A holistic and pluralistic perspective for justice through tourism: a regenerative approach

Abstract

Justice is integral in transformative tourism approaches that call for a complete restructuring of the travel and tourism sector worldwide. While justice through alternative tourism models promotes responsible, sustainable transitions in the tourism sector, these models are frequently informed by a perceived binary between the social and the environmental and long-held patterns of West-centric thought and West versus ‘the rest’ power dynamics, found both in tourism theory and practice and within justice frameworks. In this article, we explore the potential of the regenerative development paradigm to bridge these divides and adopt a pluriversal lens to devise a more just practice of tourism. The holistic, transformative tenets and pluralistic perspective of regenerative development and tourism are used to build a novel framework for justice. The framework’s capacity to analyse, unlock and catalyse place regeneration in different knowledge systems and restore just relationships has been leveraged in two rural areas in Colombia and Ecuador. Collecting data through mixed qualitative methods that combine reflexive ethnography with in situ and online interviews, we identified actions taken to address local inequalities and challenges while fostering pathways to the systemic transformation of residents’ livelihoods. These place-specific actions inspired by ancestral traditions have revitalised the areas’ ecosystems, including local human communities and the latter’s tourism activities. The discussion of results examines the potential of pluriversal regenerative development and tourism principles grounded in diverse knowledge and ethics frames to guide actions for systemic social and environmental justice.

Keywords:

• Regenerative tourism
• rural places
• regenerative development
• social justice
• environmental justice
• transformation
• Colombia
• Ecuador
• justice-through-tourism

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work received no external funding.

Notes on contributors

Stefan Lazic

Stefan Lazic is currently a PhD candidate in the Doctoral program in Sustainability: Economics, Environment, Management and Society (SUSTEEMS) at the University of Trento. His main research areas are rural community-led tourism and regenerative development. Stefan holds a master’s degree in Tourism Economics and Management from the University of Bologna and collaborates regularly with the Centre for Advanced Studies in Tourism (CAST) at the same University. He has worked as a practitioner with rural and Indigenous communities in Latin America on responsible tourism development.

Maria Della Lucia

Maria Della Lucia has a PhD in Economics and Management from the University of Padua (Italy), is a full professor of Tourism and Business Management at the University of Trento (Italy). Her main areas of research and teaching are humanistic tourism, humanistic management, local development and sustainability, destination governance, culture-based urban regeneration, creative cities and creative tourism. She has authored and co-authored numerous tourism development and planning-related research articles in leading international journals. She recently (2021) co-edited two Routledge books on the relationship between Humanistic Management and tourism (Humanistic Tourism) and between Humanistic Management and sustainable tourism, which are still largely unexplored and promising fields.