Studying how tourism is done: a practice approach to collaboration

This article seeks to contribute to empirically grounded theoretical conceptualizations of “collaboration,” by offering a practice-theoretical take on both tourism and one of its pillars: daily tourism actor collaboration. It argues that practice theory offers an important approach to investigating...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Tourist Studies
Main Author: Chimirri, Daniela
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://vbn.aau.dk/da/publications/e8efbf63-c23d-4b2c-bc73-69aeb3ce5878
https://doi.org/10.1177/1468797621998286
Description
Summary:This article seeks to contribute to empirically grounded theoretical conceptualizations of “collaboration,” by offering a practice-theoretical take on both tourism and one of its pillars: daily tourism actor collaboration. It argues that practice theory offers an important approach to investigating tourism in applied situations. This is empirically illustrated by drawing on data material generated via interviews and life map methodology during four fieldwork stays in West, South, and East Greenland. By focusing on “what happens on the ground,” this article unfolds the ontological complexity of collaborative practices as heterogeneous and constantly emerging, disappearing, and shifting, a complexity which challenges the notion of collaboration as strategical tool for tourism planning and development. As an alternative, the practice theory approach presented here offers a more viable, concretely situated alternative to investigating the phenomenon of tourism as collaborative action.