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Feminist and gender perspectives in tourism studies

The social-cultural nexus of critical and cultural theories

University of the West of England, UK

This article calls for a pause for reflection on the theoretical trajectory of feminist and gender research in tourism studies. It offers a critical appraisal of the origins, development and contemporary application of the three epistemological approaches of feminist empiricism, standpoint feminism and poststructural feminism. Although each of these broad perspectives has served to shape our multiple understandings of the relationships between gender and tourism they may also, simultaneously and inadvertently, have served to fracture the coherence of gender and tourism as a sub-discipline within tourism studies. The article suggests that to disembody that which is not yet fully formed runs the risk of aborting rather than nurturing the embryonic project of advancing feminist and gender tourism studies. Thus, while acknowledging the positive influence of the ‘cultural turn’ within feminist and gender studies of tourism, the article cautions against the wholesale adoption of poststructural approaches to the neglect of previous material analyses. Thus, the case is made for developing synergy between these two seemingly oppositional perspectives and the social-cultural nexus is introduced as a conceptual framework within which to explore the mutually informing nature of the social and the cultural in shaping both materialities and relations of gender and tourism.

Key Words: critical tourism studies • ‘cultural turn’ • feminism • feminist geography • gender • social-cultural nexus

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