Beyond Eurocentrism in tourism: a paradigm shift to mobilities

Abstract

This paper addresses critiques of Eurocentrism in tourism studies, which have called for a ‘paradigm shift' in response to the rapid rise of tourism from emerging world regions. We clarify the concept of a paradigm shift, and examine arguments for a shift in tourism studies on epistemological, theoretical and empirical levels. We argue for a shift on the theoretical level: the incorporation of tourism studies in the mobilities paradigm. We argue that this paradigm offers a fresh perspective on tourism as enmeshed with other kinds of discretionary mobilities, is free of Eurocentric assumptions, and destabilizes some of the leading concepts on which now problematic binary modernist thinking in tourism studies is based. However, the positivistic, ‘etic’ character of early studies of the mobilities paradigm hinders its culturally nuanced deployment in emerging world regions, a limitation we seek to remedy by adapting Tim Cresswell's conceptualization of mobility that comprised movement, representation and practice. We conclude by providing a summary of the principal findings of our application of the mobilities paradigm to the comparative study of tourism from the emerging regions.

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