Asymmetrical Dialectics of Sustainable Tourism

Abstract

Using resolution-based dialectics, sustainable tourism is contextualized as an evolving synthesis arising from the need for the capitalist-based mass tourism thesis and the ethics-based alternative tourism antithesis to amalgamate because of internal contradictions that limit their contribution to development. That this synthesis is skewed to mass tourism is accounted for by the four alternative tourism contradictions of unrealistic and unrealized expectations, functional incompleteness, the growth implications of success, and nonreciprocal accommodation. Mass tourism, faced with a prime contradiction of self-destruction, is experiencing limited paradigm nudge characterized by the opportunistic adoption of practices that complement the dominant capitalist paradigm. Opportunities for expanding the ethical bridgehead in mass tourism created by adherence to corporate social responsibility policies derive from the integration of alternative tourism products within mass tourism destinations and itineraries, accompanying possibilities for transformational tourist learning, and the reassertion of indigenous rights. The desired outcome is termed “enlightened mass tourism.”