(click on the title above to download the .mp3 file)Another Presentation from the Graduate Workshop on Researching Tourism in Asia, sponsored by the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, and the Dept. of Tourism at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
Today's presentation by Prof. C. Michael Hall of the University of Otago, New Zealand (cmhall@business.otago.ac.nz). The title is:
Studying the Political in Tourism: Ethics, Issues, Methods and Practicalities
Here is the original abstract from the workshop:
Issues of politics and policy are widely regarded as a significant factor in tourism. However, the number of studies that examine such issues remain small in relation to the supposed importance of tourism policy and politics. The presentation will arguethat this situation exists because of the very nature of what such studies entail, i.e. examining issues of power, and therefore this may create substantial stresses in terms of the relationship of the researcher to their subjects and the institutional environment within which they operate. The presentation will discuss issues of method in examining tourism policy and politics and examine the practical dimensions of undertaking research that arise from different methods that are adopted and the aims and objectives of studies. Emphasis in placed on the importance of being aware of intended audiences for such research as well as the potential effects of such studies on research subjects, participants and other stakeholders, including the researcher. Key issues include the relative implications of prescriptive and descriptive approaches to policy analysis; describing power; and implications of scale of analysis. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of ethical considerations in conducting research on political issues in tourism and the importance of the development of policy arguments as a practical consequence of such research.
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Michael Hall is Professor and Head of the Department of Tourism, University of Otago, Dunedin and Docent, Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland. He is the co-editor of Current Issues in Tourism and has published widely on issues of tourism, regional development and environmental history including three books on tourism policy and politics.
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