Tourism Methodologies: New Perspectives, Practices and Proceedings

This volume offers methodological discussions within the multidisciplinary field of tourism and shows how tourism researchers develop and apply new tourism methodologies. The book is presented as an anthology, giving voice to many diverse researchers who reflect on tourism methodology in different ways. Several contributions draw on a critical perspective that pushes the boundaries of traditional methods and techniques for studying tourists and their experiences. In particular, the traditional qualitative interview is challenged, not only regarding the typical questions asked, but also regarding its limitation in creating and facilitating an understanding between interviewer and interviewee. This form of interaction is taken even further in chapters that examine the issue of interaction between researchers and research subjects. How do we facilitate and embrace the overlapping realities in interview and field work situations, and how do we engage with the performative aspects of tourism as a field of study? The book acknowledges that research is also performance and that it constitutes an aspect of intervention in the situations and contexts it is trying to explore. This is an issue dealt with in different ways, depending on the ontological and epistemological stands of the researcher. The book suggests new methods and approaches, with innovative ways of collecting and creating empirical materials, by expanding the approaches to tried and tested methods, including digital innovations, digital codings and analysis, and tapping into the global network of social media.