Economies of attention and the design of viable tourism futures

Abstract

The present article focuses on three dominant forms of crisis in the twenty-first century (terrorism, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic) that challenge tourism as a viable activity and sector. Through epistemological/methodological blends of compatible arguments from the sociology of knowledge (Karl Mannheim's notion of world-vision or Weltanschauung, which emphasises planetary ways of knowing), the new mobilities paradigm (Sheller's suggestion that such ‘knowing' also produces often competing positionalities and communities in research) and scholarship on the worldmaking powers of tourism (Hollinshead's and Hollinshead and Suleman's suggestion that knowing about tourism comes to life when it is enunciated as a reality), it investigates ‘affective refrains': recurring scholarly discourses about crises in the sector, which are endowed with affective qualities (Felix Guattari’s approach to preconscious formations of feelings). Such refrains, which are both prepersonal and structured like collective imaginaries, shed light on the core ethical and moral universes that are supported by their authors. Whereas the nature of the themes covered by these authors is the modus operandi of the scholarly community to which they claim membership. But more importantly, the styles they use to intensify the attention of audiences/readerships to these styles organises the powers of affective persuasion into a paradigm.