Qualitative Research and Tourism Studies

Abstract

[ Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the world . ... This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. (Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 20ll: 3) ] Historically and globally, the use of qualitative research in tourism studies has been punctuated by a set of episodes that have been heterogeneously experienced. In the human sciences, these episodes have been referred to as 'moments' and include 'traditional', 'modernist', 'blurred genres', 'paradigm wars', 'crisis of representation\ 'postmodern', 'postexperimental inquiry', •methodologically contested present', 'paradigm proliferation', 'the fractured posthuman present' and 'the uncertain utopian future' (Denzin and Lincoln, 2018a, b). In tourism studies, these episodes or moments continue to be manifested and disparately experienced. Why? Because the nature of their manifestation is temporally, culturally, socially, geo-spatially, politically and personally determined. A 'sjngle' narrative of using qualitative research in tourism studies does not exist. There are only multiplicities and manifold perspectivities, which cannot be captured in this chapter. They can be alluded to and patterns recognized but not authentically represented. For example, my combined subjectivities cannot speak authentically about using qualitative research in tourism studies, in the various nations of Africa, South America, Asia, Central America, Eastern Europe, the European Union, the Middle East, North America, Oceania, South America, or the Caribbean. Nor can I represent the multiplicity of peoples' experiences in those nations or give voice to their individual polyvocalities and how these influence/d their own engagements in qualitative research. To attempt to do so would replicate the same "'objective" colonizing' practices of early and colonial ethnographers, traditionalists (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005: 15), and thereby 'other' their voices (Arthur J. Vidich and Stanford M. Lyman, 2000: 41). Importantly, what I can do is to signal that these represent silences in this chapter; silences, which current and future generations of qualitative researchers need to fill to address this 'crisis of representation' (Denzin and Lincoln, 2018b). Subsequently, in constructing this chapter's narrative, I recognize that it is but one possible storying among others.