Sustainability-oriented tourism research and (eco)cultural justice: What
would a critical (eco)feminist approach look like?
Authors
Blanca A. Camargo, PhD
Director, International Tourism Program
Universidad de Monterrey, Mexico
Tazim Jamal, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences
Texas A&M University, USA
Erica Wilson, PhD
Senior Lecturer
School of Tourism and Hospitality Management
Southern Cross University, Australia
INTRODUCTION
Since the emergence of the sustainability and sustainable tourism paradigm in the
1980s, much of the research has focused on developing scientific, tangible, and
measurable criteria and indicators to monitor environmental, and to a lesser degree,
economic and socio-cultural impacts. Only until recently, scholars have started to
include discussions of issues related to inclusiveness, political empowerment,
justice, and fairness in sustainable tourism development, management, marketing,
and research. However, researchers have been slow in grounding their discussions
in clear and solid ethical justifications. Tackling such issues is of sum importance for
tourism impacts tend to accrue to those who lack resources and power to influence
tourism decision making, in most cases, poor, diverse, disabled, and other
disadvantaged groups within a destination, as well as women and children.
AIMS
This conference paper undertakes an examination of the academic, institutional and
practical intersections of sustainability oriented research in tourism studies (e.g.,
sustainable tourism, responsible tourism, ecotourism), and identifies critical
omissions around issues of well-being, justice and ethic in this domain. Issues of
fairness, equity and justice will be increasingly important to address as we enter
into a previously uncharted era of climate change, extreme weather events, and
geopolitical landscapes of uncertainty driven by socio-political unrest, food
shortages and economic instabilities overlain by neoliberal intrusions in the public
and private sphere.
APPROACH
The paper employs a critical perspective to identify theoretical and methodological
gaps, and argues for a critical (eco)feminist approach and situated, embodied
knowledge to address injustices and omissions in sustainability and tourism studies.
KEY ARGUMENTS
It is time to recover the missing ‘body in tourism’ (Veijola and Jokinen, 2004) and in
Leisure Studies (Aitchison, 2005), and to bridge a persistent nature-culture divide
that marginalizes attending to intangible aspects such as human-environmental
relationships. In addition, we call for greater efforts to encourage scholarship from
the “South” and other settings where tourism researchers are grappling directly
with issues such as neocolonialism, postcolonialism and dependency. A critical
analytical framework is proposed to re-situate ‘sustainable tourism’ with a localglobal approach that facilitates “situated knowledges’ (Haraway, 1988) and is
grounded in clear (eco)cultural principles that can guide pressing sustainability
issues in the 21st century identified by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG)
and the post MDG initiatives.
References cited:
Aitchison, C. (2005) ‘Feminist and gender perspectives in tourism studies The
social-cultural nexus of critical and cultural theories’, Tourist Studies 5(3):207-224.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and
the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3): 575-599.
Veijola, S. and E. Jokinen (1994) ‘The Body in Tourism’, Theory Culture Society
11(3): 125–51.