Trajectories of embodiment inTourist Studies

Abstract

In this article we map the 20 year trajectory of theorising embodiment in Tourist Studies. From its inception in 2001, embedded within the turn in the social sciences towards embodiment, Tourist Studies has paved the way in pushing the boundaries of theorising the links between embodiment, sensuality and performativity. Tourist Studies has opened up novel trajectories in tourism research away from the traditional focus on vision, towards multi-sensual analysis including the role of taste, smell, touch and sound. In this article we draw attention to these important contributions in understanding the body-practices and body-subjects within tourism, including work that utilises non-representational analyses, relational materiality, affect, more-than-representational and more-than-human. About 20 years on we remind readers of what theorising embodiment can bring to understanding encounters in tourism spaces, and specifically how attention to embodiment moves analysis away from fixed and static notions of culture and power, towards dynamic interplays between bodies and more-than-human modalities.

Emerging from the shadows of the COVID-19 pandemic and building back better:Tourist Studiesand Asian critical tourism scholarship

“…Tourist Studies has always published critical works on gender and tourism, from theoretical interrogations of gender, theory and tourism (Aitchison, 2001(Aitchison, , 2005 to feminist calls for reforms in ways in which gender roles manifest in tourism (Everingham et al, 2021;Frohlick, 2005;Mattsson, 2022;Veijola, 2009). The first article of this issue draws on the negotiations of gender representations seen in online advertisements for Chinese and Thai martial arts destinations.…”