Paper Short Abstract:

Tourism studies, an interdisciplinary (un)discipline, bridges fields like ethnology/anthropology, geography, business studies and many others, which can create both innovation and marginalisation. This paper explores how "unwritten" disciplinary spaces can drive methodological creativity while navigating disciplinary boundaries and sometimes tensions.

Paper Abstract:

Tourism studies occupies an interdisciplinary space bordering many fields including but not limited to ethnology, folklore studies, socio-cultural anthropology, human geography, sociology, business and management studies and many others. This offers space for examining some of the potentially productive tensions that arise when disciplinary boundaries are crossed which I will do based on my experience as an ethnologist/anthropologist working at a business school. I will argue that as an (un)discipline, tourism studies exemplifies the dual nature of "unwritten" spaces, serving as sites of both certain disciplinary marginalisation but also innovation. While these spaces therefore can foster methodological and theoretical creativity and development, some problems with how to navigate the (un)disciplinary boundaries and institutional recognition also arise. This paper focuses mostly on how methods and theories from ethnology and anthropology can be adapted and transformed within qualitative tourism research. Sometimes considered somewhat peripheral within the social sciences, tourism studies can nevertheless push some boundaries by questioning dichotomies like host and guest or field and home, highlighting the fluid and hybrid nature of our contemporary "glocal" mobilities. This paper therefore critically engages with both the opportunities and constraints of working across disciplines, illustrating how tourism studies embodies some of the processes of both marginalisation and creativity at the borders of academic fields and showing that the "unwritten" spaces can be grounds for innovation.