Indigenising Tourism Sociology In China and Beyond: A Reflexive Dialogue

Tourism moves not only people, images, capital and infrastructures, but also concepts (Said, 1983). Ideas such as mobility, authenticity, hospitality, consumption, place-making, host-guest relations and destination development travel across languages, research traditions, policy regimes and everyday practices. Across different historical and social contexts, however, these concepts are not simply imported or applied. They are tested, contested, translated and reworked through tourism knowledge production (Chambers & Buzinde, 2015; McCabe, 2024).

China offers a productive site for examining this process. As a major source of outbound tourists and an increasingly significant destination for international visitors, China is deeply embedded in global tourism flows. Visa-free entry, digital platforms, study tours, high-speed rail and new leisure practices are reshaping both domestic and international tourism relations. Meanwhile, practices such as camping, skiing, surfing, rural leisure and lifestyle migration are adapted through local institutions, cultural expectations, markets and social relations, rather than merely transferred into Chinese contexts.

This session therefore asks how tourism sociology can be indigenised without becoming culturally essentialist. By “indigenisation”, we refer to the reflexive reconstruction of sociological concepts through Chinese empirical realities, intellectual traditions and tourism practices. We invite papers examining how tourism concepts travel, how Chinese tourism practices challenge or extend existing sociological frameworks, and how ideas such as filial obligation, differential mode of association, guanxi and mianzi may be reinterpreted in tourism studies. We seek a reflexive dialogue on how tourism sociology can be reworked from and within China, and what this may contribute to wider debates beyond China.