Untitled

ound to cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. As Graburn and Jafari
argued almost two decades ago:
No single discipline alone can accommodate, treat, or understand
tourism; it can be studied only if disciplinary boundaries are crossed and
if multidisciplinary perspective are sought and formed (Graburn and
Jafari 1991, p. 7).
This suggests that the disciplinary nature of tourism studies is in fact
also thought to be intrinsically related to its own object of study. It is not
only that there may exist many possible ways of studying tourism, but that
tourism is in itself such a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that it
becomes very difficult to house it in one theory, or within one discipline
only. When put in the context of the social world, that which the social
sciences investigate, the phenomenon of tourism is difficult to demarcate
and locate, for example:
due to its reliance on primary, secondary and tertiary levels of
production and service, and the fact that it is so intricately interwoven
into the fabric of life economically, socioculturally and environmentally
(Fennel 2008, p. 1).
We can then now draw the general conclusion that tourism studies
are not held together by a common all-embracing discipline specific
tourism theory in a strict sense. What we find is rather a variety of
theoretical approaches, from a range of social science disciplines, which
all contribute to the understanding and explanation of tourism and tourists.
This leads us to refer to tourism studies in the plural. This state of affairs is
also a result of the inherent complexity of the phenomena of tourism itself.
This (inter)disciplinary character of tourism studies then forms the
social science context in which tourism theory is to be located and
assessed.
On tourism theory
Theory may be used and understood in a number of slightly different ways.
It can be regarded both as the highest achievement of scientific reasoning
and dismissed as representing knowledge that is not to be trusted, as in
“well, that is just theory”. Although a theory may be supported or refuted
34