Afterword: a critical reckoning with the ‘Asian Century’ in the shadow of the anthropocene

Abstract

What does the advent of an ‘Asian Century’ portend for critical tourism geographies? This commentary argues that two recent developments have made a critical reckoning with the Asian Century more pressing than ever. First, the Asian Century is in danger of being eclipsed by the deteriorating relationship between China and the United States. And second, the COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for tourism throughout the world and threatens to fundamentally upend travel as we’ve known it for the foreseeable future. These two developments suggest a pressing need not just for a decentering of Eurocentric approaches in tourism scholarship - as has long been argued by critical tourism scholars - but for a more thorough unraveling of the politics of knowledge in tourism scholarship.

Keywords:

• Anthropocene
• more-than-human geographies
• critical tourism studies
• Asian Century
• geopolitics
• politics of knowledge

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to Dr. Harng Luh Sin and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Oakes

Tim Oakes is Professor of Geography and Director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Technology Sydney, Guizhou Minzu University, Wageningen University, National University of Singapore, and the University of Hong Kong. He is the project director for China Made, a research collective exploring the socio-technical dimensions of the Chinese model of export infrastructure development.