists’ motivations and practices is left questionable
The blurring of tourism with other forms of mobility • World has become highly fluid and pluralised through
processes of globalisation and rapid technological changes – Liquid modernity (Bauman, 2000)
• The ‘mobilities paradigm’ was instigated as a framework to deal with these social changes (Urry, 2000)
– Alleges a paradigm shift whereby the theoretical focus moves from the sedentary or the fixed to the mobile
• 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)
Implications of the mobilities paradigm for tourism studies
• 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, volunteering, work and various forms of migration
• Blurring of boundaries between different mobilities provoked some to claim ‘the end of tourism’ (Gale, 2009)
• This process of social de-differentiation weakens the divide between distinct domains:
– work and leisure; study and entertainment; and reality and fantasy
Breakdown of foundational concepts
Mobilities paradigm destabilises some of the fixed binary concepts on which sociological studies of tourism have been grounded (Cohen & Cohen, 2012)
• 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
Extraordinariness
• Pushes us to take account of more localised ‘tourisms’ at the domestic and regional scales, which are often ignored in favour of international tourism, despite being more voluminous (Ghimire, 2001)
• Tourism is viewed as an everyday activity, rather than as an extraordinary bounded practice (Franklin & Crang, 2001)
– Uncoupled from the quest for the exotic ‘Other’, a quintessential motive of modernist ‘Western’ tourists
– Contrast between the ordinariness of everyday life and extraordinariness of tourism (e.g. distinction of everyday-holiday, comparable to secular-sacred) is becoming blurred
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)
A challenge ahead
• The practical implications of these social changes, as framed by the mobilities paradigm, for tourism marketing and management have hardly been worked out
• An exception in sustainable destination governance (Dredge & Jamal, 2013) -
– Spatial re-structuring of destinations
– Pluralisation of destination management
– Re-envisioning of community
Eurocentrism in tourism studies
• 20th century sociology of tourism focused on relationship between tourism and modernity (Wang, 2000)
• Salient issue was authenticity as a cultural motive in tourist experience
• Staged authenticity (MacCannell, 1973)
– Moderns seek authenticity outside modernity and locals stage it for them
– But is authenticity a universal or culturally determined motive for tourism? THE TOURIST?
Thames Town near Shanghai
Modelled after an English village: do we still need the ‘real thing’?
THE TOURIST?
• Several authors suggested authenticity is not an important motive for Chinese tourists (e.g. Arlt, 2006; Nyíri, 2006)
– Tourism from expanding middle classes of emergent economies driven by motives other than authenticity (e.g. Mkono 2013 on Africa and aesthetics)
• Motivations, perceptions and practices are not universal; they are culture bound
• Eurocentrism has resonated through the sociological study of tourism in its early decades
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, especially among its gatekeepers! (Ren et al., 2010)
– Xiao & Smith (2006) called for Chinese research communities to be critical of tourism research knowledge generated in the European and Anglosphere world regions
• 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?
Moving forward
• Eurocentrism in tourism studies is not just in the sociological study of tourism
– Eurocentrism has bled through to studies of tourist behaviour and tourism development
– The universal significance of much tourism knowledge remains untested outside ‘Western’ contexts
• As tourism research shifts towards the rise of tourism from emergent world regions, the assumptions that underpin tourism marketing, management, planning and development will have to be revisited and checked for a Eurocentric bias
References Arlt, G.W. (2006). China’s outbound tourism. Oxford: Routledge.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Benckenendorff, P. & Zehrer, A. (2013). A network analysis of tourism research. Annals of Tourism Research, 43, 121-149.
Cohen, E. & Cohen, S.A. (2012) Current sociological theories and issues in tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 39(4), 2177-2202.
Dredge, D. & Jamal, T. (2013). Mobilities on the Gold Coast, Australia: Implications for destination governance and sustainable tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 21(4), 557-579.
Franklin, A. & Crang, M. (2001). The trouble with tourism and travel theory? Tourist Studies, 1(1), 5-22.
Gale, T. (2009). Urban beaches, virtual worlds and ‘‘the end of tourism’’. Mobilities, 4(1), 119–138
Ghimire, K.B. (2001) The native tourist: Tourism development within developing countries. London: Earthscan.
Hall, C.M. (2005). Reconsidering the geography of tourism and contemporary mobility. Geographical Research, 43(2), 125-139.
Janta, H., Brown, L., Lugosi, P., & Ladkin, A. (2011). Migrant relationships and tourism employment. Annals of Tourism Research, 38(4), 1322–1343.
MacCannell, D. (1973). Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of social space in tourist settings. American Journal of Sociology, 79(3), 589-603.
Mkono, M. (2013). African and Western tourists: Object authenticity quest? Annals of Tourism Research, 41, 195-214.
Nyíri, P. (2006). Scenic spots; Chinese tourism, the state and cultural authority. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Ren, C., Pritchard, A. & Morgan, N. (2010). Constructing tourism research: A critical inquiry. Annals of Tourism Research, 37(4), 885-904.
Sherlock, K. (2001). Revisiting the concept of hosts and guests. Tourist Studies, 1(3), 271–295.
Urry, J. (2000). Sociology beyond societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-first Century. London: Routledge.
Wang, N. (2000). Tourism and modernity: A sociological analysis. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Williams, A. (2013). Mobilities and sustainable tourism: Path-creating or path-dependent relationships? Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 21(4), 511-531.
Xiao, H. & Smith, S.L.J. (2006). Towards a paradigm shift of knowledge: Implications for tourism research in China. China Tourism Research, 2(4), 402-422.
Contemporary currents in tourism sociology
Dr Scott Allen Cohen
School of Hospitality and Tourism Management
Faculty of Business, Economics and Law
University of Surrey, United Kingdom
