A Realist Critique of the Situated Voice in Tourism Studies

Abstract

In this paper I will examine the contribution of the move to embrace situated voices in tourism studies from a realist perspective. The paper will acknowledge both the richness of the 'voices' in adding to our understanding of tourism and the important challenge its proponents are making to orthodox tourism knowledge. However, it will be argued that a commensurate and observed drift in reports of the situated voice towards relativism and the 'epistemological fallacy'- slipping from epistemological to ontological claims - are unhelpful and not necessarily an inevitable trajectory. The critical realist claims to: a 'deep' ontological distinction between a transitive and intransitive social reality; epistemic relativism; and judgemental rationality will be offered as a stronger philosophical position from which to understand the 'real' contribution of the situated voice to tourism knowledge.