Fifth International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

This project posits posthuman theory as a route to actualizing tourism as an ecologically responsive and relevant set of practices. Drawing on Rosi Braidotti’s (2019) notion of humans as “eco-sophical entities” constituted through relations with human and nonhuman others (including the planet), I theorize tourist as a participatory, collective subject position (a posthuman subject). Posthumanism emphasizes the importance of relationships between matter, technologies, human, nonhuman, and environment as constitutive of our world, radically repositioning human significance and extending agency beyond the human species. Theorizing tourism as a posthuman practice destabilizes conventional notions of tourists-as-consumers and creates a foundation for advocating tourists-as-participants re-imagine their roles as planetary citizens. Through tourism, people take part in the co-constitution of places. Because tourism facilitates relationships between environments and peoples, it is a medium through which scalar problems, like global warming, become intellectually and tangibly accessible to the general public. Tourism can enable what Sebastian Groes (2017) terms, “tiny revolutions of the mind,” allowing non-specialists to understand the “spatio-temporal immensities of Earth.” Nature tourism, in particular, holds the potential for people who tour to be understood (and understand themselves) as co-participants in a posthuman community experiencing pivotal changes, including climate change. Shifting the tourism narrative from consumption to participation is foundational to post-anthropocentric interventions in both tourism studies and tourism practice, interventions that will introduce theories of deep relationality (between humans, nonhumans, the planet, and technologies), and posit tourism as a solution to some of the environmental and social justice issues currently facing our world.