Illuminating Intersectionality for Tourism Researchers
Date
Authors
Mooney, Shelagh
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
The aim of this research note is to advocate an intersectional approach for tourism researchers. Intersectionality exposes how individuals experience the effects of their social roles (founded on mutually intersecting identities) not as separate or cumulative, but as linked and simultaneous intersections (Holvino, 2010). To explore one aspect of diversity is to see merely one piece of the complex puzzle – the other pieces may be missing. Intersectional research has been the focus of considerable academic interest over the last few years; for example, in the United States, it has assisted in tailoring public health interventions for specific populations (Bowleg, 2012). However, the adoption of an intersectional approach by tourism researchers has been relatively limited. Figueroa-Domecq, Pritchard, Segovia-Pérez, Morgan, and Villacé-Molinero (2015) argue that the tourism academy needs to remove its Western-centric focus and adopt more critical perspectives when exploring demographic differences, such as race, gender and other aspects of identity, in diverse tourism contexts. As intersectionality draws from critical race and feminist framings, its recognition of ‘intergroup’ differences between members of groups presumed to be homogeneous, for example, ‘women’, enables researchers to move beyond many Western-centric tourism studies with their positivist assumptions of universality and generalisability.Description
Keywords
Intersectionality, Gender, Hospitality research
Source
Annals of Tourism Research, Volume 72, September 2018, Pages 175-176.
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Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in (see Citation). Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. The definitive version was published in (see Citation). The original publication is available at (see Publisher's Version).