To read this content please select one of the options below:

A Humanist Paradigm for Tourism Studies?

Kellee Caton (Thompson Rivers University, Canada)

Tourism Research Paradigms: Critical and Emergent Knowledges

ISBN: 978-1-78350-929-4, eISBN: 978-1-78350-930-0

Publication date: 31 May 2016

Abstract

This chapter explores the potential for and value of imagining a humanist paradigm for tourism studies. It explores how the idea of a “paradigm” in tourism can be conceptualized, arguing that dominant thoughtlines in other fields regarding the meaning of a paradigm are not sufficient for making sense of this idea in the context of tourism studies. The chapter introduces humanism as a philosophical position in the academy and as a lived cultural practice, explores examples of extant work in tourism studies that might be seen to provide the seeds of a humanist paradigm, and offers reflections on the value of imagining such a paradigm for our field.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgment

I dedicate this chapter to my dear friend and colleague Ana María Munar, with deep gratitude for her gift of rigorous, creative, graceful, and inspiring dialogue—about tourism, about epistemology, and about life. Much of the description of humanism in the first half of the section entitled “Humanist Philosophy” is reprinted from Caton (2014a).

Citation

Caton, K. (2016), "A Humanist Paradigm for Tourism Studies?", Tourism Research Paradigms: Critical and Emergent Knowledges (Tourism Social Science Series, Vol. 22), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 35-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1571-504320150000022009

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited