Encyclopedia of Tourism

Book Preface

While the genesis of today’s worldwide tourism is to be found in historical records, its establishment as a formal academic field among anglophone scholars can only be traced to the twentieth century. In the 1970s, tourism was framed as “a study of man away from his usual habitat, of the industry which responds to his needs, and of the impacts that both he and the industry have on the host sociocultural, economic, and physical environments” (Annals of Tourism Research editorial). Since the 1990s, this field has significantly unfolded in many directions, with the resulting scientification treatments conveying the epistemological reflections of its studies.

The evolution of tourism research foci may be condensed into advocacy, cautionary, adaptancy, knowledge-based, and public platforms, each of which has added historical depth and texture to the understanding of tourism both as a field of study and as an industry. The latest platform calls for the formation of a public stance that can help tourism assume its legitimate position – side by side with other institutions and industries, in both local and global circles – and enjoy the support it deserves. In turn, this journey serves as path for tourism education, research, and the advancement of knowledge.

The edited 2009 symposium volume of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism identifies a number of patterns in the evolution of tourism research. First, the growth of tourism studies has been accompanied by an increase in a wide range of investigated topics. Second, while the nature and extent of changes vary, the overall picture that emerges is one of continuity and incremental change, with little evidence of any major paradigm shift. Third, the growth of tourism research appears not to have been driven by the pursuit of core questions under the umbrella of a unifying set of theories, leading to an unstructured and fragmented body of knowledge. Essentially, as the field moves on, its community grows to encompass new networks such as the mobilities paradigm, critical tourism studies, “new” tourism research, and the tourism education futures initiative.

More specifically, the expansion of this multidisciplinary landscape of tourism knowledge has been accompanied over the years by a phenomenal growth of its research community worldwide in terms of the large number of higher education and research institutions at universities, proliferations of academic journals and publications, rapid increase in the number of associations and conferences, as well as the diverse sources of funding for its investigations. It is quite evident that tourism research is now being conducted throughout the world, not only by (or within) its own circles but also in the whole array of disciplines encompassing the social sciences, business and economics, humanities, natural sciences, and even engineering. This global disciplinary rooting is reflected in four volumes published in the Tourism Social Science Series containing biographical chapters of some 60 known scholars in this field, as well as the large number of authors from around the world who have contributed to this Springer edition.