Socialising tourism for social and ecological justice after COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2019–2020 has the potential to transform the tourism industry as well as the context in which it operates. This global crisis in which travel, tourism, hospitality and events have been shut down in many parts of the world, provides an opportunity to uncover the possibilities in this historic transformative moment. A critical tourism analysis of these events briefly uncovers the ways in which tourism has supported neoliberal injustices and exploitation. The COVID-19 pandemic crisis may offer a rare and invaluable opportunity to rethink and reset tourism toward a better pathway for the future. ‘Responsible’ approaches to tourism alone, however, will not offer sufficient capacity to enable such a reset. Instead, such a vision requires a community-centred tourism framework that redefines and reorients tourism based on the rights and interests of local communities and local peoples. Theoretically, such an approach includes a way tourism could be ‘socialised’ by being recentred on the public good. This is essential for tourism to be made accountable to social and ecological limits of the planet.

摘要

2019–2020年的新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19）疫情有可能改变旅游业及其运营环境。这场使得全世界许多地方的旅游、旅行、接待和事件活动都被迫停止的全球危机, 提供了一个在这历史性变革时刻发现各种可能性的机会。对这些情况的批判性旅游学分析简要地揭示了旅游业对新自由主义下的不公正和剥削的支持方式。新冠（COVID-19）疫情危机提供了一个难能可贵的契机, 让大家可以进行反思, 让旅游业重新走上更好的、面向未来的发展路径。然而, 仅有”负责任”旅游方式这一种途径还不能为实现这种调整提供足够的能力。相反, 这种愿景需要以社区为中心的旅游框架, 即根据当地社区和当地人民的权益来对旅游业进行重新的定义和定位。理论上, 这个框架包括了通过重新关注旅游的公益性而使其实现”社会化”的方式。对于让旅游业承担起对地球社会和生态极限的责任而言, 这是至关重要的。

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• responsible tourism
• critical tourism
• social tourism
• social justice
• public good tourism
• cruiseship industry

关键词:

• 新型冠状病毒
• 负责任旅游
• 批判性旅游
• 社会旅游
• 社会正义
• 公益性旅游
• 邮轮业

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Thatcher’s full statement was: ‘They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours’ (from an interview in Women's Own in 1987 as cited in Thatcher, 2013).

2 ‘People of Colour’ is not a satisfactory term but it is used to encompass the range of ‘non-white’ people who do not benefit from privileged positions of power (see Glover, 2016).

3 Klein used the term ‘shock doctrine’ to describe the strategy of using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock – wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes or natural disasters – to push through radical pro-corporate measures, often called ‘shock therapy’. Corporations use this to advance their interests and ability to profit through what she called ‘disaster capitalism’ (2008).

4 This is from a liberal translation of Gramsci popularized by Slavoj Žižek (2010), which amends ‘In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’ to ‘Now is the time of monsters’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Freya Higgins-Desbiolles

Freya Higgins-Desbiolles is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management, Business Unit, University of South Australia. Her work focuses on social justice issues in tourism, hospitality and events. She has worked with communities, non-governmental organisations and businesses that seek to harness tourism for human rights, justice and equitable futures.