Getting ‘Entangled’: Reflexivity and the ‘Critical Turn’ in Tourism Studies

TLDR: The authors identify a range of entanglements that influence and constrain research choices, textual strategies and ability to pursue reflexive knowledge in tourism studies, focusing on four broad, but interlinking, themes: "ideologies and legitimacies", "research accountability", "positionality" and "intersectionality with the researched".

Abstract: Reflecting a broader postmodern shift to unmask the cultural politics of research and knowledge-making in academia, tourism studies as a field is demonstrating a notable ‘critical turn’—a shift in thought that serves to provide and legitimize a space for more interpretative and critical modes of tourism inquiry. In response to this critical turn, this paper addresses the central issue of ‘reflexivity’ which, while alive in other disciplines and fields, has received rather limited attention within tourism studies. By drawing on our own personal academic/research experiences working at the crossroads of this turn in thought, we identify a range of ‘entanglements’ that influence and constrain our research choices, textual strategies and ability to pursue reflexive knowledge. These entanglements centre around four broad, but interlinking, themes: ‘ideologies and legitimacies’; ‘research accountability’; ‘positionality’, and ‘intersectionality with the researched’. In writing this paper, we aim to uncloak the ...