Proposing paradigm peace: Mixed methods in feminist tourism research

Abstract

This article attempts to engage and advance tourism’s epistemological and methodological discussions. It explores how the transformative paradigm offers an opportunity to feminist tourism researchers to broaden their methods base and obtain nuanced understandings of systematic and localised oppression without compromising research principles, such as positionality and reflexivity. To illustrate the value of this approach, we combine a qualitative study of midlife (35–55 years) single women’s holiday experiences with a follow-up quantitative study of young (18–30 years) single women’s experiences. We argue that merging these studies creates new understandings of intersecting power relations related to gender, age and singlehood and that in a broader sense working within the transformative paradigm has the potential to promote paradigm peace in feminist tourism research. © 2012, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.