Sobre el turismo y la movilidad en tiempos de movimiento y conjetura posdisciplinar

Abstract

While tourism has been the subject of considerable academic attention, there have been notable criticisms over the nature of tourism research and in particular an alleged lack of theorization. Published exchanges have also focused on the contested status of tourism as a distinct academic discipline. We revisit these debates and recast them in light of increasing calls for post-disciplinary modes of investigation. We argue that there is a pressing need to understand tourism as a form of human movement within a wider spectrum of social and physical mobilities. Some of these have been captured by «traditional» disciplines such as sociology and cultural studies, but our understanding of mobilities in the last decade has also benefited greatly by the production of knowledges through regular transgressions of disciplinary boundaries. If studies of tourism are determined to reflect current patterns of mobilities, they must shed orthodox inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches in favour of a more flexible knowledge production, dissemination and consumption. We conclude that we are at the beginning of a paradigm shift in studies of tourism, a shift in which tourism is no longer conceptualised in isolation but as embedded in, and hence best understood as part of, a wider spectrum of human mobilities.