Changing approaches to domestic tourism

Abstract

In a paper suggesting in its title the intention of addressing In so far as Kuhn’s thesis is a plausible description of domestic tourism, it may seem a little bizarre to set out theory building in the sciences it applies a forriori in the with a brief reference to the work of Emmanuel Kant. But foundation of an academic discipline. The designation of Kant’s theorizing concerning the generation of what an area of academic interest as a ‘discipline’ implies the counts as valid knowledge has important implications for establishment of conventions and traditions which create the construction of theory in general, and concomitantly the ways in which we look at a subject. In time these the theorizing of tourism. Kant formulated a distinction conventions and traditions take on the character of canons between ultimate or ontological reality (which is indepenwhich are used in arbitrating the legitimacy of competing dent of our minds), epistemology (or the ways in which we theories in a way analogous to the notion of a ruling come to understand reality through reasoning), and empirparadigm. Said describes the formation of a canon as a ically derived sense information. For Kant, and much ‘blocking device for methodological and disciplinary selfsubsequent philosophical tradition, when we reasoned questioning’, and with Foucault, emphasizes the represabout the world what we were, in practice, doing was to sive nature by which disciplinary formation achieves conreconstruct reality or make representations of it. Howformity among its members.’ The way in which expertise is ever, since ontological reality was ultimately unknowable, built up involves the passage through rules of accreditarational endeavour was destined to be limited to repretion, speaking the language, mastering the idioms and sentation. accepting the authorities in the field. The power of scientific method, involving procedures for falsifying hypotheses about the nature of reality, lies in its promise that eventually we can come to know this ultimate reality and control it. Scientific method is seemingly dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the eradication of superstition. However, in an historic study of the sociology of science in 1962 Kuhn defined the process by which scientific theory was constructed as the development of paradigms.’ Kuhn argued that, far from an open academy in which competing theories were evaluated in an explicitly rational and. objective manner for their conformity with established facts, hypotheses were only admitted if they came framed within the terms of the prevailing paradigm. The major productive periods of scientific research were thus seen by Kuhn as puzzle solving. Only when major discontinuities between research findings and hypotheses arose, and even then only if such discontinuities were generally experienced across the breadth of theorizing, was there sufficient pressure to initiate a paradigm shift. Theorizing in science, in this perspective, was thus constrained by the social community in which it took place. It would be overambitious here to attempt such a comprehensive assessment of the disciplinary development of tourism, but I propose to embark on a part of this project by examining, first, a variety of ways in which tourism has been represented. I will then draw upon some case study work from Scotland to illustrate what I shall call the institutionalization of tourism. The purpose of this analysis is to suggest that tourism, epistemologicaliy, has existed in different forms and that our contemporary understanding is but another social construction. By relativizing tourism in this way I intend to show that the current debate on its disciplinary credibility should be conducted mindful that we are actually crmrirlg rather than discovering the phenomenon called tourism. Whether tourism be an established discipline or a ten-year wonder, the manner in which we as theorists discuss it is simultaneously the manner in which it is made manifest. As such I wish to show that we are instrumental in the construction of paradigms or canons against which future tourism theory is evaluated and against which contemporary claims to its disciplinary independence are advanced.