The book is a landmark volume which examines perplexing tourism debates such as the relevance of mass tourism, climate change, authenticity, tourism and poverty and slow tourism. Multidisciplinary in content, it covers applied aspects of sociology, anthropology, humanities and biosciences. The book is unique in its presentation and style and will be an essential resource for scholars, academics and practitioners.

New approaches to tourism study demonstrate a notable ‘critical turn’ – a shift in thought that emphasises interpretative and critical modes of tourism inquiry. The chapters in this volume reflect this emerging critical school of tourism studies and represent a coordinated effort of tourism scholars whose work engages innovative research methodologies. Since such work has been dispersed across a variety of tourism-related and other research fields, this book responds to a pressing need to consolidate recent advances in a single text. Adopting a broad definition of ‘criticality’, the contributors seek to find ‘fresh’ ways of theorising tourism by locating the phenomenon in its wider political, economic, cultural and social contexts. The collection addresses the power relations underpinning the production of academic knowledge; presents a range of qualitative data collection methods which confront the field’s dominant (post)positivist approaches; foregrounds the emotional dynamics of research relations and explores the personal, the political and the situated nature of research journeys. The book has been divided into two parts, with the essays in the first part establishing a context-specific framework for engaging philosophical and theoretical debates in contemporary tourism enquiry. The second set of essays then present, discuss and critique specific methodologies, research techniques, methods of interpretation and writing strategies, all of which are in some sense illustrative of ‘critical’ tourism research. Contributors range from postgraduate students to established academics and are drawn from both the geopolitical margins and the ‘powerbases’ of the tourism academy. Their various relationships with the English-speaking academy thus range from relative ‘outsider’ to well-positioned ‘insider’ and as a result, their essays are reflective of a range of locations within the complexly spun web of academic power relations and social divisions.

This book provides a comprehensive and readable overview of the critical debates and controversies around tourism in Africa, and the major factors that are affecting tourism development now and in the future. Drawing upon research emerging from collaborations between a growing number of African academics and practitioners based in the continent and in the African diaspora as well as international colleagues, the Handbook offers key critical insights into the issues, challenges and trends that Africa and African tourism is facing. Part I covers continent-wide issues such as climate change, ICT, heritage and development. The remaining parts are organised along geographic lines, with each chapter covering the development of tourism, current trends and discussion of critical issues such as community participation, gender, backpacking, urban tourism, wildlife tourism and conservation. Combining an overview of key theories, concepts, contemporary issues and debates, this book will be a valuable resource for students, academics and practitioners investigating the role of tourism in Africa.

Over the past 20 years, the perception of tourism as an effective contributor to socio-economic development in the developing world has propagated, with many viewing tourism as a provider for poverty alleviation and towards other UN Millennium Development Goals. Over the same period, readers have become familiar with the paradoxes, complexities and inequalities of tourism in relation to development, wealth creation, growth, redistribution, governance and ‘hosts-guests’ relationships. This volume further extends this critical debate with a much-needed cohesive publication on Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). In an era of fluctuating tourist arrivals at global level, the growth of tourism in SSA requires deeper consideration in terms of its inconsistent and questionable implications at local level. Taking as a central theme the debate on whether tourism should be used in development efforts, this book examines the way in which tourism has controversially become the way forward to development in several SSA locations and assesses bottlenecks to sustainable development as well as dilemmas and challenges faced by those SSA destinations seeking to achieve development through tourism. It offers an explicit set of chapters adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing upon tourism studies, human geography, sociology, anthropology, political economy, development and environmental studies, and integrates case studies authored by local African practitioners and academics to produce a book that gave voice to local experts on local realities. Combining an overview of key theories, concepts, contemporary issues and debates as well as practical insights from a wide range of regions in SSA, this book will be a valuable resource for those investigating the role of tourism in development.

The book entitled “Current Debates In Tourism & Development Studies” includes 10 chapters written by researchers in the field of tourism and development. It is divided into four themes, each theme exploring current tourism and development issues that are of critical importance. The key themes of the book concern transforming tourism-resident perception (theme 1), alternative tourism (theme 2), event tourism and destination image (theme 3), and development studies (theme 4). The book has following specific objectives: (a) to identify and analyze the current debates of tourism; (b) to examine current key tourism trends, issues and challenges; (c) to provide compherensive review of tourism and development over the years; (d) to implement rural development, behavioral economics and demographic divident and economic growth issues. It is our strong believe that these chapters will contribute to the understanding of current debates in tourism and development. Furthermore, each chapter in the book will make a significant platform for both tourism industry and academia.

This important volume will stimulate debate about the boundaries, definitions, functions, and effects of public relations. The editors are Lecturers in Public Relations at the Stirling Media Research Institute, University of Stirling, Scotland.

Activating Critical Thinking to Advance the Sustainable Development Goals in Tourism Systems focuses on the role of critical thinking and inquiry in the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in tourism systems. The impetus for the development of this book emerged from the declaration by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly of 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. This declaration purposely positions tourism as a tool to advance the universal 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 SDGs, thus mutually serving as an opportunity and responsibility to appraise from a critical lens what the SDGs signify and how they can be understood from multiple perspectives. The chapters in the book foster the next phase of sustainable tourism scholarship that actively considers the interconnections of the UN’s SDGs to tourism theory and praxis, and activates critical thinking to analyze and advance sustainability in tourism systems. It articulates the need for the academy to be more intrinsically involved in ongoing iterations of multilateral accords and decrees, to ensure they embody more critical and inclusive transitions toward sustainability, as opposed to market-driven, neoliberal directives. The contributions in this book encourage various worldviews challenging, shaping, and more critically reflecting the realities of global communities as related to, and impacted by, sustainable tourism development. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.