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3. Tourism theory
Tourism theory and explanation must always move with the cultural
milieux in which they arise.
- Adrian Franklin 18
Every relation between two instances demands a route. What is already
there on this route either facilitates or impedes the relation.
- Michel Serres 19
The argument is no longer that methods discover and depict realities.
Instead, it is that they participate in the enactment of those realities.
- John Law 20
In this chapter we will introduce and investigate tourism theory, that is,
that conceptual domain which has as its aim and goal to articulate and
develop our understandings and explanations of tourism and tourists. We
will particularly focus on “ontology”, that is, the basic assumptions and
principles underlying our understandings and explanations of tourism and
tourists. In our mapping of this theoretical terrain we will along the way
also actualise our own approach to tourists and tourism imaginationings.
All research in tourism studies has to engage with tourism theory.
Contrary to lay understandings, “facts” and “findings” about tourism and
tourists do not pop up on their own on the tourism researcher’s table of
analysis. In other words, how we choose to conceptualize and theorize
tourism and tourists will inevitably have consequences for how we conduct
our studies, what type of research we do, and what kind of knowledge
claims about tourism and tourists we are able to make.
In addition, it ought to be kept in mind that theory is not at all a sole
concern for researchers or the academia. For example, every tourist is
theoretical in the sense of having to make abstract assumptions and
calculations about concrete matters such as where to go and what to do.
Likewise, anybody working in tourism is dependent upon notions and
ideas when reasoning and deciding about how to organise and conduct the
18 Franklin 2003, p. 279.
19 Serres 2007, p. 150.
20 Law 2004, p. 45.
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