Botterill, D. (2003) - An Autoethnographic Narrative On Tourism Research Epistemologies. Loisir Et Société: Society and Leisure, 26 (1), 97-110

Loisir et Société / Society and Leisure
ISSN: 0705-3436 (Print) 1705-0154 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rles20
An Autoethnographic Narrative on Tourism

Research Epistemologies
David Botterill
To cite this article: David Botterill (2003) An Autoethnographic Narrative on Tourism

Research Epistemologies, Loisir et Société / Society and Leisure, 26:1, 97-110, DOI:
10.1080/07053436.2003.10707608
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07053436.2003.10707608
Published online: 03 Jul 2013.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 335
View related articles
Citing articles: 3 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rles20
AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC NARRATIVE
ON TOURISM RESEARCH
EPISTEMOLOGIES
David BOTTERILL
University of Wales Institute Cardiff
Introduction
This article is best seen as a contribution to my intellectual project termed “the
underlabouring of tourism research.” My intention in pursuing this line is to bring
some clarity to the case for a stronger engagement by the tourism research
community with ontological and epistemological argument. I have asserted
consistently since my doctoral study program that the tourism research community
must do more than engage in the pursuit of knowledge as the basis for establishing
the legitimacy of tourism studies in the academy. It must also recognise that
the strength of the claims that can be made about advancements in knowledge
about tourism are inextricably linked to addressing the “crisis” in social scientific
knowledge and specifically, the pursuit of a more satisfactory philosophy of social
science.
The article is not an attempt to provide the case for special consideration of
the epistemologies of tourism research within leisure studies nor to provide a broad
sweeping review of methodological and epistemological approaches found in the
literature. Over 40 English language tourism journals alone publishing more than
500 articles a year have recently been identified (Tribe, 2003a). Instead, it is in
the style of a personal narrative (Riessman, 1993) account of tourism research.
The narrative account conveys my research career, and I use the metaphor of a
journey of getting to know tourism through social scientific inquiry. Within the
narrative, I deliberately expose many of the influences – an interweaving of the
personal, professional and intellectual – that have shaped a 20-year engagement
with the epistemologies of tourism research. My rationale for such an approach
Loisir et société / Society and Leisure

Volume 26, numéro 1, printemps 2003, p. 97-110 • © Presses de l’Université du Québec
© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

Édifice Le Delta I, 2875, boul. Laurier, bureau 450, Sainte-Foy, Québec G1V 2M2 • Tél. : (418) 657-4399 – www.puq.uquebec.ca
Tiré de : Loisir et société / Society and Leisure, vol. 26, no 1, Chantal Royer (dir.).
98 David BOTTERILL
is based on the premise that consideration of methodologies and epistemologies

in a special issue of Leisure and Society should acknowledge the all-embracing
complexity of the topic. The complexity I refer to here is not only the complexity
of philosophical choice, but argues additionally that when choices are made about
“the research” by an individual researcher: what topic to research? how to research
the topic? and the interpretation of results, they are shaped by the totality of
experience surrounding the researcher. This includes the official and public aspects
of the research, that which is often reported in the literature, and the informal,
private and unofficial. Such approaches to reporting the research process are rare
in the tourism and leisure studies literature; for exceptions, see Casey’s (1992)
account of research in an arts centre and Sparkes’ (2000) review of the use of
autoethnography and narrative in sport sociology. The unconventional nature
of autoethnographic writing is acknowledged, and the comments of reviewers on
a first draft were understandably mixed. However, I am arguing here that reflecting
upon a “career” in tourism research is perhaps the only way to make explicit the
complexity of the lived experience of epistemological and methodological choice.
These arguments firmly locate the article as an example of autoethnographic
narrative (Patton, 2002). Such approaches to writing about research raise the ques-
tion of what criteria should be used to pass judgement upon autoethnographic
contributions. Sparkes has fully explored this question in his account of what makes
“heartful” (Ellis as cited in Sparkes, 2002:210) autoethnography. Included in the
quotation below is a selection taken from his list that might usefully be applied to
this article.
These include the following: the use of systematic sociological introspection
and emotional recall; the inclusion of the researcher’s vulnerable selves; […]
the celebration of concrete experience and intimate detail; […] the connecting
of the practices of social science with the living of life […] (Sparkes,
2002:210)
In accepting this article, the special issue editor is, therefore, taking something of
a risk, and I hope her foresight will be vindicated. This will be particularly so if
those embarking into “the field” find that the article will provide encouragement
to explore the extent to which “the research” and the incumbent epistemological
and methodological choices should be considered as a separate category from other
areas of their lives.
I also want to introduce the philosophy of Critical Realism (CR), the latest
resting point on my personal epistemological journey, in order to stimulate further
an exploration of a critical realist tourism social science. In the introduction of a
recent reader on Critical Realism it is described as:
[…] a movement in philosophy in the human sciences and cognate practices
[…] that is fully international and multi-disciplinary (that) […] has trans-
formed the intellectual scene. At least, at the turn of the millennium it presents
an intellectual challenge to other philosophies that they can scarcely refuse
(Archer, Bhaskar, Collier, Lawson & Norrie, 1998, p. ix).

An Autoethnographic Narrative on Tourism Research Epistemologies 99
I have come to the view that CR satisfies most of the objections I have discovered
on my personal tourism research epistemological journey through positivism,
constructivism and critical theory. And yet it retains the possibility of universal
and hierarchical theory, easily contains the nuance of hermeneutics and interpre-
tation and offers the transformative power of an emancipatory science.
I also use the idea of points of departure in research. The problem of moving
from a single case to more generalisable comment is fully recognised in
autoethnography. The aspiration is that in writing a self-narrative, my own expe-
rience will provide insight into the larger culture and sub-culture of which I am a
part (Patton, 2002). In this article, the points of departure provide connections to
the larger project of tourism research and the wider sub-culture of the anglo-centric
tourism research community. The founder of Critical Realism, Roy Bhaskar,
inspired this approach when in his critical account of naturalism he posed as a start
point the question “What makes experiments possible?” (Bhaskar, 1979). He
subsequently developed this start point in respect of the social sciences to ask:
“What properties do societies possess that might make them possible objects of
knowledge for us?” (Bhaskar, 1979:31). It occurs to me that other tourism research-
ers and I have pursued particular lines of inquiry because of a chosen point of
departure and I was interested in substituting “tourism” for “societies” in Bhaskar’s
question to create a new point of departure “What makes the study of tourism
possible?” Later in the article, I present this new point of departure as a way of
characterising and exploring critical realist tourism research (CRTR), but first,
narratives of three previous points of departure that I have encountered on my
tourism research journey are reported, namely: “What is tourism?” “What does
tourism mean?” and “How does the distribution of power in tourism work to exploit
and oppress?”
A first point of departure – “What is tourism?”

Researchers who pose the “What is Tourism” question typically engage first in a
search for tourists, who then become the observable data of all manner of descrip-
tive studies. My own and others’ studies in this genre seemed intent on describing
what tourists did, how often they did “touristy-things,” how much they spent and
what their characteristics were, as defined, of course, by the researcher. What might
be termed as the “bean counting” variety of tourism research.
Establishing the scale and scope of the phenomenon – even in terms of the
most facile of descriptors – seemed so very important at the time. There was, and
in some situations still seems to be, an unself-conscious rush to establish the “facts”
about tourists that become fallaciously, I would argue, the truth about tourism. Such
a journey requires little by way of introspective reflection on the assumptions that
underlie it. This is because the practices of doing “What is tourism?” type research
follows so closely the dominant logical positivist methodological, epistemological

100 David BOTTERILL
and ontological assumptions. The absence of accounts of justification for the

assumed empirical realist ontology and the complete dependency upon detached
observation in experience and the identification of patterns of constant conjunction
to find meaning in an atomised world combine to present these practices as “natural.”
They are so embedded that they are the “common sense” of the natural sciences
and by emulation, in the human and social sciences as well. Exponents of the “What
is tourism?” predilection do, of course, gravitate to the more difficult explanatory
and predictive point of departure questions – the “Why is tourism like this?” or
the “What would tourism look like if this were to happen?” type questions. As they
do so, the level of abstraction of the data from the lived human experience and
the identification of patterns in the resultant quantified data become ever more
dependent on the closed internal logic of mathematics.
My encounters with the excesses of empirical realist (bean counting)
accounts of social science occurred at Texas A and M University (TAMU) –
between 1983 and 1987. Encouraged or rather required by a doctoral study
programme to engage with the dominant way to do science and the advanced tech-
niques perceived necessary to make sense of observed data as a “proper” research
training, I mounted my own resistance. I grasped at the strands of critique I could
find in the on-campus academy – in the philosophy department and in the
misleadingly utilitarian named educational administration department. I discovered
disputes over empirical realism in some human sciences through the pages of the
volumes of the late 70s and early 80s Annals of Tourism Research in the writings
of Dean MacCannell, Nelson Graburn, Eric Cohen and particularly Peter Stringer.
Only much later did I realise that such disputes were substantively grounded in
other philosophic traditions embracing quite different epistemologies. I did find
sufficient authoritative support to sustain my resistance, always important to a
doctoral candidate, largely in the shape of Professor John Crompton and, not
withstanding a nervous “breakthrough,” I negotiated my way to a largely anti-
positivist PhD (Botterill, 1988; Botterill, 1989).
On reflection, not everything was bad about this encounter with logical
positivism. Its very strength on the TAMU campus provided me with a depth of
knowledge of its practice, informed from direct experience that has throughout
my career helped me understand and communicate with “mainstream” research.
At the same time, because it was so visible, so normal, it was an easy target to
take metaphorical pot shots at. Precisely because it was so ubiquitous, there was
usually someone sufficiently offended by my heretic comments with whom a lively
exchange might be developed, that, on each occasion, helped develop my critique.
My North American colleagues largely tolerated such interactions as examples of
British eccentricity, but for me, they were full of meaning. At TAMU, I had
encountered the epitome of what Delanty (1997) describes as the “technical useful
knowledge” that emanates under institutionalised positivism. Although at the time
I became increasingly intolerant of the unchallenged positivist ethos on campus,

I have re-assessed its contribution on my journey. I now accept that the scientific
community was deeply committed to the notion of progress of the improvement
to the human condition through science, and this distinctly modernist ideal has
endured in my search for a satisfactory philosophy of social science. However,
what I found bemusing then was the lack of any critical reflexivity within the
scientific community at TAMU. It was as if the research community possessed a
moral, ethical and political “blind-spot.” The benefits of scientific advance were
simply assumed, and the consequences of the technically useful knowledge that
was produced was seldom, if ever, subjected to any explicit analysis of knowledge/
power relations.
A second point of departure – “What does tourism mean?”

In my search concurrently for a reactionary and yet defensible position to the
dominant positivism of the TAMU campus, I stumbled upon George Alexander
Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology through Stringer’s application of the rep-
ertory grid to tourism (Stringer, 1984). What captivated me about Kelly (1955)
was his explicit account of a different philosophy of science: constructivist
alternativism. Here was my ontological liberation from the dominant influence of
empirical realism at Texas A and M that took me into my first encounters with
phenomenology and constructivism. I subsequently gathered strength from both
within and without the personal construct psychology camp. I called at various
stations en route in my exploration of the “What does tourism mean?” point of
departure. The first metaphorical “Station” was social constructionism, provided
by the sociologists Berger and Luckman, and then to phenomenology, a direction
much more extensively explored by one of my doctoral students, Martin Selby,
some 13 years later (Selby, 2000). Then, but almost certainly not in a neat sequence
and under the influence of the TAMU Philosophy Department faculty member,
Larry Hickman, my journey led to the American pragmatists, James, Pierce and
Dewey. What I found initially so satisfying about constructivist accounts was the
re-inclusion, even celebration, of human experience as “difference.” It seemed at
the time the perfect anecdote to large doses of counting the same “beans.” Epis-
temologically these approaches challenged the supremacy of the image of the
external observer equipped with the Humean “blank sheet” upon which to record
observations and resulted in a redressing of the balance of power between the
researcher and the respondent in the research relationship. This subversive, in
positivist terms, reversal of the researcher-respondent relationship and the rejection
of the researcher’s “clean sheet” mind continued to influence my travels well
beyond my PhD to include excursions into Naturalistic (Lincoln & Guba, 1985)
and Human (Reason, 1988) inquiry. Within the tourism literature, I found parallels
with the incursions of cultural anthropologists and their approach to fieldwork and
the apparent acceptability of the “local” case study as opposed to the “universal”
model or theory building as an acceptable end point in research. I delighted in the

102 David BOTTERILL
relativism of it all, even if the exhaustion born out of resistance and the insecu-
rity of living with ambivalence took a particularly heavy toll. I remember vividly
my point of breakdown. Together with my then wife, we were watching the first
space shuttle landing. I started to cry, loudly and incessantly, and continued for
several months after.
In my exploration of Kelly’s PCP as a basis for understanding tourists’
experiences, I also saw an opportunity to re-claim science from its positivist tech-
nically useful outcomes to something more akin to the emancipatory origins
of scientific thought. I was interested in not just exploring “constructions” of
individual tourists, but how those constructions might change to expand the indi-
vidual tourist’s personal construct system. I described this internalised process of
change, following Kelly and in true constructivist genre, as a re-construing of a
constructed external reality that could never be known beyond the constructions
placed upon it. Tourism, I was arguing at the time, might then make a contribution
to a tourist becoming, in true to humanistic psychology parlance, a fully or
optimally functioning person (Botterill & Crompton, 1996).
My dissolution with and ultimate rejection of the constructivist position with
which I concluded my PhD in 1987 came much later in my epistemological
journey. Just as I have come to re-assess the legacy of my logical positivist training
at TAMU, I also hold on to some of the virtues of a constructivist approach,
particularly its insistence upon reflexive epistemology. What I can no longer
defend, however, is the anti-realist thesis that truth will always remain a constructed
science – that there is nothing more to science than science, or as Howarth (2000)
puts it in respect of another constructivist methodology, discourse analysis. “The
confirmation or refutation of the substantive conclusions reached by discourse
analysts depends ultimately on their persuasiveness to the community of
researchers and scholars in the social sciences” (p. 141). Such findings, therefore,
move us no closer to an understanding of the meaning of tourism beyond that held
in the minds of the research community, and it is this epistemological end point
that I can no longer defend.
A third point of departure – “How does power work

in tourism to exploit and oppress?”
My life, as opposed to my intellectual, journey led me to return to Britain in 1986,
and the personal and the epistemological became once more interwoven and
brought about a shift in my thinking to explore a third point of departure. Still rare
in the tourism literature, the stimulus for me to pursue critical social science came
from outside of the tourism academy through my everyday interactions with UK
trained sociologists, human geographers, political historians and political scientists.
I was recruited by a social science subject group at a small college in the southwest

of England as the tourism specialist in 1986. Invitations to formally present my

PhD work at seminars were readily accepted and brought me up sharply against
the influence of Marxian thought upon British social and human science. I found
that my interest in emancipatory change through tourist experience well received,
but the significance I gave in my work to individual tourists was largely dismissed.
The intellectual interests of my new colleagues was in the historical condition of
capitalism and the potential for change in collective political action. What I have
come to understand as “critical” social science provided me with a new direction
in tourism scholarship that I lived through my “voluntary” work in helping to
establish the United Kingdom based network – Tourism Concern – over a five-
year period. I was drawn to the notion of “new” social movements as a way of
conceptualising collective action in respect of tourism. On the prompting of one
of my colleagues, I discovered the work of the French sociologists Touraine (1981)
and his approach to inquiry that he calls “sociological intervention.” I began to
think of Tourism Concern as an embryonic social movement and have subse-
quently written about my experiences of sociological intervention. Under this
method, the researcher /activist engages the other activists in a critical dialogue
that challenges the assumptions with which the activist works, but at the same time
raises her/his action to a higher level of struggle. In practice, this meant adopting
a rigorous dialectical approach to the documentation of what Touraine calls
“historicities.” Consequentially, I took particular care to incorporate epistemo-
logical reflexivity in the research process and to ensure validity in my research
output. This was achieved in part by incorporating the sharing of several iterations
of drafts of my papers with members of the Tourism Concern steering group prior
to placing them in the public domain (Botterill, 1991; Botterill, 1999).
I ended my associations with the leadership of Tourism Concern in 1993.
There were several reasons for this. First, a fissure in my personal life, a divorce,
drained me of the emotional energy necessary for engagement with the struggle.
Second, I became disenchanted with the cultural, constructivist account of a social
movement emanating from my research that failed to engage with a more realist
approach which directly tackles “the way social movements achieve their effects”
(Scott, 1990: 134). Third, I moved my employment to a “vocational” university
in Cardiff and thus found it difficult to retain a high profile in a critical network.
Fourth, and most importantly, I became sceptical of the still ill-defined absolutist
notions of just, participatory and sustainable forms of tourism that were the
“effects” sought by Tourism Concern. However, as was the case for the journeys
I took from positivist and hermeneutic start points, I took from my critical social
scientific journey key tenets. I would describe these as the recovery of the func-
tion of critical reflection in social inquiry, the prefiguring of what is absent, silent
and excluded, and the collective emancipatory possibility.

104 David BOTTERILL
What is critical realism? and What might

a critical realist tourism social science look like?
In taking a CR turn in my own work, I am not denying the possibilities for others
to take any of the journeys I have described thus far, but I fail to see how they can
rescue the social sciences from its crisis. Substantive claims to social scientific
truth in any of its domains can only be made, critical realists would assert, by a
break from the directions taken in the philosophy of social science in the previous
century.
My engagement with CR followed a period reflecting upon the epistemo-
logical choices made by research students I was supervising between 1993 and
2000 (Botterill, 2001). This was assisted greatly by a visiting researcher appoint-
ment at Research Centre of Bornholm in the summer of 1999. To find a substan-
tially funded research centre dedicated to progressing tourism research is
exceptionally rare, and it would appear unfortunately to have been short-lived. The
conditions created by the permanent staff in Bornholm in the late 1990s were very
conducive to the development of ideas and without this “supportive space,” I can’t
imagine how the paper, eventually published in Leisure Studies, would have been
written. Subsequently, I have been reading some of Bhaskar’s original works and
working through the implications of CR for tourism research.
The first observation I would make is that CR is a philosophy of science that
makes claims to apply to all science. Critical Realism goes some way therefore
in repairing the break between the natural and social sciences caused by the
constructivist turn. Above all, it re-asserts ontology and thus breaks with the domi-
nant preoccupation of constructivist social sciences with epistemology – labelled
by critical realists as the “epistemic fallacy.” In asserting a unifying ontology,
however, Critical Realism disassociates itself completely from the positivist
“observation + correlation = explanation + prediction” methodology. Instead, as
Mary Archer asserts, “[…] it substitutes the quest for non-observable generative
mechanisms whose powers may exist unexercised or be exercised unrealised, that
is with variable outcomes due to the variety of intervening contingencies which
cannot be subject to laboratory closure” (Archer, 1998: 190). Thus, CR borrows
from Kantian transcendental idealism (we can therefore acknowledge the influ-
ence of the social scientist’s mind upon the process) but applies it in a natural realist
sense to an intransitive ontological structure. The bases of a CR ontological struc-
ture, generative mechanisms, are found in the domain of the “real” that sits beneath
the domain of the “actual” (events) and the surface domain of the “empirical”
(experiences). The term depth realism is applied to convey this three-tier ontological
structure, and the role of the social scientist is analogous to digging deeper into
social reality moving beyond the sensory, beyond the documented, in order to
discover the real powers of objects. Thus, the CR method of abstraction may
expose “ ‘trans-phenomenality’ (that knowledge may be not only what appears,

but of underlying structures that last longer than those appearances), and ‘counter-
phenomenality’ (that knowledge of deep structures may not just go beyond, and
not just explain, but also contradict appearances)” (Gale, 2001). While generative
mechanisms are the substance of intransitive objects in CR, they are always held
open to refutation. Critical Realism ontology, then, rests on a number of realist
principles:
1. The distinction between transitive and intransitive objects of science:
between our concepts, models etc. – the transitive and the real entities,
relations and so forth which make up the natural and the social world – the
intransitive.
2. The further stratification of reality into the domains of the real, the actual
and the empirical.
3. The conception of causal relations as tendencies, grounded in the interactions
of generative mechanisms; these interactions may or may not produce events
which in turn may or may not be observed. (Outhwaite, 1998:282)
So what might CRTR look like? I express a CRTR point of departure as
“What makes the study of tourism possible?” Here I am referring directly to the
critical realist’s interest in the characteristic of generative mechanisms to contain
powers that may exist unexercised or be exercised unrealised. I find that from this
start point the tourism research agenda takes on a new shape. All the previous start
points I have described by dint of their surface observations, place tourists or
tourism at the centre of the researcher’s gaze. By looking at what makes the study
of tourism possible, attention is thereby drawn away from the surface – the
experiences and events that we characterise as tourism – to thinking about the
underlying mechanisms and powers that act to create or constrain tourism. This
suggests to me that a CRTR offers another way of knowing tourism achieved not
by studying where it is visible, but where it is absent.
I am, therefore, following two lines of substantive enquiry in order to
evidence CRTR. The first is not a new topic for tourism researchers in the French
language community but is less common in English language circles. This is
the topic of social inclusion in tourism and would examine areas such as non-
participation in tourism consumption, equality of opportunity in tourism employ-
ment, disability and discrimination in tourism and would draw upon mainland
European accounts of social tourism. The second topic area in which to
demonstrate CRTR through an exploration of the absence of tourism is in respect
of “crisis” and tourism. Here the concepts contained within Beck’s (1992) Risk
Society Thesis provide a theoretical frame, and the impacts of environmental,
financial, health-related and terrorist crises, which cause a “break” in tourism, offer
the prospect of glimpsing the “generative mechanisms” needed for tourism to exist.
At the end of an intensive morning making final revisions to this article, I
take a break – a walk in the warm spring sunshine in a nearby park. Amongst the

106 David BOTTERILL
scents, colours and reminders of renewal, I realise that I have not yet finished
writing, as I have still to provide a reflective account of my latest epistemological
turn. I have provided a philosophical justification for CRTR above but have not
connected it to the wider sub-cultural context I inhabit nor have I reflected on the
personal influences surrounding my substantive research topic choices.
As Urry (2003) reminds us, “The discipline (sociology of tourism) is, how-
ever, characterised by intellectual underdevelopment (p. 9),” and my desire to
provide a stronger theoretical base for the study of tourism undoubtedly lies
beneath my CR turn. Without the adoption of the ontological premise within CRTR
and the abandonment of the epistemic fallacy, then I contend that tourism research
will have little opportunity to progress theoretically. The validity of these intel-
lectual influences is also inexorably bound to the institutional politics of university
life in the UK in 2003. The legitimisation of tourism studies within the academy
is dependent on the further development of the subject. In the UK, there is evidence
of a developing maturity in tourism studies (Botterill, Gale & Haven, 2003; Tribe,
2003a). However, recent directions in UK government policy for the funding of
universities, particularly research funding in England, seriously threaten the
advances made in the subject over the past 25 years (Haven & Botterill, 2003;
Tribe, 2003b). Against this context, then, my response is to tackle these inter-
related issues by pressing ahead with an intellectually challenging agenda. The
aspiration is to make a tourism research inspired contribution to social theory and
social science philosophy, reversing what Urry (2003) calls “a parasitism [by
tourism studies] on broader debates and controversies within sociology and cultural
studies” (p.18).
But why “social inclusion” and “crisis” as substantive research topics?
Clarity is more difficult to achieve when the reflective lens is close to the object
as each tiny adjustment of the lens temporarily blurs the vision. Risking this and
accusations of self-indulgence, I will continue the narrative. My “accidental”
relocation to Wales, the birthplace of both my parents, through a career move in
1992 has proved a personal revelation. Initially experienced as a “comfort” feeling
not experienced anywhere else that I have lived, I am now immersed is an explo-
ration of Welshness; place, people, genealogy, language, history, culture and
politics. Devolved political power from Westminster to Cardiff in 1999 (as a part
of the UK Government’s devolution policy for Scotland, Northern Ireland and
Wales) has for the first time since 1404 reinstated a government in Wales, the
Wales Assembly Government (WAG). This has, arguably, allowed the distinct
political culture of Wales to escape from the broader political influences of the
United Kingdom. Social inclusion was one of the main policy planks in the first
government to serve the WAG, a Labour/Liberal Democrat alliance, and looks set
to hold an even stronger place given the recent establishment of a majority
“Old” Labour administration in elections in May 2003. The topic of social inclu-
sion in tourism then enables me to align my research interest with the emotional

exploration of personal identity and belonging in a nation striving to build an

international presence commensurate with its new-found political freedoms. I have
also become disabled through a hearing impairment!
And why “crises” as a substantive topic? The impacts of environmental,
financial, health-related and terrorist crises upon tourism evoke strong responses.
In teaching a Sociology of Tourism and Leisure module, I have noted how the level
of student interest has risen during coverage of this topic. In the public arena, it
seems somewhat absurd that a crisis in tourism demands results in increased
recognition of tourism’s importance to society on all fronts, this I find intriguing.
On a personal level, what processes of transference are at work here. Am I in crisis
again? Quite the opposite I would say as without the loving stability provided by
my new partner and our extended families, then I doubt that I would have found
the courage to embark on my new epistemological turn. However, there is for me
a compelling fascination with the exceptional case, the abnormal and the heterodox,
and perhaps an exploration of tourism and crises is the latest expression of one of
my multiple “selves.”

108 David BOTTERILL
BOTTERILL, T.D., GALE, T., & HAVEN, C. (2003). A survey of doctoral theses accepted
by universities in the UK and Ireland for studies of tourism, 1990-99. Tourist Studies,
2(3), 283-311.
CASEY, B. (1992). The seven year itch, reflections on writing a thesis. In R. Burgess (Ed.),
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, 3 (p.183-205). Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI
Press Inc.
DELANTY, G. (1997). Social science: Beyond constructivism and realism. Buckingham:
Open University Press.
GALE, T. J. (2001). Late Twentieth century cultural change and the decline and attempted
rejuvenation of the British seaside resort as a long holiday destination : A case study
of Rhyl, North Wales. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Wales.
HAVEN, C., & BOTTERILL, D. (2003). Tourism studies and the research assessment exercise
2001. (Guidelines 11). Guildford, Surrey: ATHE.
HOWARTH, D. (2000). Discourse. Buckingham: Open University Press.
LINCOLN, Y., & GUBA, E.(1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills: Sage.
KELLY, G.A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs. New York: Norton.
OUTHWAITE, W. (1998). Realism and social science. In Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar,
Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson, & Alan Norrie (Eds.), Critical realism essential
readings (p. 282-296). Routledge: London.
PATTON, M.Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods, 3rd ed. London: Sage.
RIESSMAN, C.K. (1993). Narrative analysis. London: Sage.
REASON, P. (Ed.) (1988). Human inquiry in action. London: Sage.
SELBY, M (2000). People, place and consumption: Contextualising and researching urban
tourist experience, with particular reference to Cardiff, Wales. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation. Wales.
SCOTT, A. (1990). Ideology and the new social movements. London: Unwin Hyman.
SPARKES, A.C. (2000). Autoethnography and narratives of the self: Reflections on criteria
in action. Sociology of Sport Journal, 17, 21-43.
SPARKES, A.C. (2002). Autoethnography: Self-indulgence or something more? In A.P.
Bochner, & C. Ellis (Eds.) Ethnographically speaking, autoethnography, literature
and aesthetics (pp.209-232). Walnut Creek, Alta Mira.
STRINGER, P. (1984). Studies in the socio-environmental psychology of tourism, Annals
of Tourism Research, 11(1), 147-166.
TOURAINE, A. (1981). The voice and the eye: An analysis of social movements, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
TRIBE, J. (2003a). The RAE-ification of tourism research in the UK. International Journal
of Tourism Research.
TRIBE, J. (2003b). Editorial: The future of higher education in hospitality, leisure, sport
and tourism. Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Education, 2(1)
1-4. (www.hlst.ltsn.ac.uk/johlste).
URRY, J. (2003). The sociology of tourism. In C. Cooper (Ed.), Classic reviews in tourism
(pp 9-21). Clevedon: Channel View Publications.

David BOTTERILL
Un récit autoethnographique sur l’épistémologie de la recherche en tourisme
RÉSUMÉ
Une autoethnographie d’une façon de « connaître » le tourisme par une enquête
scientifique sociale est décrite par le biais d’un récit sur le parcours d’une carrière
où s’entremêlent les événements personnels, professionnels et intellectuels.
L’article s’articule autour de trois questions qui constituent les points de départ
traditionnels que l’on retrouve généralement dans les études en tourisme, et des
inévitables voyages épistémologiques, ontologiques et méthodologiques que font
les chercheurs. L’auteur présente des observations étayées par ses propres expé-
riences sur la nature insatisfaisante des destinations finales de ces voyages. Des
arguments sont également présentés pour demander aux chercheurs en tourisme
d’explorer à fond les possibilités d’une approche réaliste critique à ce domaine.
Certains des indicateurs de la philosophie critique réaliste de Bhaskar sont fournis,
ainsi qu’une esquisse de ce que pourrait être une approche réaliste critique
du tourisme.
David BOTTERILL
An autoethnographic narrative on tourism research epistemologies
ABSTRACT
An autoethnography of getting “to know” tourism through social scientific inquiry
is depicted through a narrative account of a career journey that interweaves the
personal, professional and intellectual. The paper is structured around three
questions that provide the conventional points of departure commonly found in
tourism research and the incumbent epistemological, ontological and methodo-
logical journeys made by researchers. Claims about the unsatisfactory nature of
the destinations reached on these journeys will be made and illuminated by the
experiences of the author. Arguments are presented for tourism researchers to take
seriously the possibilities of critical realist tourism research. Some of the markers
of Bhaskar’s critical realist philosophy are introduced before imagining what
critical realist tourism research might look like.

110 David BOTTERILL
David BOTTERILL
Un relato autoetnográfico sobre la epistemología
de la investigación en turismo
RESUMEN
Una autoetnografía de una manera de « conocer » el turismo por medio de una
investigación científica social se describe utilizando un relato del recorrido de una
carrera donde se mezclan los acontecimientos personales, profesionales e
intelectuales. El articulo se elabora alrededor de tres preguntas que constituyen
el punto de partida tradicional que se encuentran generalmente en los estudios en
turismo, y de los inevitables viajes epistemológicos, ontológicos y metodológicos
que hacen los investigadores. El autor presenta observaciones que se apoyan en
sus propias experiencias sobre la naturaleza insatisfactoria de las destinaciones
finales de esos viajes. También se presentan argumentos para pedir a los
investigadores en turismo de explorar a fondo las posibilidades de un enfoque
realista crítico de este dominio. Ciertos indicadores de la filosofía crítica realista
de Bhaskar son suministrados, así como un esbozo de lo que podría ser un enfoque
realista crítico del turismo.


Botterill, D. (2003) - An Autoethnographic Narrative On Tourism Research Epistemologies. Loisir Et Société: Society and Leisure, 26 (1), 97-110

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Botterill, D. (2003) - An Autoethnographic Narrative On Tourism Research Epistemologies. Loisir Et Société: Society and Leisure, 26 (1), 97-110

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Botterill, D. (2003) - An Autoethnographic Narrative On Tourism Research Epistemologies. Loisir Et Société: Society and Leisure, 26 (1), 97-110

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Loisir et Société / Society and Leisure

ISSN: 0705-3436 (Print) 1705-0154 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rles20

An Autoethnographic Narrative on Tourism

To cite this article: David Botterill (2003) An Autoethnographic Narrative on Tourism

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07053436.2003.10707608

Published online: 03 Jul 2013.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 335

View related articles

Citing articles: 3 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

Loisir et société / Society and Leisure

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

is based on the premise that consideration of methodologies and epistemologies

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

A first point of departure – “What is tourism?”

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

and ontological assumptions. The absence of accounts of justification for the

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

A second point of departure – “What does tourism mean?”

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

A third point of departure – “How does power work

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

of England as the tourism specialist in 1986. Invitations to formally present my

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

What is critical realism? and What might

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

exploration of personal identity and belonging in a nation striving to build an

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

© 2003 – Presses de l’Université du Québec

You might also like