TY - JOUR
T1 - Lessons from the field
T2 - Reflecting on a tourism research journey around the 'celtic' periphery
AU - Everett, Sally
PY - 2010/2/22
Y1 - 2010/2/22
N2 - The challenge within the tourism academy to acknowledge the situated nature of knowledge within the research process is intensifying. Drawing on a multidisciplinary body of reflexive narratives and recent work in tourism that acknowledges the personal influences that construct knowledges, this paper embraces this challenge by offering an autobiographic narration of field work in Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall. Food tourism is employed as a conceptual vehicle to pursue a more culturally focused, critical tourism investigation, thereby contributing to work that extends tourism research beyond the sphere of management and business. Drawing on research involving indepth interviews with (food) tourists and participant observation, it is suggested that tourism knowledge is constructed at the micro-level, directly shaped by seemingly insignificant or overlooked moments. The paper illustrates how personal aspects of field work (gender, age, ethnicity, personal insecurity, loneliness and physical demands), combined with overcoming more practical issues (weather and transport logistics), should inform the contextual foundations of any empirical research; it from these moments where tourism knowledge is truly cultivated. Underpinned by qualitative methodological literature within a framework of critical realism, it urges others to embark upon a similar reflexive journey in order to develop tourism research into a robust sphere of academic enquiry.
AB - The challenge within the tourism academy to acknowledge the situated nature of knowledge within the research process is intensifying. Drawing on a multidisciplinary body of reflexive narratives and recent work in tourism that acknowledges the personal influences that construct knowledges, this paper embraces this challenge by offering an autobiographic narration of field work in Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall. Food tourism is employed as a conceptual vehicle to pursue a more culturally focused, critical tourism investigation, thereby contributing to work that extends tourism research beyond the sphere of management and business. Drawing on research involving indepth interviews with (food) tourists and participant observation, it is suggested that tourism knowledge is constructed at the micro-level, directly shaped by seemingly insignificant or overlooked moments. The paper illustrates how personal aspects of field work (gender, age, ethnicity, personal insecurity, loneliness and physical demands), combined with overcoming more practical issues (weather and transport logistics), should inform the contextual foundations of any empirical research; it from these moments where tourism knowledge is truly cultivated. Underpinned by qualitative methodological literature within a framework of critical realism, it urges others to embark upon a similar reflexive journey in order to develop tourism research into a robust sphere of academic enquiry.
KW - Participant observation
KW - Performativity
KW - Physicality
KW - Positionality
KW - Reflexivity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=76749096864&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13683500902853502
DO - 10.1080/13683500902853502
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:76749096864
SN - 1368-3500
VL - 13
SP - 161
EP - 175
JO - Current Issues in Tourism
JF - Current Issues in Tourism
IS - 2
ER -