Investigating tourism consumption within Bourdieu’s empirical paradigm, this article explores the development of a model of sociological choice in tourism consumption. By operationalizing habitus as sociological choices tourists make in the realm of tourism consumption, this article proposes that oppositional choices tourists make in the realm of tourism consumption are produced and reproduced by and in conformity with their respective class habitus, structured by cultural capital. A questionnaire-based study of Western tourists in Indian setting, using factor analysis and regression analysis, identifies three categories of tourism consumption lifestyles shaped by habitus and capital composition. The “tourists” consume tourism as a mass cultural activity finding “virtue in the necessity”; the “travelers” (with middlebrow taste) rely on off-the-beaten-track “travel” experiences and “intellectualize” tourism; and the “virtuosos” (with highbrow aesthetic taste) consume luxury tourism services taking privilege in appreciating what they see and consume, often with authority and arrogance.

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Organizational analysis in the tourism industry within a broader sociological framework has largely received scant scholarly attention. This article is an effort to elicit new insights that Bourdieu's sociological paradigm may bring to organizational analysis in tourism. This article seeks to examine and explain contestations for domination within and between travel agencies within the framework of Bourdieu's relational analysis, using his theoretical triad—capital, habitus, and field. Examining contestations at the individual level (capital and dispositions), the mesolevel (habitus), and at the macrolevel (field) within and between travel companies, the article proposes to investigate organizational practices and strategies within and between travel companies. The article argues that organizational practices such as those of maximizing the distinction between tourist and traveler, and overwhelming promotion of ecotourism and "authenticity," and emergence of boutique travel agencies and hotels can practically be explained within the contours of Bourdieu's relational analysis. Drawing empirical evidence from travel companies, this article, through archival research and analogical theorizing, also proposes that organizational members import capital and habitus from their previous fields of struggle, from the social and professional arenas of their past, to organizational fields to form and shape organizational habitus.

Community-based tourism development in rural tourist destinations is hindered by the complex interplay of power struggles between the State, hoteliers, travel agents, local tourism players, host community and activists. Following Bourdieu’s ‘epistemologically reflexive’ sociology of everyday life, including his concepts of ‘capital’, ‘habitus’ and ‘field’, I examine the power relations between the Indian State, the regional government, the armed forces, private urban hoteliers and travel agencies, religious corporations, local tourism service providers (e.g. the ponymen and taxi operators) and the host communities operating at the tourism destination of Pahalgam in the Himalayan territory of the Indian-administered Kashmir. Drawing on ethnographic material collected during June–September 2017 and October 2018, I analyse the power relations in the context of a growing political conflict in the region. The central question this article addresses is how and to what extent these actors, particularly the Indian State, engage in contestations for dominance, insurrection and subversion over Pahalgam tourist destination. Theorising the embodiment of ponywālā1 habitus, I demonstrate that ‘subaltern’ dispositions of the ponymen and their corresponding tourism practices of offering pony rides to tourists and pilgrims create boundaries within the destination ‘field’ of Pahalgam. Subsequently, I aim to show that such dispositions cultivate internalised beliefs or doxa among local community players, thus limiting their access to capitals (economic, social, cultural and symbolic) and ensuring the (re)production of their dominated position in the destination field of Pahalgam.

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