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5. Towards an earthly tourism research agenda
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to
set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterson 33
Tourism studies is coming of age at a time when dramatic change is
afoot in the broader domain of social research philosophy.
- Belhassen & Caton 34
The fitness of nature and of the Earth thus has the power to challenge
blind (ideological) belief in the infinite power of abstraction, of human
thinking and technology, and of political power and the space which that
power generates and decrees.
- Henri Lefebvre 35
Throughout the preceding chapters we have tried to convey a sense of the
topological and heterogeneous complexity of contemporary tourist and
tourism imaginationings in the world and on the Earth. In this final chapter
of the report we will not provide a distilled summary, or a list of
conclusions. Things do not fall that neatly into place, there are always
cracks that “marks the powerlessness to think, but also the line and the
point from which thought invests its new surface” (Deleuze 2004, p. 251).
These cracks represent to us new frontiers, but also substantial challenges
that we believe will haunt research in tourism studies into the future.
In summarising these challenges the chapter will take some steps
towards “an earthly tourism research agenda” by which we want to achieve
our first objective of this report: to identify some relevant and important
future areas of research on tourism and tourists. Underpinning our project
is an attempt to grapple with the paradox that although tourism is
considered an earthly business, the Earth is rarely theorized in tourism
studies. Indeed, it seems to us that the arguments that dominate are
variations on a theme that, in one way or another, tourism studies is not
social enough. Even the standard tourism geography definition of tourism,
seeing it as; “activities of people travelling to and staying in places outside
their usual environment”, is seen as problematic because “it fails to
encapsulate any distinct sphere of social practice” (Johnston, Gregory,
33 Source unknown
34 Belhassen & Caton 2009, p. 335.
35 Lefebvre 1991, p. 330.
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