Critical Essays in Tourism Research

Critical Essays in Tourism Research results from an inner and deep reflection revolving around the future of tourism in the years to come as well as the epistemological limitations experienced by the discipline today. As some voices agreed, tourism research is facing one of the worst crises in its history. Although, over the years, theorists applauded over production as one of the signs of maturation for the discipline; for more than fourteen years, tourism has not been consolidated as an established alternative. The fragmentation or dispersion of produced knowledge adjoins to the monopoly of an economic-based paradigm which centers on management and the profits of the industry. In this book, the authors will show that tourism is something more than a mere service industry or naive activity. They will lay the foundations down for a new conceptualization of tourism. We hold the thesis that tourism is the cornerstone of Western civilization, as a rite of passage that revitalizes all daily frustrations keeping - in this way -- society united. Chapters which are organized in this book deal with different aspects or topics that touch on tourism as the main object of study, but all of them unveil the stereotypes, prejudices and biased diagnoses of the profit-centered theories.