Critical Tourism Studies

Through the democratization of travel, transport technology developments, ubiquitous internet use and growing global affluence, international tourism is booming despite temporary setbacks. Globetrotting tourists are seen as part of the frictionless flow of capital, information, culture and goods and most places on the planet are meant to be competing in a global marketplace to entice these. As such tourism is generally promoted as a motor for economic growth and regularly cited as the world largest industry, employing one in ten people of the planetary workforce. Under these terms there is a need to tend to the diverse relations through which tourism places and spaces emerge, and thus define tourism development successes from a broader perspective than merely as measurable economic growth. The course will enable PhD students to unravel the multiple relations surrounding tourism and its development in a range of settings. The course will equip students with a nuanced appreciation of the social and cultural dimensions of power manifest in tourism destination development, in tandem with an appreciation of the production and material aspects of tourism and mobility. These will be embedded with an understanding of the forces of structural power that characterize twenty-first century capitalism and globalization.

Former occurrences of this course

7-15 July 2022