Table Of ContentFieldwork in Tourism
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 signifi-
cant 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 prob-
lems that emerge, the solutions that were developed and the realities of being
‘in the field’. Fiel dwork in Tourism is an essential guide for Tourism higher
level students, academics and researchers embarking on research in this field.
C. Michael Hall is Professor in the Department of Management, University
of Canterbury, New Zealand; Docent in the Department of Geography,
University of Oulu, Finland; and Visiting Professor at the Linnaeus Uni-
versity School of Business and Economics, Kalmar, Sweden. He is co-editor
of Current Issues in Tourism and he has published widely in tourism,
gastronomy and environmental history.
Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility
Series Editor: C. Michael Hall Professor at the Department of Management,
College of Business & Economics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag
4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
The aim of this series is to explore and communicate the intersections and
relationships between leisure, tourism and human mobility within the social
sciences.
It will incorporate both traditional and new perspectives on leisure and
tourism from contemporary geography, e.g. notions of identity, representa-
tion and culture, while also providing for perspectives from cognate areas
such as anthropology, cultural studies, gastronomy and food studies, market-
ing, policy studies and political economy, regional and urban planning,
and sociology, within the development of an integrated field of leisure and
tourism studies.
Also, increasingly, tourism and leisure are regarded as steps in a continuum
of human mobility. Inclusion of mobility in the series offers the prospect to
examine the relationship between tourism and migration, the sojourner, edu-
cational travel, and second home and retirement travel phenomena.
The series comprises two strands:
Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility aims to address
the needs of students and academics, and the titles will be published in
hardback and paperback. Titles include:
The Moralisation of Tourism Qualitative Research in Tourism
Sun, sand ... and saving the Ontologies, epistemologies and
world? methodologies
Jim Butcher Edited by Jenny Phillimore and
Lisa Goodson
The Ethics of Tourism Development
Mick Smith & Rosaleen Duffy
The Media and the Tourist
Tourism in the Caribbean Imagination
Trends, development, Converging cultures
prospects Edited by David Crouch,
Edited by David Timothy Duval Rhona Jackson and Felix Thompson
Tourism and Global Environmental Understanding and Managing
Change Tourism Impacts
Ecological, social, economic and Michael Hall and Alan Lew
political interrelationships
Edited by Stefan Gössling and Forthcoming:
C. Michael Hall
An Introduction to Visual Research
Cultural Heritage of Tourism in the
Methods in Tourism
Developing World
Tijana Rakic and Donna Chambers
Dallen J. Timothy and
Gyan Nyaupane
Routledge Studies in Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and
Mobility is a forum for innovative new research intended for research
students and academics, and the titles will be available in hardback only.
Titles include:
Living with Tourism Ecotourism, NGO’s and Development
Negotiating identities in a A critical analysis
Turkish village Jim Butcher
Hazel Tucker Tourism and the Consumption
of Wildlife
Tourism, Diasporas and Space
Hunting, shooting and sport fishing
Edited by Tim Coles and
Edited by Brent Lovelock
Dallen J. Timothy
Tourism, Creativity and Development
Tourism and Postcolonialism
Edited by Greg Richards and
Contested discourses, identities
Julie Wilson
and representations
Edited by C. Michael Hall and Tourism at the Grassroots
Hazel Tucker Edited by John Connell and
Barbara Rugendyke
Tourism, Religion and
Spiritual Journeys Tourism and Innovation
Edited by Dallen J. Timothy and Michael Hall and Allan Williams
Daniel H. Olsen
World Tourism Cities
China’s Outbound Tourism Developing tourism off the beaten
Wolfgang Georg Arlt track
Edited by Robert Maitland and
Tourism, Power and Space Peter Newman
Edited by Andrew Church and
Tourism and National Parks
Tim Coles
International perspectives on
Tourism, Ethnic Diversity and development, histories and change
the City Edited by Warwick Frost and
Edited by Jan Rath C. Michael Hall
Tourism, Performance and The Study of Tourism
the Everyday Richard Sharpley
Consuming the Orient
Children’s and Families’
Michael Haldrup and Jonas Larsen
Holiday Experience
Tourism and Change in Polar Regions Neil Carr
Edited by C. Michael Hall and
Tourism and Agriculture
Jarkko Saarinen
Rebecca Torres and Janet Momsen
Fieldwork in Tourism
Methods, Issues and Reflections Gender and Tourism
Cara Atchinson
Edited by C. Michael Hall
Tourism in China
Forthcoming:
David Airey and King Chong
Tourist Development in India Real Tourism
Kevin Hannam and Anya Diekmann Claudio Minca and Tim Oaks
Volunteer Tourism Tourism and Animal Ethics
Angela Benson David A. Fennell
Political Economy of Tourism Tourism and National Identity
Jan Mosedale Elspeth Frew and Leanne White
Fieldwork in Tourism
fl
Methods, issues and re ections
Edited by C. Michael Hall
First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2011 C. Michael Hall
The right of C. Michael Hall to be identified as editor of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Fieldwork in tourism / edited by C. Michael Hall.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Tourism – Resea rch. I. Hall, Colin Michael, 1961–
G155.A1F536 2010
910.72′3 – dc22
2010008240
ISBN 0-203-84551-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-58919-2 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-84551-6 (ebk)
Contents
List of illustrations x
List of contributors xi
Foreword xiii
Introducing the contexts of fieldwork 1
1 Fieldwork in tourism/touring fields:
Where does tourism end and fieldwork begin? 7
C. MICHAEL HALL
2 Defining and redefining conceptual frameworks
for social science field research 19
ALAN A. LEW
PART I
Research relationships: Power, politics and
patron–client affinities 35
3 Researching the political in tourism:
Where knowledge meets power 39
C. MICHAEL HALL
4 The visible/invisible researcher: Ethics and
politically sensitive research 55
STEPHANIE CHOK
5 Interviewing elites: Perspectives from the medical
tourism sector in India and Thailand 70
AUDREY BOCHATON AND BERTRAND LEFEBVRE
viii Contents
PART II
Positionality: Researcher position in the field–practicalities,
perils and pitfalls 81
6 Reflexivity and ethnography in community
tourism research 87
TERESA LEOPOLD
7 Doing ‘risky’ and ‘sexy’ research: Reframing the
concept of ‘relational’ in qualitative research 99
REIKO YAMAGISHI
8 Studying halal restaurants in New Zealand:
Experiences and perspectives of a Muslim
female researcher 112
MELISSA WAN HASSAN
9 Researching heritage tourism in Singapore:
An outsider perspective as an asset? 127
DAVID TANTOW
10 Cosmopolitan methodology: Implications of the
ethnographer’s multiple and shifting relationships
in studying ethnic tourism 140
MALITA ALLAN
11 Allowing women’s voices to be heard in tourism
research: Competing paradigms of method 151
JO BENSEMANN
PART III
Methods and processes 169
12 Studying local-to-global tourism dynamics through
glocal ethnography 177
NOEL B. SALAZAR
13 Researching second home tourism in South Africa:
Methodological challenges and innovations 188
GIJSBERT HOOGENDOORN AND GUSTAV VISSER
Contents ix
14 Off the record: Segmenting informal discussions
into viable methodological categories 199
JAMIE GILLEN
15 Know yourself: Making the visual work in tourism research 209
JENNY CHIO
16 Work it out: Using work as participant observation
to study tourism 220
CHRIS MCMORRAN
17 Researching tourists in the outdoors: Challenges
and experiences from protected areas in Sweden 232
SANDRA WALL REINIUS
18 Challenges in fieldwork: Researching group service experiences
at a white water rafting provider in New Zealand 240
JÖRG FINSTERWALDER AND VOLKER G. KUPPELWIESER
19 Facing rejection: Volunteer tourists whom I could not interview 249
HARNG LUH SIN
PART IV
Future directions and new environments 261
20 In cyberspace can anybody hear you scream?
Issues in the conduct of online fieldwork 265
C. MICHAEL HALL
21 Integrating researchers and indigenous communities:
Reflections from Northern Canada 289
R.H. LEMELIN, E. WIERSMA AND E.J. STEWART
22 Managing post-fieldwork interpersonal
relationships: Mea (maxima?) culpa 308
DAVID TIMOTHY DUVAL
23 Concluding thoughts: Where does fieldwork end
and tourism begin? 315
C. MICHAEL HALL
Index 319
