Putting Foucault to work in tourism research

Abstract

This paper reflects on Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge as a methodological approach in tourism research. It offers lessons from recent research focused on critiquing heritage sites and museums as examples of destination discourse. The aim is to tackle an increasingly acknowledged reluctance to declare method when carrying out Foucauldian analysis. The paper reflects on the role of discourse analysis as a methodology in tourism research before considering Foucault's specific contribution. It then offers a synthesis of Foucault's methodological ideas and presents these as an adaptable discursive analytic that can be applied to a range of tourism research contexts. It considers the methodological limits that are associated with the deployment of Foucault before a conclusion considers the novel contribution of the paper, which is an adaptable discursive analytic for tourism researchers to contemplate when thinking about how to “do” Foucauldian discourse analysis.