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The epistemology of a set of tourism studies

David Botterill

To cite this article: David Botterill (2001) The epistemology of a set of tourism studies, Leisure
Studies, 20:3, 199-214, DOI: 10.1080/02614360127084
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Leisure Studies 20 (2001) 199–214

The epistemology of a set of tourism

studies
DAVID BOTTERILL
Welsh School of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Management, University of Wales Institute,
Cardiff

The assumptions that underlie social science research in tourism are seldom made
explicit. The aims of this article are twofold. First, the epistemic question in tourism
is opened for closer examination as a means of developing the self-understanding of
the grounds of knowledge amongst members of the tourism research community.
This is addressed by a detailed epistemological reading of a set of Žve PhD studies, in
terms of their epistemological antecedents and the contemporary constructivist-
critical realist debate. Second, arguments are presented for an intensive engagement
with epistemology in future tourism studies, on the basis that the status and
importance of tourism research is closely tied to the general pursuit of a more
satisfactory epistemological solution in the social sciences.

Introduction
Tourism research has progressed in both a multidisciplinary and inter-
disciplinary manner. However, an examination of the largely unspoken
epistemology of many tourism texts displays the inuence of positivism and
the scientiŽc method in interdisciplinary tourism research. The assumed
normality of positivistic epistemology in tourism research is, it is argued,
unhelpful to the development of the Želd. That the more complex and
difŽcult matter of the underlying assumptions upon which positivism is
premised – the nature of reality (the ontological question) and the way of
knowing (the epistemological question) – are rarely articulated can be
construed as a potentially serious aw. Various philosophical challenges
within the history of positivism have created its present form. Vigorous
dispute – for example the long standing counter arguments on the applicabil-
ity of positivism to understanding the social world as represented by schools
of hermeneutics and critical theory – has questioned seriously its validity as
an epistemology suitable for the social sciences.
In challenging this unspoken epistemology, Walle (1997) contributes what
he calls a vital analysis to building a distinct tourism research tradition
through a comparison of qualitative and quantitative methods. He concludes
by questioning the appropriateness of the scientiŽc method. A further
contribution (Echtner and Jamal, 1997) extends the critique of the received
view by asking questions drawn from the philosophy of science about
disciplinary developments in sociology and social policy; geography; organ-
izational and strategy research; and marketing and consumer behaviour
Leisure Studies ISSN 0261-4367 print/ISSN 1466-4496 online © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/02614360110086570
200 D. Botterill
research. In analysing two approaches to the philosophy of science, Echtner
and Jamal (1997) open a debate that clearly offers much to the evolution of
interdisciplinary tourism research. In a recent review of hospitality research,
Jones (1998) refers to research paradigms, methodology and methods, cor-
rectly identifying that ‘fundamental issues of perception, values and scientiŽc
method are rarely identiŽed or discussed’ (p. 109) in hospitality research.
This paper seeks to build on these contributions but addresses the topic
more directly from the literature of the philosophy of social sciences. The
aims of the paper are twofold. First, the author seeks to open the epistemic
question to a closer examination and thereby contribute to the self-
understanding of the tourism research community. Second, arguments are
presented for an intensive engagement with epistemology in future tourism
studies. The challenge within the argument is made on the grounds that the
status and importance of tourism research is closely tied to the general pursuit
of a more satisfactory epistemological solution in the social sciences. Through
its twin aims, the article attempts to move beyond the somewhat closed
critique of method (Walle, 1997), the selectivity of Echtner and Jamal (1997)
and the relativist paradigm debate (Dann, 1997; Jones, 1998).
In the paper I offer a reading of a set of tourism studies in the context of
contemporary debates on constructivism and realism (Delanty, 1997). In
particular, the epistemological reading examines the relations between social
science and society, a central question in the philosophy of social science
discourse, and by implication the relationship between tourism research and
the social organization of tourism. It is contended that Delanty’s (1997)
arguments about the contribution of epistemological debate to the question of
the public role of social science offers a useful framework for the considera-
tion of the inuence of tourism researchers over tourism itself and the claim
to expert knowledge about tourism.

The Cardiff Studies – Five Ph.D. studies of tourism

Details of the Žve studies are given in Table 1. The studies were all
undertaken in a single university department of tourism over a period of 7
years, 1993–2000. It is not claimed, therefore, that the studies are in any
sense a systematic sample of PhD studies in tourism. Topics covered included
tourism development issues in the context of the urban regeneration (Selby),
as a part of rural economic development (Emanuel) and at seaside resorts
(Gale). In each of these three studies images of a tourist destination are
understood to be vital to an understanding of the consumption of tourism
products. This is made most explicit in Foster’s study of the interplay of
private and public sector stakeholders in the construction of international
images of Wales as a tourist destination. Tourism’s relationship with the
physical environment is represented in Nelson’s study of coastal pollution and
its impact on the beach as a tourism resource.
Table 1 indicates the relationship of the author of this paper to the Žve
projects. He acted as the director of studies for four and internal examiner for
the Žfth of these studies. The special inuence of the author upon the studies
Table 1 The Cardiff Studies
Author’s
Title/Topic Status of Role in PhD Publications Awarding
Name of Thesis Thesis Programme Period to Date University Methods Analysis
Louise An investigation and Complete Director of 1993–97 Emanuel et al. Open • Hitorical/Literacy writings • Concept development
Emanuel evaluation of visitor Studies (1996) • Census Data – Place Perception
and resident place Emanuel • Visitor Survey (n-400) – Economic
perceptions of Mid (1997) • Visitor In-depth interviews (n = 15) Development and
Wales • Postal Resident Survey (n = 1000) Landscape Perception
• Resident In-depth (n = 15) • Tests of Association
• In-depth Policy Informants (n = 5) – Visitor/Resident
Differences
• Integrative
Nicola Representing Wales: Complete Examiner 1994–99 Foster (1996) Open Questionnaire Survey • Destination image
Foster Congruence and Foster (1999) Wales Tourist Attraction Operations system
Dissonance in (n = 296) • Familiarity as a factor
Touristic Imagery: A American Four Operators (n = 62) in destination image
Systems Approach American Tourists to Wales (n = 159) • System component
• Policy analysis (Wales Tourist dissonance
Board) • State intervention in
• Content analysis of brochure destination image
image (Wales Tourist Board) • Socio-linguistic
• Repertory grid interviews (n = 20) analysis
• In-depth interviews on representa-
tion of destination image (n = 18)
• In-depth interviews on images of
Wales (n = 100)
• Branding identity free association
(n = 78)
Tim Late Twentieth Complete Director of 1994– Gale et al. (in Wales • Reading the Landscape – ‘way of • Four ‘period’
Gale Century Change and Studies 2001 press) seeing’ paradigms
The epistemology of a set of tourism studies

the Decline and Gale (1998) • Semiotic Analysis municipal distinguished by

Attempted Gale (2001) brochures ‘critical incidents’
Rejuvenation of the • Document analysis 1945–60
British Seaside Resort – Council minutes, policy 1960–74
as a Long Holiday 1974–88
Destination: A case 1988–97
Study of Rhyl, North
Wales.
201
 202

Table 1 Continued
Author’s
Title/Topic Status of Role in PhD Publications Awarding
Name of Thesis Thesis Programme Period to Date University Methods Analysis
Cliff Examination Complete Director of 1994–97 Nelson Open Laboratory based quality testing • Microbiological
Nelson of complex Studies (1998) Quasi-Experimental Design Indicators
relationships between Williams and Litter survey
coastal pollution and Nelson ‘Condom’ equivalent • Pollution Index
public perception, (1997) Beach Survey (n = 1200) • Logistical regression
susceptibility of Nelson and Self Complete (n = 600) • Conceptual Model
beach users to illness, Williams Telephone (n = 450) ‘Beach Management’
behavioural patterns, (1997) Turbidity – Sechi Disc
attitudes towards Nelson et al.
seaside award (2000)
schemes and the
regulatory framework
through which they
D. Botterill

interact

Martin People, Place and Complete Director of 1994–99 Selby and Wales • Language of urban tourism • Experiential
Selby Consumption. Studies Morgan decision making epistemology
Conceptualising and (1996) – Repertory Grid • Salient urban
researching the Selby (1996) (Kelly) tourism constructs
experience of urban Selby (2000) – Stock of knowledge • Image index
tourism (Shutz) • Factor Analysis
• Great grid survey • Policy Implications
(n = 337) for Cardiff
• Three cities: Cardiff,
Edinburgh, Bristol
 The epistemology of a set of tourism studies 203
is, therefore, acknowledged. However, the pattern and substance of super-
visory intervention varied substantively across the studies and the Žnal output
was unequivocally that of the research student. His conversations with these
students over a 7-year period have encouraged him to place his thoughts in
the wider public domain. This is on the basis that, in an hermeneutical sense,
the kind of epistemological reading attempted here would not have been
possible without such engagement.

Positivism in the studies

Delanty (1997) proposes Žve tenets of positivism: Scientism or the unity of
the scientiŽc method; naturalism or phenomenalism; empiricism; value free-
dom; instrumental knowledge. The inuences of positivism within the set of
studies will be considered under each of these Žve points separately. Of all the
studies, that by Nelson is most explicitly positivistic. His study, therefore, will
be used to exemplify each tenet before incorporating aspects from the other
studies to further detect the inuence of what continues to be the major
shaper of the self-understanding of tourism research.
Scientism and the unity of the scientiŽc method
Research in tourism displays many of the markers of scientism. Tourism
research problems are deŽned as a relationship between variables: independ-
ent, dependent and intervening. The researcher classically sits outside of the
phenomenon, observes and attempts to unravel the effect of interventions or
treatments upon dependant variables such as tourism demand, motivation
and supply. It is perhaps surprising that the adoption of the laboratory
experiment or Želd based quasi-experimental work is a relatively rare
occurrence in mainstream tourism literature. The exceptions are generally
found in studies of the natural environment. The Žndings of these studies,
however, are seldom reported in mainstream interdisciplinary tourism
journals.
Problematizing the interaction of people and nature in tourism settings
preconditions the necessity of a merging of social and physical science epis-
temologies. For example in a recent study of pollution perception at the beach
Nelson acknowledges that part of his purpose is to bridge across the physical
and social sciences (Nelson and Williams, 1997; Nelson et al., 2000). The
bridge, in part, takes the form of his method selection. In the Želd, Nelson
would come closest to the image of the scientist in the tourism environment.
This is characterized by the researcher standing in the sea and collecting
samples for microbiological analysis, or using the ‘secchi disk’ suspended at
differing heights below the surface of the sea in order to measure clarity/
turbidity. On the beach, Nelson used transepts to measure objectively the
amount and content of debris. He also conducted a quasi-experimental design
study with tourists in order to determine a ‘condom equivalent index’ of beach
debris tolerance levels (Nelson et al., 2000; Williams and Nelson, 1997).
In common with Emanuel, Foster and Selby, Nelson incorporates a social
survey into his method. The questionnaire, perhaps more than any other
204 D. Botterill
research technique, has become the social scientist’s positivist ag. The origins
of the questionnaire, Delanty suggests, are to be found in the development of
a professional social science in American universities, particularly in the
empirical micro-case studies of functional sociology, in the early part of the
twentieth century. The extent of tourism research based on questionnaire
method is considerable. All of the major indices of domestic and international
tourism demand are based on this technique and the vast majority of research
in both the academic and consultancy spheres adopts a questionnaire
instrument to make observations. Data derived from the questionnaire offers
itself for quantiŽcation and statistical testing.
Tourism research has therefore assumed the ‘turn’ in positivist epistemol-
ogy inspired by advances in mathematics. All studies except Gale’s use
statistical tests of quantiŽed data in their analyses. Nelson applies logistical
regression to examine the risk of bathing in the sea, Selby uses multivariate
cluster techniques to discriminate between urban tourist segments and Foster
builds a mathematical model to display relationships in image construction.
These are all indicators of the inuence of the ‘logical turn’ within positivism
itself. The development of logical positivism was premised on the ‘the ideal of
a uniŽed science based on the certain knowledge of mathematical logic’
(Delanty, 1997, p. 29) and the quantiŽcation present within four of the Žve
studies can be read as the expression of ‘new’ developments in physics in the
1920s. This ‘turn’ immediately demonstrates how research in tourism has
taken its shape and form from disputes about positivism and its assimilation
in the social sciences.
Naturalism or phenomenalism
This implies a unity in the subject matter of science as well as the unity of
method. The subject matter, reality, is external to science itself. Reality, or
nature, is reducible to observable units or naturalistic phenomena and can be
observed objectively. Nelson’s study displays reductionism in the attempt to
deŽne and measure variables and to incorporate the variables into a con-
ceptual model. While others classically applied the atomism of positivism
in collecting social survey data, the nature of Nelson’s data enable more
rigorous testing of relationships.
Within naturalism it is also assumed that the truths discovered by science
have a corresponding truth-value in reality. This is a major point of dispute in
social science and one that informs a number of the Cardiff studies. For
example, Emanuel (1997) is engaged on a substantial project of exploring
relationships between the perceptions of visitors and residents and the reality
of places, as expressed by the shape and form of economic development.
Similarly Gale (1996), in some ways the least positivistic study, is directly
seeking to ‘interpret the inuence of late twentieth century socio-cultural
change upon the physical reality and image of Rhyl . . .’. Without the inu-
ences of the assumption of the correspondence theory of truth in this raw
form, such social science research aspiration would have little credence.
The relationship between what social science creates as knowledge in its
discourse and the social reality that it seeks to understand or inuence
 The epistemology of a set of tourism studies 205
distinguishes constructivist and critical realist positions in contemporary
disputes. Such relationships are predicated on a third trait of naturalism –
objectivism. A common expression of abstract sensory data in studies of
tourism is ‘perceptions’. The term is found in the titles of the studies by
Emanuel and Nelson. Nelson assumes, for example, that pollution perception
exists outside science, in an objective ‘nature’, and is thus neutrally ob-
servable. Emanuel’s measurements of perceptions of place in rural mid-Wales
similarly assume such conditions. This aligns her study closer to positivism
than that of Selby, who emphasizes subjectivity in building a language of the
urban tourists’ perceptions of place. The major inuences on Selby’s work
were the phenomenologist Schutz’s concept of ‘stock of knowledge’ and
Kelly’s constructivist alternativism (Botterill and Crompton, 1996).
The empiricist tradition within positivism experienced a major intervention
when Popper called for the deductive testing of hypotheses to replace an
inductive process of replication and veriŽcation as the principal means of the
assertion of scientiŽc truths. The inuences of Popperian critical rationalism
are most strongly evidenced in North American tourism research. The
Popperian thesis that resulted in the proposal of hypotheses to falsify through
empirical testing is evidence of the dynamism of epistemological debate in the
internal critique mounted within positivism. Essentially, Popper argued that
science proceeds to truth not by a process of inductive veriŽcation, but by the
falsiŽcation of theoretical propositions. In Nelson’s study the inuences of
Popperian critical rationalism are most strongly evidenced. The proposal of
hypotheses to falsify in his study is evidence of yet another turn in the internal
critique mounted within positivism. Echoes of Popperian thought are also
found in Emanuel’s attempt to problematize the relationship between land-
scape perceptions and forms of economic development, but without the
explicit articulation of the hypo-deductive technique.
Value freedom
All the researchers claimed to follow the tenet of value freedom in their
research. However, each has a rich stock of subjective experience that has
inuenced their choice of tourism study. Nelson, for example, is a dedicated
surf lifesaver who has lived for most of his life within sight of one of the
beaches in his study. Likewise Gale was drawn to his study of the seaside
resort from Žrst hand personal experiences of growing up in urban south
Wales and the delights of a trip to the seaside. Yet neither has written
explicitly of these formative experiences, preferring instead to position
themselves as ‘outside’ of, and value neutral to, the phenomena they study,
under the inuence of, no doubt, a ‘proper’ positivist science.
Instrumental knowledge
Positivist science has conventionally sought to provide technically useful
knowledge. Typically, studies seek to contribute to policy development,
problem solving, near market innovation and best practice models. Nelson’s
study epitomizes this approach, by developing a code of practice on managing
the beach. Selby too has within what is otherwise largely an anti-positivist
206 D. Botterill
thesis included a strong commitment to assess the policy implications for
public agencies. Emanuel and Gale are less embracing of the notion of
immediately ‘useful’ knowledge. Even in their work, however, it would be
difŽcult to argue that a certain utility of output has not inuenced their
decisions to consider policy makers’ perceptions (Emanuel) and local state
interventions (Gale).

Hermeneutics and interpretation

The inuences of the hermeneutic tradition are clear in much contemporary
tourism social science research. The emphasis upon meaning and subjectivity
in hermeneutics set it against the instrumental logic of positivism. It has sus-
tained an anti-positivist stance that is the bedrock of contemporary construc-
tivist epistemology and, in its linguistic form, has provided the antecedents of
deconstructionism. Selby’s investigation is closest to a hermeneutic epistemol-
ogy. Accordingly, his study will be used to exemplify a number of dominant
tendencies found in the hermeneutic tradition.
Interpretation
Truth in the hermeneutic tradition is to be discovered through the scientist’s
interpretation of data. Social structures are assumed too complex to access
using the simple act of observation, meaning that the researcher must be
sensitive to the multi-layered social structure, combining intuition with
interpretation. Selby adopts a conversational method in the early rounds of
data collection. Such an approach opens the mind of the urban tourists and
invites the researcher to sense the layers of meaning inherent within a
discussion of previous urban tourism experiences. In adopting a form of
triading and laddering drawn from Kelly’s repertory grid technique, Selby’s
conversations with urban tourists provided subjective accounts of experience
(Selby, 1996; Selby and Morgan, 1996). These enable him, in classical neo-
Kantian style, to be engaged in ‘a fusion of horizons’ (Gadamer as cited in
Delanty 1997, p. 54) between himself and the tourists to whom he talked.
The use of qualitative in-depth interviews by Foster and by Emanuel also
attests to the interpretive inuences in their studies. The presence of
qualitative data in theirs’ and others’ studies of tourism is not just a method
of preferred technique as Walle (1997) presents it, but it is indicative of the
anti-scientism of the hermeneutic tradition. It is not just the hermeneutic
conception of social structure that is anti-positivist, but also the claim of the
separation of method between the human and natural sciences. Selby chooses
as a part of his study to develop his own technique for gathering data and, in
this respect, rejects a number of previous attempts by researchers to capture
tourism images.
The emphasis on linguistic constructivism found in Selby’s study is exempli-
Žed by his attempts to develop a language of urban tourism decision making.
Social action is to be understood in what Giddens (1976, p. 162) has called the
‘double hermeneutic’. This is achieved by Selby engaging in conversations
with tourists (the Žrst hermeneutic) and then interpreting those conversa-
 The epistemology of a set of tourism studies 207
tions, in order to build ‘consensus constructs’ (the second hermeneutic). The
emphasis on language to structure experience is also evidenced in Emanuel’s
consideration of literary inuences upon what she calls the ‘expected place’
component of place perception (Emanuel, 1997; Herbert, 1995).
Throughout the hermeneutic approach there is an underlying humanism
that presumes that human nature is meaningful and uniŽed. The sense in
which Selby is critical of the materialist determinism in accounts of the city in
some urban tourism studies is typical of the inuences of humanism. Instead
he proposes that tourists negotiate their experiences through the city, as active
agents. The prominence of the subjective in experience and the importance of
cultural context in reading social structures have a tendency to produce a
relativist and uncritical form of social science. Gale’s approach, in which
he seeks to understand the role of locally signiŽcant decision making in
transforming tourism resources, embodies these inherent problems of the
hermeneutic tradition.

The inuence of critical theory

The characteristics of a Marxist inspired social science are virtually absent
from this set of tourism studies. Critiques of the system of domination that
gives rise to the human condition under study are not often found in studies
of tourism. Yet a major contribution of critical theory has been to reassert the
emancipatory role of social science in a rejection of the conservatism of
hermeneutics and the technically ‘useful’ knowledge of positivism. This ‘turn’
is central to debates about the public role of social science and, by implication,
the public role of tourism social science.
In offering an explanation, the legitimacy of critical theory and the
emancipatory notion within critical tourism social science may be under
attack from the industry prerogative that pervades tourism research. Two
possible reasons for the apparent unwillingness of tourism researchers to
recognize issues of power are suggested here: naivety, and exclusivity. It is
possible that there is a naive view operating in the received study of tourism
that is ignorant of the dimensions of economic and cultural power that
structure tourism (Morgan and Pritchard, 1998). In such a thesis it is
suggested that the epistemological rationalism of positivism underpins a view
of tourism as a benign force. Furthermore, models of rational processes are
typiŽed by the economic analysis of tourism, in which the principal challenges
are set within a closed system dominated by the themes of efŽcient and
effective resources allocation. Typically, tourism research adopts empirically
tried and tested models of organizational and business studies in an attempt
to emulate optimum performance in other economic sectors. Under such an
approach there is little room for a researcher to express political commitment
to emancipatory social change.
Alternatively is it that the industry prerogative acts to exclude any altern-
ative conception of tourism? The critical theorists’ attack on commodiŽcation
is clearly an anathema to the dominant industry agenda in tourism.
Considerations of social exclusion and the marginalization of economically
208 D. Botterill
weaker individuals and groups are of little consequence in mainstream studies
of tourism. Those in our societies who are not tourists are by deŽnition absent
from studies of tourism. Yet tourism is increasingly understood to touch the
lives of virtually all those living in the ubiquitous tourism destinations.
Research questions to do with the conditions of those who work to provide
for tourists, or who are so economically disadvantaged to be excluded from
tourism, challenge the dominant thesis of tourism as industry. The insti-
tutionalization of research in universities has, in Britain, increasingly become
a business itself. It is not surprising therefore that the business of research in
tourism becomes the tourism business. The spaces in intellectual life that
might sustain a critical tourism social science are closed down. The pro-
fessionalized tourism research community reneges on what Bourdieu (1990)
sees as the task of social science: the preservation of the autonomy of intel-
lectual critique.
It is perhaps an ironic twist of fate that a question that is beginning to enter
the tourism industry research agenda might best be answered by reference to
a social science founded upon the tenets of critical theory, particularly the
constructivist method of Bourdieu (1995). Tourism’s economic importance is
now an undisputed reality of many economies and yet its political status
continues to be low in virtually all institutionalized forms. Such disparity
deŽes rational logic. Why is it that the pound generated by tourism, although
equal to the pound generated by agriculture or manufacturing, appears to
have less value?
To understand the miss-match between economic importance and political
status requires the researcher to retain a strong Marxist sense of the
objectivity of ideological structure. The structure that is imagined in this case
is one that clearly contains an implicit ranking of economic activity and
subordinates tourism to other dominant interests, despite the fact that
tourism has overtaken those interests in economic importance. The actors
who construct the social meaning of tourism become, therefore, the targets
for the politically reective practice of a critical social science whose aim is to
transform. Critical social science can bring about change, in this case to raise
the status of tourism and thereby elevate the interests it represents, including,
ironically, the tourism industry itself.

The constructivist-critical realist dispute

Delanty (1997) argues that debates in the philosophy of social science in the
mid 1990s were contained within the dominant discourse of constructivism
and between constructivists and critical realists. The arguments are not
anymore about differences between the social and natural sciences but are
superseded by a common acceptance of a reexive and indeterminate science
that constitutes its object. If tourism research constitutes tourism then what
can the expert system of knowledge about tourism say authoritatively in
respect of tourism?
In the environmental sciences, Beck (1992) has argued that the problem for
the authority of science is in the challenge of public accountability – to solve
 The epistemology of a set of tourism studies 209
the problems it has itself created. Risk – the spectrum of unseen secondary
consequences of scientiŽc progress – is itself the subject of a public and
scientized scrutiny. Arguments are mounted by an increasingly sophisticated
public for and against scientiŽc advances in topics such as genetics or in
energy. The truth-value of the scientiŽc Žndings are challenged and for some
at least science is exposed as a set of competing constructivist accounts.
Nelson’s efforts to measure pollution perception as an objective reality were
constantly challenged by media interest in pollution matters and by the degree
of public outrage over environmental disasters. Was his condom equivalent
a measure of tourist’s pollution perception or was it a measure of the
importance of pollution perception to tourists? Did it have universal value or
was it a context speciŽc construction?
It can be argued that tourism has been created indirectly by advances in
science and technology, particularly information and transportation technol-
ogy. Tourism experts have asserted a social scientiŽc authority that, following
Beck’s analysis of risk, has also come under attack, perhaps not with the same
force as the energy and genetics debates, but with commensurate importance.
The establishment of an international network of organizations that col-
lectively seek to dispute the beneŽts of tourism and raise questions about the
‘risks’ of further development is direct evidence of how Beck’s thesis is
applicable to tourism (Botterill, 1991; 1999).
Tourism research sits rather uncomfortably in the social sciences. The
tourism research community has an uneasy relationship with its wider
academy; its legitimacy as a domain of science is hardly established, at least
in the English-speaking world (Botterill, 1998). Tourism research shares with
other interdisciplinary Želds the problem of forging a legitimate place in
discipline-dominated research institutions and universities. Furthermore tour-
ism researchers’ relationship with public policy can also be problematic.
Tourism is appropriated by public agencies that see it as an opportunity to
rescue ailing economic sectors, or as an engine for redevelopment. Yet in the
Cardiff studies all of the researchers found it difŽcult if not impossible to
access local and national policy communities during the course of their
projects. Sometimes the response could best be described as passively hostile
to tourism research.
The response within the tourism research community to both of these
difŽculties has in part been to become introspective; to seek to develop
tourism social science as a closed system, an institutional response that shuts
itself off from the phenomenon itself. Such an approach emulates the
institutionalizing of science, yet the condition of reexivity and indeterminacy
in the epistemological debate simply does not allow for such narrow
introspection. There is little point in building an internal expert consensus, an
authority, if the fundamental epistemological assumption of that authority is
itself under challenge. Tourism social scientists need to become bolder and
more outward looking in their pursuit of recognition by the wider social
scientiŽc community and to encompass notions of reexivity and indetermin-
acy in their studies.
210 D. Botterill
These notions Žnd their strongest expression in Emanuel’s (1997) study of
the relationship between tourism as a form of economic development and the
environment, particularly landscapes, of touristic mid-Wales. She began her
study by reversing the generally assumed position that an objectiŽed nature,
expressed as natural resources, determines economic development in a ‘place’.
Instead she adopted a constructivist tenet in arguing that subjective percep-
tions of landscape have equal, if not greater, potential to inuence economic
development, including tourism. The model she proposed attempted to
capture the reexivity and indeterminacy inherent in the environment-
economic development relationship. This is represented in the model by depict-
ing perceptions of place as central to a reexive understanding (see Fig. 1).
The simple truism that tourism is consumed in the place of production is
often used to explain the lack of Žt between tourism and industrial models
of economic development. Emanuel’s reexive model of place suggests a
more satisfactory basis for understanding tourism as a form of economic
development.
Broadly speaking, critical constructivist social science takes the reexivity
argument further, with an emphasis on the possibilities of reconstruction.
Here the ‘problem’ of reexivity is welcomed as it leads to new possibilities in
social relations. Radical and critical constructivists share a common belief in
the importance of social movements as change agents. Research interest in
new social movements owes much to the critical theory inuences of an
overtly emancipatory social science (Botterill, 1999). Selby’s constructivist
work attempts to break through received deterministic viewpoints offering a
way of improving the demand – supply relationship in urban tourism by
reconstruing the material structure of the city through urban tourist agency
(Selby and Morgan, 1996).

Fig. 1. Diagrammatic representation of the proposed environment, perception, economic

development relationship (Emanuel, 1997).
 The epistemology of a set of tourism studies 211
A contemporary dispute within constructivist social science is evidenced in
the systems theory concept of autopoesis. Systems theory researchers, while
acknowledging the constructivist activity of the mind, argue that science can
offer something other than just scientiŽc constructions. There is something
more to science than science. What emerges from the empirical process in
systems theory is access to a set of self-regulating structures that are
uninuenced by human agency – a concept similar to the idea of the self-
organizing and operationally closed systems of natural science. Thus Foster’s
(1996; 1999) attempt to understand how international tourists’ images of
Wales are formed, communicated and negotiated, transcends observable
events.
The autopoesis of systems theory still leaves the ontological question of
reality in constructivist philosophy in a somewhat ambiguous state. Con-
structivists would accept of course an objective social reality outside of
science, but would stress as crucial how social actors construct their reality.
Autopoesis redirects the social sciences not to the actors but to some
structural mechanism of self-regulation, such as Piaget’s transformative
capacity of the mind, although it still stops short of claims to realism.
A counter school of critical realism has emerged as the major competitor to
constructivism. According to Delanty (1997) critical realism is Žrst, a defence
of the possibility of causal explanation; second, an acceptance of the
hermeneutic notion of social reality, but without drawing constructivist
conclusions; and third, it involves a critical dimension. It is both anti-
positivist in many respects and post-empiricist, arguing that generative
mechanisms lie deep in the ontological depths of social reality but are not
accessible through reductionism or experience. The task of the critical realist
social science is to dig into social reality to discover generative mechanisms,
causal laws, which are independent of the events to which they give rise
(Harvey, 1990). It is in this sense that Gale’s work comes closest to critical
realism. By digging deeper into the transformative processes of the develop-
ment of Rhyl as a tourist resort, he is trying to develop explanations that are
tested by a range of context speciŽc data in an attempt to move beyond
simplistic notions of a resort life cycle.

Conclusions
The project to resolve the epistemological dispute in a more satisfactory way
is central to the relationship between social science and the public domain
and, by extension, the relationship between tourism research and tourism
itself. Nineteenth century claims to social science as a way of solving human
problems as the basis for the creation of rational society have proved difŽcult
to defend, yet continue to occur in the justiŽcation for tourism research. In its
place tourism social science, I would argue, has to Žnd different ways of
justifying its status as a knowledge system. It is not alone in this project. The
authority of natural science is similarly under challenge, not least because of
the perceived ‘threat’ of the impacts of science.
212 D. Botterill
The challenge, I would argue, is not to emulate an unsatisfactory
epistemology that conŽnes tourism research to an institutionalized closed
tourism expert system in which experts talk to experts in an ever-decreasing
circle. Instead as Delanty argues for social science in general, tourism social
science should act as a mediating discourse between ‘expert knowledge’ and
a wider society.
It has been demonstrated that the epistemology of tourism research maps
unevenly against the three principle epistemological inuences in the social
sciences. The ‘normalization’ of a positivist epistemology has unduly limited
the development of tourism research as social science. Tourism researchers
need to be alerted to the ongoing search for a more satisfactory epistemo-
logical solution in the social sciences that over arches what Harré (1998,
p. 48) calls ‘knowledge by acquaintance, knowing something by living it so to
speak, and knowledge by description’.
In contrast to the critique of the received view of tourism research, the
latter part of this paper has demonstrated the liveliness and relevance of the
epistemological dispute in the social sciences to the study of tourism. The
current tendency for tourism researchers to retreat into arguments about
discipline status for tourism as a defence of the subject is counter productive.
What promises much more is the sense in which, along with many other
aspects of early 21st century social life, tourism offers an ontological sphere
in which the epistemological dispute in the social sciences can be rehearsed,
experimented with and more satisfactorily resolved.
The tourism research community should be reminded that the scientiŽc
project of which they are clearly a part began as an attempt to break from
a priori systems of knowing that were shown through science to be funda-
mentally awed. It was often the case that the pre-scientiŽc systems of
knowing acted together with political organization to create oppressive
institutions that perceived the new ideology of science as heretical and
threatening of an established order. The tendency to an uncritical science in
interdisciplinary tourism research carries with it the possibility of a defence of
conventional ways of knowing tourism. Opening to the epistemological
question would invite not just an enrichment of interdisciplinary tourism
research but would also carry with it the project of shaping public discourse
around tourism, to take on board the ethical and moral dimensions of the
much acclaimed ‘world’s largest industry in the next Millennium’. I call,
therefore, for engagement with the modernist inspired intellectual pursuit of
an emancipatory critical tourism research in the 21st century.

Acknowledgements
The ideas for this article were developed during a month long residency at the
Research Centre of Bornholm, Denmark as a Visiting Researcher during
August 1998. I would particularly like to thank Szilvia Gyimóthy and Anders
Sørensen for their contributions to lively discussions that informed an early
draft.
 The epistemology of a set of tourism studies 213
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