From Tourist Looking-glass to Analytical Carousels: Navigating Tourism through Relations and Context

Abstract

This paper contributes to debate about how tourism is conceptualised. It takes a discursive approach to understanding some of the rules and relations that have influenced the way tourism has been defined ‘conventionally’ with particular attention to a way of seeing tourism that has the hallmarks of a tourist looking-glass. From here an examination is made of more contemporary movements that undermine conventional discourse. In searching for some common ground between these different approaches to tourism, a synthesis can start to be developed around the idea of relations and context. Tying these contemporary analyses to a relational and contextual basis invites some coherence in the search for new directions for tourism discourse.