Vulnerabilities and Viabilities in Tourism Studies

Shalini Singh is Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at Brock University, Canada. Her research explores aspects of leisure tourism with a focus on domestic tourism and cultural heritage, spirituality and place – people synergies. Her current engagement with UNESCO’s religio-heritage site of Bodhgaya (India) seeks to investigate the agency of such destinations in international diplomacy.

• Introduction: Vulnerabilities in tourism scholarship – scholars’ plea for a viable future 1. Tourism studies and the changing research ecosystem 2. Rethinking or reinventing tourism? Exposing the ontological and epistemological conflicts in tourism studies literature during the COVID-19 pandemic 3. Free time as a central issue of tourism studies: a genealogy of leisure/idleness based on the indigenous cosmovisions of Latin America 4. Kinmaking: toward more-than-tourism (studies) 5. Is an axiological turn viable for tourism studies? Reinvestigating the Platforms model 6. Studying tourism means going to have a look for yourself: co-research, vulnerabilities and opportunities after the pandemic 7. Religion, spirituality, and the formation of tourism knowledge 8. Economies of attention and the design of viable tourism futures 9. The ‘misplaced’ vulnerability of tourism studies: towards a relational ontology, epistemological pluralism and affirmative ethics 10. Complementarity: bridging the tourism academic/religion divide