Travelling down the road to postdisciplinarity? Reflections of a tourism geographer

Abstract

Like many other forms of scholarship in geography, tourism geography has evolved as a distinct subfield of inquiry within the discipline, although the contributions of tourism geographers are perhaps more readily acknowledged in the multidisciplinary realm of tourism studies. I trace the evolving relationship of tourism geography to both the discipline of geography and to the field of tourism studies. In doing so, I reflect on such influences as the role of institutions, paradigm shifts, technology, and other factors that affect the creation and management of geographic knowledge in the twenty‐first century. The intent of this article is two‐fold: first, to appeal to geographers for greater recognition of the importance of tourism as a quintessential component of geographic study that in today's world warrants integration into core aspects of geographic enquiry; second, to use current debates within both tourism studies and geography to reflect on issues of disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and even postdisciplinarity.

Tourism through the lens of a human geographer: a view from the South

“…My geographical background enabled me to complete a spatial analysis of 12 tourism nodes consisting of warm water spa, safari-lodge and holiday farm developments. Geography provides the framework or lens through which we can view, explore and understand various phenomena of the world in which we live (Nelson, 2017) and I concur with Gill's (2012) idea that one of geography's strengths is its synthesising role as an interdisciplinary discipline.…”

“…Geographers are well equipped to work in the tourism field because they understand the worth of a 'holistic' approach, work on the interface of the physical and human environments (Gill, 2012), and have a good understanding of system dynamics (settlement systems and ecosystems) (Gossling, Scott, Hall, Cerron, & Dubois, 2012) and interconnections, ecological thresholds, social-ecological relations and how social ecological systems-thinking can assist in adaptive management of tourism destinations (national parks, islands and coastal beaches). Tourism geographers use new paradigms such as evolutionary economic geography (Brouder, 2014) and resilience theory (Lew, 2014) to explain the path dependency, the evolution of destinations and how certain destinations have the capacity to break loose from their lock-in situations or have the adaptive capacity to 'bounce' back after major disasters.…”

Postdisciplinar geography of postmodern

“…[Gill, 2012]. Не исключено, что предложенное деление излишне утяжелено и не везде приложимо, но последовать за ним применительно к географии представляется заманчивым.…”

“…На междисциплинарном уровне объект исследуют различные науки, но между их представителями не прослеживается реального взаимодействия и перспективы теоретической интеграции [Gill, 2012]. Под видом специализации по проблемам, над одном и том же объекте выстраивалось несколько предметных дисциплинам.…”

“…На нем прослеживаются более интегрированные теоретические, концептуальные и методологических разработки [Lawrence, 2010;Gill, 2012].…”