Abstract
This chapter inspects qualitative research pedigree in Tourism Studies in Asia ontologically. It provides an explanation of what ontology is (in focussing on matters of being and becoming), distinguishing it from epistemology (which focuses upon matters of knowing). In examining the received but scant literature on qualitative research (in general) across the social sciences in Asia and (specifically) within the domain of Tourism Studies there, judgement is reached that ontological awareness on the continent are not highly developed. In assessing that qualitative research in Asia is prey to considerable influence from styles of inquiry that emanate from ‘the West’, it supports the view that it is somewhat imprisoned within Eurocentric templates that do not fit well within Asian cultural/cosmological contexts. In order to catalyse more informed/relevant qualitative research activity in Asia – and particularly to galvanise more substantive approaches to ontological concerns – the authors generate a prospectus of ‘guiding light subjects’ which can (hopefully!) drive qualitative research forward in Tourism Studies, there. Yet, the chapter recognises that ontological inquiry is no easy-to-absorb craft, and so a set of ten commonplace areas of ontological difficulty (after Hollinshead) are critiqued vis-à-vis the docent (or exemplar) of Neo-Confucian thought-lines in China. Overall, the chapter is thereby developed as one that seeks to cultivate a new pool of ‘beginning poets’ (i.e. informed and enthusiastic research imagineers) who can drive soft science forward ontologically in the domain of tourism and travel and do so via practices which adroitly reflect Asian inheritances and voice consciousness.
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Notes
- 1.
Hopefully, the above ten revealed contexts can stimulate much more ontological research in China – and across Asia – in accordance with ‘Neo-Confucian’ doxa, ‘Asian’ value systems, ‘Eastern’ cultural warrants, etc. To that end, tourism ought not just be seen as an act of mere visitation or a mere sight-seeing escapade. Instead, it can be registered more fruitfully as a very rich spectrum of human activity where all sorts of travellers can and do seek to realise their own preferred forms of ‘being’ and exercise their own favoured styles of ‘becoming’. And hopefully, those researchers who feed the industry’s practitioners (with new kinds of intelligence about who thinks what about which and who celebrates which, when, and where) can work in Asia in accordance with ontologically ripe forms of interpretation and ontologically relevant research methods as they pry into the metaphysics of presence in the marketplace of travel (see Wilson and Hollinshead 2015).
And maybe it will not be a Westerner who will play the lead role or the first-named function in the updating (or the replacement!) of this chapter when the second edition of this book is produced. Hopefully, it can be a more plausible ‘Eastern’/‘Asian’ scribe – or an experienced [rather than a beginning] ‘poet’ – who can then inform us about the vicissitudes of Asian kinds of being and the vexations of Asian kinds of becoming under the hurry-scurry of tourism. Speaking ironically … let an ‘Asian’ research imagineer put an end to this current and further example of ‘Western’ overstepping and thereby to this additional instance of (possible/probable) Eurocentric intrusion.
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Acknowledgment
The authors of this chapter would like to express their rich appreciation to Chun Yu Lo (Lady Lo-ndon) for the speed and effectiveness of her support services in the production of this manuscript. Ontologically, may she have her own good fortune in her own efforts to explain different aspects of so-called ‘Eastern’ aspects of being and becoming to the ‘Westerners’ around her.
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Hollinshead, K., Suleman, R. (2018). Tourism Studies and the Metaphysics of Presence: Matters of Ontology and the Enlightened Eye. In: Mura, P., Khoo-Lattimore, C. (eds) Asian Qualitative Research in Tourism. Perspectives on Asian Tourism. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7491-2_2
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