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Abstract
Although there is a growing body of literature focusing on the use of qualitative research approaches for understanding human-animal relations, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the topic in tourism studies. In particular, the central role played by animals in the tourism industry and thus in the creation of tourism experiences calls for a more critical reflection on the methodologies through which the relations and encounters between humans and non-humans are studied. Considering this gap, we draw upon videography to explore the potential and challenges of using video as a means to interpret and theorise on multispecies relations in tourism. More precisely, we use videography to better understand the co-constructed relationship between humans and animals engaged in tourism activities, leading us to consider these relationships as multispecies assemblages. Our attempts to explore and document these encounters on video lead us to critically evaluate the ethical and epistemological underpinnings of our study and hence to the genesis of this methodological paper. Although challenged by a post-humanist stance, videography as a ‘more-than-representational’ approach offers ways to capture non-linguist, sensuous and embodied qualities of the research context. Utilising these possibilities, our study contributes to the development of more inclusive tourism theorising and futures by exploring videography as a vehicle for emergent theorising on human-animal relations through its relational and political nature of engagement.
摘要
虽然越来越多的文献关注于使用定性研究方法来理解人与动物的关系, 但令人惊讶的是, 在旅游研究中很少有人关注这一主题。特别是, 动物在旅游业中以及因此在创造旅游经验方面所起的核心作用呼吁对研究人类与非人类之间的关系和接触的方法进行更批判性的反思。考虑到这一空白, 我们利用录像方法探讨了视频作为解释和理论化旅游中多物种关系手段的潜力和挑战。更准确地说, 我们使用影像来更好地理解参与旅游活动的人和动物之间共同构建的关系, 使我们把这些关系看作是多物种的组合。我们试图通过视频来探索和记录这些遭遇, 从而批判性地评估我们研究的伦理和认识论基础, 从而形成这篇方法论论文。尽管受到后人文主义立场的挑战, 视频摄影作为一种‘比表征性更强’的方法, 提供了捕捉非语言学、感官和具体研究背景的方法。利用这些可能性, 我们的研究通过探索利用视频图像为研究工具研究新兴的人与动物关系理论研究, 最终有助于发展更具包容性和前瞻性的旅游理论。
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the audiences of the videography screenings in the “2nd Peaceful Coexistence Colloquium - Reimagining Ethics and Politics of Space for the Anthropocene” and the “Living Ethics Seminar” for the inspiring and insightful discussions that helped to develop the videography to its final version. We also thank associate professor Joonas Rokka and the three anonymous reviewers for their encouraging and constructively critical comments received for the earlier versions of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 While being aware of the tendency of the category of ‘non-human’ to propose human exceptionalism, we use this categorisation with care in those situations where the focus is explicitly to be taken further (or widened) from the human, in order to give room for other types of agencies as well as to bring forth the disruption caused by their realisation.
2 The study was conducted between 2016 and 2018 as part of the project ‘Animals and Responsible Tourism: Promoting Business Competitiveness through Animal Welfare’. The project, which was implemented by the University of Lapland, was funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through Business Finland, a Finnish funding agency. In addition to public funding, 10 per cent of the project budget was financed by a group of tourism companies, because this is a requirement to receive funding through this particular funding instrument.
3 Even though our research is not to be considered a ‘full’ ethnography, it correlates with the central notion of multispecies ethnography in pressing (or perhaps) inviting ‘creatures previously appearing on the margins of anthropology … into the foreground’ (Kirksey & Helmreich, Citation2010, p. 545), and in holding ethnographic elements in its methodological array. Our study takes this ‘foregrounding’ into practice in the field of tourism studies, and as such builds on existing work exploring human-animal relations in tourism (e.g. Fennell, Citation2012; Markwell, Citation2015; see Authors).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Minni Haanpää
Minni Haanpää is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lapland, Faculty of Social Sciences, the University of Lapland, Multidimensional Tourism Institute (MTI). Her research interests are in the areas of tourism and event experiences, affect, co-creation, ethnographic methodologies, especially videography and autoethnography, and tourism as a means of social change. Her work has been published in Tourism Recreation Research, Society and Leisure and in edited, peer-reviewed books.
Tarja Salmela
Tarja Salmela is a researcher and a critical organization scholar in the University of Lapland. Her work centers around topics of disruptive and more-than-human methodologies, the body, ethics and affects, fueled by her multidisciplinary background at the intersection of organization studies, feminist studies, critical animal studies, tourism studies and academic activism. Salmela works currently as a post doc scholar in an Academy of Finland project (2019–2023) Envisioning Proximity Tourism with New Materialism.
José-Carlos García-Rosell
José-Carlos García-Rosell is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lapland, Faculty of Social Sciences, Multidimensional Tourism Institute (MTI). His research interests are in the areas of sustainable business development, corporate social responsibility, multi-stakeholder processes, tourism service development, tourism and management education, action research and ethnographic research.
Mikko Äijälä
Mikko Äijälä is a junior researcher and PhD Candidate at the University of Lapland, Faculty of Social Sciences, Multidimensional Tourism Institute (MTI). He holds a Master’s degree in Tourism Research (University of Lapland) and is currently working on his PhD. In his PhD project he studies the agency of sled dogs by exploring human-sled dog encounters in tourism.