Like a fish in water: Habitus adaptation mechanisms of informal tourism entrepreneurs in Thailand

Erdinç Çakmak,Rico Lie,Tom Selwyn,Cees Leeuwis

doi:10.1016/j.annals.2021.103262

Abstract

This article investigates possible pathways of habitus change by informal tourism entrepreneurs in Thailand. Bourdieu's concept of habitus is depicted as a person's understanding of the world. Do people adapt their worldview in response to only external stimuli? Through ethnographic fieldwork including participant observations and active semi-structured interviews with 53 participants, this paper identifies a classification of four modes of habitus adaptation: (1) Understanding and appreciating the field and its conditions, (2) Challenging core beliefs systems, (3) Applying a practical sense to ‘objective possibilities’, and, (4) Challenging non-reflective dispositions. We argue that charting the modes of habitus adaptation could help policymakers understand the change processes of informal entrepreneurs in the tourism sector and their willingness to change.

Highlights

Few social scientists today would deny that global tourism has significantly contributed to changes in host communities' social and cultural structures
This paper seeks to answer the following central question: How habitus adapts in response to major and minor individual and social structural change? More precisely, this paper empirically investigates whether and how informal tourism entrepreneurs change their habitus in response to both internal and external stimuli in Thailand
This paper presents the first formal attempt in the tourism literature to break up habitus adaptation empirically by integrating concepts from two bodies of literature: affective psychology and sociology

Summary

Introduction

Few social scientists today would deny that global tourism has significantly contributed to changes in host communities' social and cultural structures. This paper presents the first formal attempt in the tourism literature to break up habitus adaptation empirically by integrating concepts from two bodies of literature: affective psychology and sociology This consolidated novel approach focuses on the pathways of habitus change and how habitus adapts dynamically to the new conditions and circumstances impacting upon one's social structural environment and individual life trajectories. This novel approach incorporates the notion of individual changes together with structural changes in the production of new facets of the self. This study indicates new avenues for research in social sciences and, in particular, in tourism studies

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