As part of the lecture series “New Views, Perspectives and Research on Gender Theory”, the Study Research Group for Gender Equality and Public Policy of the Institute of Social Sciences Lara Končar, M.A., PhD student at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade, Department in Cultural and Media Studies held an online lecture about the disciplinary frame of tourism field and its theoretical conceptualization, and the importance of a feminist perspectives for the production of tourism knowledge.
In the first part, through an overview of the approaches in the “parent disciplines” in tourism studies – economics, business studies, management studies, geography, sociology and anthropology – the process of differentiation between economic and socio-cultural analyzes is outlined, with a special focus on “cultural turn” and “critical turn” in the social sciences and humanities.
In the central part, starting from debates about the disciplinary frame, the boundaries of tourism field, and the dominant scientific-research discourses that shaped the processes of codification of tourism knowledge – the influence of feminist-oriented authors is highlighted.
Through an overview of feminist perspectives and themes in tourism studies from the seventies of the 20th century to the present day, a special focus is directed to discussions about the importance of patriarchal and capitalist patterns for the study of tourism and its theorization. In the final part, relying on the problems of the theoretical conceptualization of tourism in context of leisure, travel and from the perspective of tourists – the concept of hospitality is proposed, which is considered significant both for the theorization of tourism from a feminist perspective, and for the analysis of structures, relations and inequalities that are constituted in tourist places, spaces, activities and contents.
