1st Edition
Fieldwork in Tourism Methods, Issues and Reflections
The inherent mobility of tourists and consequent relative ephemerality of contact between the visitor and the visited tourism phenomenon have specific characteristics that challenge the usual fieldwork practices of the social and physical sciences. Such conditions create specific concerns for the tourism researcher in terms of their positionality, relationality, accessibility, ethics, reflexivity, and methodological appropriateness.
Fieldwork in Tourism is the first book to focus on this extremely significant component of contemporary tourist research and provides hands on approaches to conducting tourism fieldwork in a range of settings, exploring the methodological considerations and offering strategies to mitigate these. The book also discusses how fieldwork affects researchers personally and what happens to field relationships. Divided into five sections, each with an introduction and a guide to further reading, the chapters cover the context of fieldwork, research relationships, politics and power, the position of the researcher in the field, research methods and processes, including virtual fieldwork, and the relationships between being a tourist and doing fieldwork. The concluding chapter suggests that the link between tourism and fieldwork perhaps offers greater insights into understanding creative fieldwork than may be imagined.
This book incorporates a rich and diverse set of fieldwork experiences, insights and reflections on conducting fieldwork in different settings, the problems that emerge, the solutions that were developed, and the realities of being ‘in the field’. Fieldwork in Tourism is an essential guide for Tourism higher level students, academics and researchers embarking on research in this field.
Introducing the Contexts of Fieldwork 1 Fieldwork in Tourism/Touring Research: Where Does Tourism End and Fieldwork Begin? C. Michael Hall 2 Defining and Redefining Conceptual Frameworks for Social Science Field Research Alan Lew Research Relationships: Power, Politics and Patron-client Affinities 3 Researching the Political in Tourism: Where Knowledge Meets Power Michael Hall 4 The Visible/Invisible Researcher: Ethics and Politically-Sensitive Research Stephanie Chok 5 Interviewing Elites: Perspectives from the Medical Tourism Sector in India and Thailand Audrey Bochaton and Bertrand Lefebvre Positionality: Researcher Position in the Field, Practicalities, Perils, and Pitfalls 6 Reflexivity and Ethnography in Community Tourism Research Teresa Leopold 7 Doing ‘Risky’ and ‘Sexy’ Research: Reframing the Concept of ‘Relational’ in Qualitative Research Reiko Yamagishi 8 Studying Halal Restaurants in New Zealand: Experiences and Perspectives of a Muslim Female Researcher Melissa wan Hassan 9 Researching Heritage Tourism in Singapore: An Outsider Perspective as an Asset? David Tantow 10 Cosmopolitan Methodologies: Implications of the Ethnographer’s Multiple Positions in Studying Tourism Malita Allan 11 Allowing Women’s Voices to be Heard in Tourism Research: Competing Paradigms of Method Jo Bensemann Methods and Processes 12 Studying Local-to-Global Tourism Dynamics Through Glocal Ethnography Noel B. Salazar 13 Researching Second Home Tourism in South Africa: Methodological Challenges and Innovations Gijsbert Hoogendoorn and Gustav Visser 14 Off the Record: Segmenting Informal Discussions into Viable Methodological Categories Jamie Gillen 15 Know Yourself: Making the Visual Work in Tourism Research Jenny Chio 16 Work it Out: Using Work as Participant Observation to Study Tourism Chris McMorran 17 Researching Tourists in the Outdoors - Challenges and Experiences from Protected Areas in Sweden Sandra Wall Reinius 18 Challenges in Fieldwork Researching Group Service Experiences at a White Water Rafting Provider in New Zealand Joerg Finsterwalder and Volker G. Kuppelwieser 19 On Facing Rejection: Volunteer Tourists that I Could Not Interview Harng Luh Sin Future Directions and New Environments 20 In Cyberspace Can Anybody Hear You Scream? Issues in the Conduct of Online Fieldwork C. Michael Hall 21 Integrating Researchers and Indigenous Communities: Reflections From Northern Canada R.H. Lemelin, E. Wiersma and E.J. Stewart 22 Managing Post-Fieldwork Interpersonal Relationships: Mea (maxima?) Culpa David Timothy Duval 23 Concluding Thoughts: Where Does Fieldwork End and Tourism Begin? C. Michael Hall
Biography
C. Michael Hall is Professor in the Department of Management, University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Docent, Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland; and Visiting Professor, Linnaeus University School of Business and Economics, Kalmar, Sweden. Co-editor of Current Issues in Tourism, he has published widely in tourism, gastronomy and environmental history.
