Illuminating Intersectionality for Tourism Researchers

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.