Conceptualizing justice tourism and the promise of posthumanism

Abstract

The past two decades of tourism research have seen a growing interest in the relationship between tourism and justice. Some of this attention has focused on the just or unjust outcomes of mainstream tourism, and how it could contribute more to justice. Other research has directed the attention to the justice outcomes of alternative forms of tourism, where their increased commodification and de-politicization has limited the potential justice benefits enormously. Yet, a clear conceptualization of justice tourism is still lacking, and its theoretical grounding is still too limited. This paper addresses these concerns and aims to clarify the concept of justice tourism and advance a conceptual framework where types of justice tourism and justice through tourism are systematically identified and classified. Moreover, from the proposed conceptual framework, posthumanism emerges as a promising ethical regime with which the commodification and depoliticization of justice tourism could be reversed, and its increasing co-optation by neoliberal capitalism curved. Posthumanism’s affirmative ethics and political responsibility, along with its political forms of solidarity and advocacy, can become an effective mechanism for radical transformation and a crucial catalyst for justice in tourism and tourism research.

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Keywords:

• justice tourism
• commodification
• depoliticization
• posthumanism
• affirmative ethics
• political responsibility
• solidarity
• advocacy

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Jaume Guia

Dr. Jaume Guia is an Associated Professor at the University of Girona. He is Programme Director of the Erasmus Mundus European Master’s in Tourism Management (EMTM) and Scientific Director of the Tourism Research Campus at the same university. He has published articles in leading academic journals on a variety of topics including destination governance, cross-border destinations, destination place making, destination image, or tourism networks and clusters. Currently he is leading a research programme on tourism in contested places and the meaning of responsible tourism in those situations.