The Spaces and Places of the Tourism Encounter. On Re-Centring the Human in a More-Than/Non-Human World

Abstract

This paper will revalue the phenomenological understandings of the tourism encounter, inspired by spatial theories of intentionality. With a growing body of theory delving into the relational realm and the ways in which the body and our actions are relationally enmeshed in networks of more-than/non-human entities, this paper seeks to recentre human intentionality as the core of the tourism encounter to better address its political nature and relevance. Whilst thereby critiquing some of the propositions of relational ontology, the paper is not about rejecting these, but augmenting them through a focus on the intention to care. Thereby, the paper will explore the ways in which the tourism encounter can be re-storied as one for making spaces and places of conviviality through people relating to each other and their surroundings with particular intent imbued with care. Valuing care and how it can be narrated helps to make space for a plurality of futures which can in turn break the deadlock of tourism being conceived either as mass/over- or alternative tourism. Both of these and more exist at the same time in the same place.