Towards Developing a Framework for Analysing Tourism Phenomena: A Discussion

摘要

The social and cultural phenomena related to tourism have been studied for more than three decades, but evaluations of their role and importance are inevitably subjective. In addition, despite contributions from scholars in numerous disciplines, there is no single paradigm in tourism studies. In this paper, explicitly written from a sociological perspective, three basic and complementary levels of analysis are indicated, focusing on globalisation and wider systems, social and economic structures and institutions, and interactional processes. Prominent contributions to the tourism literature from these different methodological foundations are discussed, and it is concluded that wider recognition of such levels would facilitate a more coherent, comprehensive and comparative understanding of tourism's role and importance in a wide range of societies, and would also help clarify the questions being addressed in empirical research and theoretical analyses.