Tourism Studies and Conceptual Unsettlement: The Decolonisation Of The Bleached Field

Each discipline / domain should regularly examine its effectivities regarding the representation and making of the socio-historical world .  In inspecting the so-called global provocations of tourism, this presentation advances the view that the increasing dominion of tourism / Tourism Studies over matters of culture, heritage, and nature has not only been carried out according to eurocentric canons, but has been bolstered by theoretically feudal forms of knowing.  It thereby calls for a concerted decolonisation of Tourism Studies --- that is, for a conceptual cleansing of the field to clearly identify and confront the hegemonic agency and authority of the industry over colonialised places / spaces and over histories / contemporaneities.

The presentation therefore will principally question:

~1 = Which priority areas of concern in international tourism should be decolonised, if any?

~2 = What would / should / could the decolonisation of Tourism Studies principally entail, or mainly consist of? 

~3 = Who should be involved in the so-called decolonised 'cleansing' of Tourism Studies?

~4 = How would the decolonisation of tourism be substantiated educationally (in the schooling of practitioners and researchers who currently drive international tourism)?

The main supposition undergirding this paper is that the decolonisation of the so-called bleached realm of tourism (after Pfaelzer's term "bleached" field / "bleached" understandings) would involve considerable conceptual unsettlement for many of those who work in Tourism Studies / Tourism Management.  Much of the required re-oriented understanding would indeed be corrective (as the industry's internal and collaborative sinews of oppression are identified).  Hence a more fluid acumen is demanded vis-a-vis the field's "improved conversation with the world" (after Bauman), where the productive / compossible genius latent within it can be positively used much more strategically and frequently for distant / removed / colonialised populations in their own found interests.