Emplacing non-human voices in tourism research: the role of dissensus as a qualitative method

Abstract

Although tourism shares a fundamentally important relationship with the natural environment, non-human voices are easily lost in conventional methods used in tourism research that favor consensus and clear patterns. Even with qualitative methods, researchers tend to seek consensus among peers and often focus disproportionately on the social dynamics of tourism, leading to entrenched anthropocentrism and limited efficacy in representing the condition of a multitude of non-human lifeforms, physical formations, and processes. The portrayal of the tourism environment as a passive backdrop for human activities is particularly insufficient for addressing problems at eco or natural tourism destinations where key roles of fellow species and biophysical formations make tourism a more-than-human phenomenon. This situation calls for engaging with non-human others in the tourism landscape through novel methods that are creative, fluid, and to some extent free of theoretical or paradigmatic moorings. Informed by a dissensus on the centrality of the human experience for meaning-making, such engagements are disruptive of the dominant anthropocentric tendencies in qualitative research but are nevertheless necessary for addressing wicked problems, the complex nature of which preclude anthropocentric solutions. As an alternative, fluid and speculative inquiries into the inherent plurality and complexity of non-human others have the capacity to grow into an organic toolkit to inform tourism research in a time of pervasive change.

摘要

虽然旅游业与自然环境有着极为重要的关系, 但在传统的旅游研究方法中, 非人类的声音很容易被忽略, 因为传统的研究方法更倾向于共识和清晰的模式。即使采用定性的方法, 研究人员也倾向于寻求同行之间的共识, 往往不成比例地关注旅游的社会动态, 从而导致根深蒂固的人类中心主义, 在表现大量非人类生命形式、物理形态和过程的条件方面效力有限。将旅游环境描述为人类活动的被动背景, 对于解决生态或自然旅游目的地的问题特别不够, 因为在这些地方, 同类物种和生物物理结构的关键作用使旅游成为一种远非简单的人类现象。这种情况需要通过创造性的、流动的、在某种程度上不受理论或范例束缚的创新方法研究旅游景观中的非人类他者。通过对意义形成的人类经验的中心地位的异议, 这种介入破坏了定性研究中占主导地位的人类中心主义倾向, 但对于解决旅游发展的痼疾是必要的, 因为这些问题的复杂性排除了人类中心主义的解决方案。作为一种替代方案, 对非人类固有的多样性和复杂性进行流动的和推测性的探究, 有能力成长为一个有机的工具包, 在一个普遍变化的时代为旅游研究贡献新知。

Keywords:

• Qualitative research
• anthropocentrism
• dissensus method
• nonlinearity
• complexity and plurality
• fluid methods

关键词:

• 定性研究
• 人类中心主义
• 异议方法
• 非线性
• 复杂性和多元性
• 流动性方法

Acknowledgment

I wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their critical and constructive comments which made the paper better. I am grateful to fellow scholar Adam Doering of Wakayama University for correcting and fine-tuning some of the expressions in the manuscript. I also wish to thank Takeshi Takenaka for the photograph of the Blakiston’s Fish Owl.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Wakayama University Center for Tourism Research.

Notes on contributors

Abhik Chakraborty

I have been conducting interdisciplinary research on the human interpretation of the geo-biosphere in the Anthropocene; with natural heritage and ecotourism destinations as model case studies. My key works include those on alpine environments, geoheritage, complex change in landscapes and a critical analysis of the sustainability concept.