Exploring Ontology of Tourism: A New-Realist Approach

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to propose a new-realist ontology of tourism; an ontology that could be used as a foundation for those social sciences which are ready to accept the moderate realist approach. To achieve this goal, an answer to the general question is sought: What is the nature of the tourism reality? This has been broken down into specific issues: What entities make up the domain of tourism? How are they formed and how do they exist in the world? What are their features? And finally: What are the epistemic consequences of the adopted solutions? Our answers are embedded in Searle’s social ontology and his concepts of biological naturalism and social Background. The proposed tourism ontology will also be able to serve as a competitive option to relativist approaches that seem to be gaining the upper hand in the current debate about the state of tourism research.

Exploring the foundations of tourism geography: between flat ontology and J. Searle’s vertical social ontology

“…Instead, phenomenological approaches, which delve into the intricate interrelations between humans, space and its particular places, have rather garnered greater traction in contemporary academic considerations. This tendency is observable in various scholarly works, such as those authored by Relphs (1976), Tuan (1976) and Bunkse (2004) and critically discussed by Malpas (2018) as well as Butowski et al (2023). Given the prevailing trends in the field, I firmly believe that this article possesses the potential to offer a valuable and worthwhile contribution to the subject matter under examination-specifically, by treating the sub-discipline of human geography centered on tourism as a special platform through which the proposed viewpoints are presented.…”

“…Based on these powers, (5) tourism institutions are constructed, within which (6) tourism social, including institutional facts are generated (Butowski & Butowski, 2023). Notably, the whole process exhibits a structured and hierarchical nature, with a vertical direction, emphasizing the central role of human beings as the creators.…”

The ontological and epistemological foundations of tourism geography: Chosen aspects of its empirical field of research

“…According to Butowski and Butowski (2023), Figure 4 illustrates the following stepby-step process: Initially, human beings establish constitutive and regulative rules that are specific to tourism. Subsequently, these rules are put into action through the assignment of tourist functions, which encompass both ordinary and status functions attributed by individuals to objects and other human beings.…”