Resources

RESOURCES


RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Patricia Johnson
School/Work Place : University of Newcastle, Australia
Contact : Patricia.Johnson@newcastle.edu.au
Year : 2009

Introduction: Nurturing effective intercultural dialogue through tourism has been positioned to be an emergent challenge to tourism professionals working toward sustainability in a globalised world (Robinson and Picard 2006). This interdisciplinary study devises inroads into ways of addressing this challenge through ‘reading’ the language of cosmopolitanism as it appears in writings about tourism and travel. When one writes about travel a journey into the cosmos is documented which is a socio-cultural imagining of self and other. These writings can be highly influential on the reading (and potentially travelling) public and they are positioned as informing the development of global citizenry literacy. As cultural texts they recount an engagement in, and with, cosmopolitanism by way of a cosmopolitical gaze. This paper is drawn from a wider study which examines linkages between cosmopolitanism and cultural literacy by formulating a conceptual framework to ‘read’ cultural orientations through discourse and ideology. The study examines women’s travel writing to Iran in a specific time period: between 1979 (the Islamic Revolution) and 2002 (President Bush’s State of the Union address that positioned Iran in the ‘Axis of Evil’). This timeframe marks a period of uncertainty – a liminal period marred by crisis which gave rise to negative discursive frameworks that have been ‘normalised’ in Western cultural thought. Key discourses are identified by discerning patterns of convention in the ways the authors frame their narrative and position the foreign within this framework.

Method: This study adopts a poststructuralist, social constructivist research design which views travel and the travel text as sign, discourse and representation. The study draws from texts set within a chronological frame and uses the cultural studies lens of liminality to examine data. Liminality provides a way to explore the language of cosmopolitanism in that it has the potential to cast light on the cosmopolitical by revealing how the self and ‘other’ are imagined. This method positions ‘reality’ as socially constructed and studies discourse in historical and cosmopolitical contexts. Elements of a feminist paradigm are incorporated through its concern about relationships of gender and power. Scapes and scripts are used as conceptual tools to explore how imaginings of self and other are constructed in the travel text.

Findings: The findings identified key discourses by discerning patterns of convention in the various ways these authors frame themselves ‘in the world’ and how they position the foreign within this framework. These travellers were found to engage with place in ways that were oriented by Western viewing positions which form a rubric of discourses that positioned self, place and ‘other’. While all authors evoked values espoused in liberal democracy, these narratives are ethnocentric and reveal an element of rigidity in liberal democracy in that they cast judgement over the foreign from a position of ‘security’ and legitimate the voice through discourses of Western privilege and choice which appear as dimensions of Western internationalism as a narrow form of cosmopolitanism. Concerns are raised in relation to the rigidity of Western discourses because they impact on fostering improved intercultural relationships and, by extension, sustainable tourism practices.

Application of Results: This paper de-constructs the cosmopolitan gaze to forward a plan for revising a conceptual framework that can be used to ‘map’ culture by forwarding the idea that a cosmopolitical rubric (made up of discourses that commonly appear within cultural groups) would assist in defining the gaze from any cultural viewing position. The qualitative research method used in this study could also be applied to other forms of writings about travel and tourism to understand how other people and places are positioned to discern shifts in ways of thinking about authenticity of the foreign. This conceptual ‘tool’ could be useful to tourism planners, educators and other professionals as well as tourism media to understand how polemic positions are shaped and cultures are stigmatised through discourse. Awareness of how discourse operates in travel/tourism is crucial to understanding intercultural relationships as they impact on sustainable tourism practices.

Conclusion: These authors were found to mobilise notions of liminality and authenticity as discursive tools to provide authority to the voice, ground discourse and structure the gaze. The cosmopolitan gaze was found to be selective in its focus by drawing from widely held ‘legitimate’ Western discourse to construct ‘other’ by falling back on preconceived ideas of the foreign. The discussion raises timely and topical issues which address intercultural relationships between Western and Southwest Asian cultures in the context of tourism and travel. The paper addresses the scholarly conundrum of theorising cosmopolitanism and contributes in a useful way by forwarding a conceptual framework that can be applied to further understand the concept and the dynamics that characterise cultural exchange. In this way it contributes to tourism scholarship by focussing on issues which are immediate to questions which surround sustainable tourism.


List of Articles
No. Subject Viewssort Date
85 Think Tank XII Opportunities and Obstacles for Sustainable Tourism Mo... file 8372 Nov 06, 2013

Cross border destination management is characterized by some extra challenges: national, district or county interests, different administrative structures, a high impact of politics and policies, inequality of tourism infrastructures, power ...

Author: Tatjana Thimm 

Year: 2012 

84 Think Tank IX The role of values in sustaining the hospitality labou... file 8656 Oct 13, 2013

The role of human resources in sustaining hospitality enterprises has long been recognized (Hjalager und Andersen 2001; Baum 2007). Personnel are considered vital for the delivery of touristic experiences, thus being a central ingredient of ...

Author: Anja Hergesell, Ulrike Bauernfeind & Dagmar Lund-Durlacher 

Year: 2009 

83 Think Tank XI Visualising Sustainability: Reflections on Applied Stu... file 8690 Oct 14, 2013

As Sontag (1979) stated, we live in an image-based world within which we are continuously bombarded with visuals in countless formats and guises. However, despite such image saturation, academic engagement whether through teaching or resear...

Author: Caroline Scarles 

Year: 2011 

82 Think Tank XIV Exploring the potential of Community Based Ecotourism ... file 8755 Jun 27, 2014

Development in developing countries often results in mass land-use change and subsequent increase in greenhouse gas emission by deforestation or forest degradation. For instance, approximately a-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions was a...

Author: Stephen Wearing, Paul Chatterton, Amy Reggers & Hanna Sakata 

Year: 2014 

81 Think Tank VI Corporate Social Responsibility and Marine Tourism Org... file 8856 Oct 13, 2013

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an important issue for some governments but the tourism industry appears to be slow in adopting CSR strategies. By focusing on CSR, we argue that the implementation of CSR audits could help t...

Author: Ya-Ting Huang, David Botterill & Eleri Jones 

Year: 2006 

80 Think Tank VIII Destination Competitiveness and Policy Making for Pove... file 8857 Oct 13, 2013

This paper has five aims. First, to discuss the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) and the method of its construction. If the TTCI is to have policy significance it is essential that its components be identified and analysed as ...

Author: Larry Dwyer 

Year: 2008 

79 Think Tank XV A vacation from capitalism; what happens when the ‘mas... file 8973 Jul 27, 2015

Philosophical and theoretical debates in tourism must be situated not just within economic and cultural contexts, but also political and social ones (Ataljevic, Pritchard & Morgan, 2007). Tourism is more than an ‘industry,’ Freya Higgins...

Author: Amy Savener 

Year: 2015 

78 Think Tank XIV A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Sustainab... file 9098 Jun 26, 2014

Emerging tourist destinations can challenge ecological, economic, social, and quality of life barriers. These issues draw attention towards the consequences of increasing complexity that are often found as a tourist marketing system grows an...

Author: Sarah Duffy & Larry Dwyer 

Year: 2014 

OPA: 2014 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

77 Think Tank VII Volunteer Tourism: Sustainable Innovation in Tourism, ... file 9099 Oct 13, 2013

This is a study of the relationships between two volunteer tourism host communities and the volunteer tourists who visit them. One is a declining rural community located in the Appalachian mountains of the United States. The other is in a ra...

Author: Nancy McGehee 

Year: 2007 

76 Think Tank XII Employee Work Attitudes, Mobility and Promotional Oppo... file 9175 Nov 06, 2013

The issue of employee mobility is brought into sharp focus in times of economic and social uncertainty. Previous studies into the causes of employee mobility have investigated, among other determinants, the link between the promotional oppor...

Author: Margaret Deery, Leo Jago & Michael Stewart 

Year: 2012 

75 Think Tank IV Environmental Training and Measures at Scandic Hotels,... file 9227 Dec 01, 2013

Hotels are traditionally geared towards providing a high-level of comfort and entertainment, as well as a broad spectrum of services, often without giving much concern to associated environmental or socio-economic impacts. Hotel companies ty...

Author: Paulina Bohdanowicz, Branko Simanic & Ivo Martinac 

Year: 2004 

OPA: 2004 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

74 Think Tank VIII Sustaining through Gastronomy: The Case of Slow Food M... file 9345 Oct 13, 2013

This paper is conducted within the interpretive paradigm, using subjectivist, non-positivist, qualitative approach to research started out of writer’s personal motivation after being exposed to a couple of Slow Food conviviums in the recent ...

Author: Miha Bratec 

Year: 2008 

73 OPA award Slow Travellers - Who Are They, and What Motivates Them? file 9502 Nov 06, 2013

Tourism’s contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is estimated to be around 5% and is forecast to grow rapidly, to around 16% of global emissions by 2020. Future strategies for mitigation must address the levels of demand for t...

Author: Derek Robbins & Jaedong Cho 

Year: 2012 

OPA: 2012 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

72 Think Tank VIII Community Actions to Engage Local Residents in Tourism... file 9503 Dec 19, 2013

This paper explores the residents’ knowledge of community actions to engage local members in tourism planning and development in the King Cobra Village of Thailand. The degree of participatory ability which is associated with the public atti...

Author: Kitsada Tungchawal 

Year: 2008 

71 Think Tank VI Sustainable tourist accommodation management: The role... file 9585 Oct 13, 2013

The integration of sustainability within the domain of tourism has recently made considerable progress. For instance, in the UK and the Netherlands, the most important federations of tour operators, the FTO and the ANVR, have introduced obli...

Author: Menno Houtstra 

Year: 2006 

70 Think Tank IX What do sustainable tourism researchers value? An anal... file 9734 Oct 13, 2013

Sustainable Tourism has emerged as a major field of specialisation within tourism and has been so pervasive that some have suggested that the field represents a fifth platform of tourism research, while others have argued that the field has...

Author: Pierre Benckendorff 

Year: 2009 

69 Think Tank XI Environmental Attitudes of Generation Y Students: Foun... file 9784 Oct 14, 2013

Sustainability has long been a theme in the tourism research and planning literature and is a growing concern in the wider area of business and corporate management. Consequent to these trends in practice and research there has been a growt...

Author: Pierre Benckendorff, Gianna Moscardo & Laurie Murphy 

Year: 2011 

68 Think Tank XII Destination Governance and Tourist Mobilities: New Par... file 9809 Nov 06, 2013

Resort communities are complex systems where destination governance has become increasingly challenged by new mobilities of capital, finance, labor, communication, transportation, leisure and tourism. Popular destinations like the coastal co...

Author: Dianne Dredge & Tazim Jamal 

Year: 2012 

67 Think Tank IX Community based sustainable tourism: Quality of life a... file 9967 Oct 13, 2013

This paper explores the concept of quality of life (QOL) as perceived by residents in tourism destinations and examines differences in perceptions of QOL among culturally different destinations. The perceived QOL of local community is an imp...

Author: Yvette Reisinger & Kwang-Soo Park 

Year: 2009 

66 Think Tank XII Furthering the Understanding of the Slow Travel Phenom... file 9970 Nov 06, 2013

Slow travel is a relatively new concept. Originally this was a grass root movement, which now is becoming an interest area for scholars. The first organised networks and forums started to emerge approximately a decade ago. A slow travel webs...

Author: Tina Roenhovde Tiller 

Year: 2012 

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