The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism
Methodological Issues
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Developments in Research
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Introduction
There is no single accepted way to doing qualitative research
It depends on a range of factors including:
 Beliefs about the nature of the social world and what can be
known about it (ontology)
 The nature of knowledge and how it can be acquired
(epistemology)
 Purposes and goals of research
 Characteristics of the research participants
 Position and environment of the researchers themselves
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Key Elements of Qualitative
Research
• How do you know what is important to study?
• Aims to provide an in-depth and interpreted understanding
of the social world
• Samples are small in scale and purposively selected
• Data collection methods usually involve close interaction
researcher/research participants
• Data is detailed, information rich and extensive
• Analysis is open to emergent concepts and ideas
• Outputs tend to focus on the interpretation of social meaning
through mapping and re-presenting the social world of
research participants
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Developments in
Archaeological Research
Focus on material culture
Late 20th Century
Focus on ‘lifeways’ - how
people lived and used places
Physical
Environment and technologies
of past societies
Archaeology
Classical
Archaeology
18th Century
Shift from retrieval of
artefacts to focus on people
Spatial
Socio-cultural
Use of space and
interrelationships of people and
place
Inter and intra-societal
relationships, embodiment,
behaviours and cosmologies
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Knowledge Tree
- A way of scoping The Field
Ontology
What is the nature of reality?
Epistemology
What is the nature of knowledge?
Methodology
What is the nature of the approach to research?
Techniques
What practices of research should be undertaken?
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
“Firstly ... nothing exists;
secondly ... even if anything exists, it is
incomprehensible by man;
thirdly.., even if anything is comprehensible, it is
guaranteed to be inexpressible and incommunicable
to one’s neighbour”
Gorgias (500BC) quoted in Aristotle (340BC)
De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia 980 a19-20
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Derived Hermeneutical Helix
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Three-Stage Iterative Research
Process
 Stage 1 Examining the textual corpus as a whole, through exploring own
presuppositions and pre-understandings of the text by developing
personal reflectivity. This reflexive writing process is repeated at the two
subsequent points where the helix returns to the pre-understanding and
presuppositions stage, in order to reflect further on personal bias towards
the texts.
 Stage 2 Review of the Judaeo-Christian theological and biblical studies
literature to lay down background details before the inductive textual
analysis was undertaken. In keeping with the traditional hermeneutic
circle, after the pre-understandings and the textual corpus as a whole
were reflected upon, the texts themselves were considered individually.
 Stage 3 Intergradations of the ideas and concepts into hospitality
research. As a consequence of the application of the hermeneutical helix
a new Hospitality Model is presented in three different contexts and
from two perspectives (Chapter 10).
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Use of Language in Research
RHETORICAL ISSUES
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
How to translate
“... translated texts tend to speak more of the translator than of
their original message. It is not too difficult to render texts
written in a dead language as literally as possible and to
suggest to the outsider, through the use of quaint and stilted
locutions, the alleged awkwardness and archaism of a
remote period… A step nearer to the realization of the
legitimate desire to make the texts ‘speak for themselves’…
with a critical discussion of the literary, stylistic, and
emotional setting of each translated piece”
(Oppenheim 1977:3).
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Case Study on Romans 12:13
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Translations of Romans 12:13
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
More Translations...
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Values and Reflexivity
AXIOLOGICAL ISSUES
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Reflexivity
 “Modern societies have reached a position where not only
are they forced to reflect on themselves but also they have
the capability of reflecting back on themselves” Hall
(2004:140)
• Personal bias – influence on the research process
• Personal bias – influence on the writing process
 These types of bias may exist within qualitative research –
they must be controlled for where possible and at the very
least acknowledged in your methodology
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Objects
 From a pre-Copernican view, objects are considered just by
themselves, totally apart from any intrinsic cognitive
relation to our representations; it is mysterious how they
could ever be determined a priori.
 Kant theorised that things could be considered just as
phenomena (objects of experience) rather than noumena
(things in themselves specified negatively as unknown
beyond our experience).
 Therefore, if human faculties of representation are used to
study these phenomena, a priori conceptualisations can be
envisaged.
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
Objects
 Kant ([1781] 1998) also showed how flawless logic
can prove the existence of God; at the same time he
showed how flawless logic proves that there is no
God at all; illustrating that opposing philosophies
can be equally logical and at the same time
contradictory and incomplete, a salient warning to
any emergent researcher defending their
philosophical stance.
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010
A warning…
• Can everything come down to the beliefs of
the researcher?
• Is your opinion absolute?
 Benedict XVI (2005:2) “we are building a
dictatorship of relativism that does not
recognize anything as definitive and whose
ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own
ego and desires.”
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishing © 2010