Decentring scholarship through learning with/from each ‘other’

Abstract

The contemporary tourism world is characterised by mobilities from the East and West. Yet despite this, tourism scholarship remains highly Anglo-Western-centric. How, then, might we go about engendering a decentring of Anglo-Western-centrism in tourism scholarship? In this paper, we respond to this question by discussing some ‘situated’ educational experiences during a tourism fieldschool programme in Pai, Thailand. The international mix of (trainee and trainer) researchers on the fieldschool provided a rich source for exploring the ways in which tourism dynamics are gazed upon and theorised about by researchers from various ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ backgrounds. Our shared interactions and reflections allowed each of us to experience being ‘other’ in relation to tourism knowledge and concepts. Moreover, we were afforded a heightened awareness of each ‘other’s’ experiences of being ‘other’ in different contexts. Our experiences thus serve, on the one hand, to highlight the pervasive influence of Anglo-Western centrism in tourism knowledge creation. On the other hand, our somewhat serendipitous experiences and discoveries during the fieldschool demonstrate the potentiality of the ‘international classroom’ to produce a tourism scholarship which is more open and sensitive to diversified and culturally relevant knowledge(s); in other words, a decentred tourism scholarship.