Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T20:44:10.643Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Complexities of Experience: a Critical Tourism Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2012

Jo Ankor*
Affiliation:
University of Technology, Sydney
*
Address for correspondence2/65 Tusmore Ave, Tusmore SA 5065. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

In this article, travel is considered as offering moments of encounter with difference that generate new ideas and therefore new perceptions of being in the world for the individual. The role of the Other — of difference and the unknown — is important in the examination of the travel experience of encounter and Levinas's philosophy of the face-to-face encounter with the Other provides a conceptual framework for understanding the responsive relation to difference. This article also addresses the difficulty of writing about the experience in travel. It takes a critical approach through a flexible and interpretative method that attempts to represent the ephemeral nature of the travel experience in a manner that brings the traveller's interactive response to place and encounter to be part of the research. Three ‘voices’ — theory, critical-creative and narrative — reveal aspects of the relationship of the individual and difference for both traveller and researcher, and together offer a three-dimensional tool for tourism studies. This article aims to contribute to understanding the travel experience and, in the experimentation with mixed methodologies, to contribute to our theoretical frameworks through encouraging the reader to take a different journey of exploration.

Type
Special Issue: Beyond the Margins (Critical Tourism and Hospitality)
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bayles, D., & Orland, T. (1993). Art & fear: Observations on the perils (and rewards) of artmaking. Santa Cruz, CA: Image Continuum Press.Google Scholar
Brook, S. (2002). Does anybody know what happened to ‘fictocriticism’? Cultural Studies Review, 8 (2), 104118.Google Scholar
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clifford, J. (1997). Routes: Travel and translation in the late twentieth century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). The domain of creativity. In Runco, M.A. & Albert, R.S. (Eds.), Theories of creativity (pp. 190214). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Diprose, R. (2002). Corporeal generosity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Droit, R. (2005). How are things? A philosophical experiment (Cuffe, T., Trans.). London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Fenner, F. (Ed.). (2008). Handle with care: 2008 Adelaide biennial of Australian art. Adelaide, South Australia: Art Gallery of South Australia.Google Scholar
Fleming, C., & Fullagar, S. (2007). Reflexive methodologies: An autoethnography of the gendered performance of sport/management. Annals of Leisure Research, 10 (34), 238–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fullagar, S. (2002). Narratives of travel: Desire and the movement of feminine subjectivity. Leisure Studies, 21, 5774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gablik, S. (1991). The re-enchantment of art. New York: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Garlick, S. (2002). Revealing the unseen: Tourism, art and photography, Cultural Studies Review, 16 (2), 289305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Getzels, J.W., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). Creativity and problem finding in art. In Farley, F.H. & Neperud, R.W. (Eds.), Foundations of aesthetics, art and art education (pp. 2542). New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Hollinshead, K. (2004). Tourism and new sense: Worldmaking and the enunciative value of tourism. In Hall, C.M. & Tucker, H. (Eds.), Tourism and postcolonialism: Contested discourses, identities and representations (pp. 1535). London, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jamal, T., & Everett, J. (2004). Resisting rationalism in the natural and academic life-world: Critical tourism research or hermeneutic charity? Current Issues in Tourism, 7 (1), 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lechte, J. (1995). (Not) Belonging In postmodern space. In Watson, S. & Gibson, K. (Eds.), Postmodern cities and spaces (pp. 99111). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (Lingis, A., Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
Mace, M. (1997). Toward an understanding of creativity through a qualitative analysis of contemporary art making. Creativity Research Journal, 10 (2–3), 265278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milne, S., & Ateljevic, I. (2001). Tourism, economic development and the global-local nexus: Theory embracing complexity. Tourism Geographies, 3 (4), 369393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muecke, S. (1997). No road (bitumen all the way). Perth, Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press.Google Scholar
O'Dell, T. (2005). Blurring borders and testing connections. In O'Dell, T. & Billing, P. (Eds.). Experiencescapes: Tourism, culture and economy (pp. 4250). Copenhagen, Denmark: Copenhagen Business School Press.Google Scholar
Parry, D., & Johnson, C. (2007). Contextualizing leisure research to encompass complexity in lived leisure experience: The need for creative analytic practice. Leisure Sciences, 29, 119130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pratt, M.L. (1992). Imperial eyes: Studies in travel writing. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reisinger, Y., & Steiner, C. (2006). Reconceptualizing object authenticity. Annals of Tourism Research, 33 (1), 6586.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, G., & Wilson, J. (2006). Developing creativity in tourist experiences: A solution to the serial reproduction of culture? Tourism Management, 27, 12091223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, L. (2000). Evaluating ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 6, 253255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, S. (1996). The cartographic eye. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shapiro, R. (1996). Ethics, the literary imagination, and the other. Journal of Australian Studies, 50/51.Google Scholar
Simms, K. (Ed.). (1997). Ethics and the subject. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suvantola, J. (2002). Tourist's experience of place. Hampshire, England: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Tobin, J. (2004). Creativity and the poetic mind. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Todd, J. (2005). Social transformation, collective categories, and identity change. Theory and Society, 34 (Spring), 429463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tribe, J. (2008). The art of tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 35 (4), 924944.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uriely, N. (2005). The tourist experience: Conceptual developments. Annals of Tourism Research, 32 (1), 199216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wearing, S., Stevenson, D., & Young, T. (2010). Tourist cultures: Identity, place and the traveller. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, R. (1976). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Zajonc, A. (1993). Catching the light: The entwined history of light and mind. New York: Bantam BooksGoogle Scholar