Exploring Ontology of Tourism: A New-Realist Approach

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to propose a new-realist ontology of tourism; an ontology that could be used as a foundation for those social sciences which are ready to accept the moderate realist approach. To achieve this goal, an answer to the general question is sought: What is the nature of the tourism reality? This has been broken down into specific issues: What entities make up the domain of tourism? How are they formed and how do they exist in the world? What are their features? And finally: What are the epistemic consequences of the adopted solutions? Our answers are embedded in Searle’s social ontology and his concepts of biological naturalism and social Background. The proposed tourism ontology will also be able to serve as a competitive option to relativist approaches that seem to be gaining the upper hand in the current debate about the state of tourism research.

Keywords

new-realism Searle’s social ontology ontology of tourism ontological objectivity/subjectivity epistemic objectivity/subjectivity

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“To talk of many things:

Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—

Of cabbages—and kings—

And why the sea is boiling hot—

And whether pigs have wings.”

(Carroll 1872, 75–6)

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative new-realist view of tourism as a social construction in relation to its ontological foundations and to discuss some of the basic epistemic implications arising from the adopted assumptions. We would like to propose our considerations also as a competitive option to a variety of relativist approaches, including among others, constructionism, interpretivism, critical theory, feminism(s) and gender studies, or more broadly, various postmodernist trends, which arguably in the present debate have gained the upper hand (Holstein and Gubrium 2011; Nycz 1998; Szahaj 2004). Naturally, these approaches have different “content” of relativism, and some of them (e.g., selected currents in critical theory) can be even considered realist (in particular, close to critical realism) to some extent. Nevertheless, in general, they are classified as being closer to relativist standpoints than to the positions regarded as realist (Hicks 2019; Roszkowski 2019, 2020).

Certainly, the aforementioned approaches have influenced both ontological beliefs (as argued by Hannan and Knox 2010) and the epistemological beliefs related to the social sciences. The tendency is also noticeable in the debate about the general condition of tourism studies (Chambers 2007; Hollinshead 2006; Jamal and Everett 2004; Tribe 2006a, 2006b, 2008), and in particular in their qualitative implementations (Hollinshead 2004; Hollinshead and Jamal 2007; Phillimore and Goodson 2004; Westwood, Morgan, and Pritchard 2006). The discussion sometimes takes the form of harsh criticism of the realist approach, often formulated from an ideological standpoint. Among others Jennings claims of the positivist and post-positivist approaches that such realist, West-based epistemologies should “no longer represent an accountable tourism research agenda in a twenty-first century world of flux and unpredictability” (Jennings 2007, 9). Instead, she proposes other approaches and paradigms—in majority anchored in the relativist ontology and epistemology, such us: social constructionism, interpretive social sciences, participatory paradigm, feminist paradigm, and, at a more general level, postmodern paradigm.

The dangers of such an imbalanced position have been addressed, among others, by Butowski (2020a) as well as Butowski et al. (2021), but primarily by Platenkamp and Botterill (2013), who claim that the disappearance of the reality and the concomitant spread of paralyzing relativism undermine tourism knowledge production. Seeking a better balance Ren’s statement (referring to Callon and Latour 1981) that “the social is not separable from the material in human society” (Ren 2010, 200) could be treated as a kind of ontological compromise between realist and relativist stances. Duim, Ren, and Jóhannesson (2017) go so far as to conclude that the ongoing debate of realism versus onstructionism may be bypassed by focusing on the relational effects of concepts and entities that make up tourism reality, as postulated by Murdoch (1997) and Jóhannesson (2005).

In order to counterbalance the perceived relativist bias, this new-realist view of tourism primarily applies Searle’s (1995, 1998, 2011) ideas of basic social ontology, which are embedded in his concepts of biological naturalism and the social Background¹ (Searle 2017). In addition, to construct the proposed ontology of tourism, some assumptions of Haack’s (1996, 2003, 2016) concept of “innocent realism” were also made. These primarily concerned the general supposition of the existence of a one (albeit very heterogeneous) world.

In the broadest sense, both of these authors, as proponents of the realist approach, draw attention to the real existence of something independent of humans—be it the world or objective truth. Relativist approaches, on the other hand, would encompass those views which ascribe the greatest role to human-internal factors, thereby questioning the relevance of an external reference.

Taking into consideration the above presuppositions, we believe that the application of the new-realist assumptions to the particular domain of tourism studies leads to a new and useful ontology of tourism. Thus, this article attempts to tackle the following general question:

– What is the deepest nature of the tourism reality?

To further operationalize it, this complex problem has been broken down into four, more detailed ontological questions:

– What entities make up the domain of tourism?

– How are they formed?

– How do these entities exist in the world?

– What are their characteristics?

These are further supplemented by one basic epistemic question:

– To what extent are the entities that make up the tourism reality knowable?

This article attempts to outline possible answers, discussing at the same time some key considerations related to the epistemic status of knowledge about tourism. That at least some scholars of tourism have also noticed the relevance of addressing such questions is evident, among others, from the voices of Coles, Hall, and Duval (2009, 81), who argued that:

“Scholars interested in tourism have been criticized for a lack of interest

in the ontological and epistemological [. . .] foundations of their work, including the notion that some tourism knowledges are created for tourism knowledges’ sake in a fragmented, incoherent and unsystematic manner.”

In addition Franklin and Crang (2001), Franklin (2004) as well as Phillimore and Goodson (2004) declared quite convergent views, stating explicitly that tourism studies, due to their methodological weaknesses, have a very limited contribution to the construction of social theory.

These opinions, formulated a decade or two ago, seem to be still valid nowadays. This is evidenced by the results of a thematic query of articles published in recent years in chosen (highly ranked) international journals dealing with the theoretical aspects of tourism, such as (among others) Journal of Travel Research, Annals of Tourism Research, Current Issues in Tourism, Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, and Tourism Management. Only a few percent of them mention the ontological foundations of research at all, most often in the context of particular empirical studies carried out by their authors. Even fewer papers undertook a philosophical reflection on the nature of tourism, treating it as the main topic of authors’ considerations. The latter group includes articles on diverse ontological issues of tourism, such as (only exemplary texts published in English that are not cited elsewhere in this paper are listed), for example:

(1) ontological foundations of semiotic (Echtner 1999) and phenomenological approaches in tourism studies (Pernecky and Jamal 2010);

(2) “Hopeful tourism” as a new ontological perspective for the future of tourism (Pritchard, Morgan, and Ateljevic 2011);

(3) an Asian ontological perspective for contemporary and future tourism studies (Wijesinghe, Mura, and Culala 2019; Yeoman and Beeton 2014);

(4) ontological foundations for qualitative research in tourism (Matteucci and Gnoth 2017; Wilson and Hollinshead 2015);

(5) tourism as seen from the perspective of practice theories (Souza Bispo 2016);

(6) the posthumanism paradigm for tourism research (Guia and Jamal 2020; Ren 2021).

The query shows quite clearly that the published papers (and majority of the thematic books’ chapters) are mostly concerned with the chosen, fragmented ontological aspects of tourism. They are often limited to certain particular narrow topics, geographical areas, or historical periods. On the other hand, there are not enough texts dealing with the most elementary ontological foundations of tourism related to the main currents of philosophical thought, such as, for example, realism, anti-realism, or relativism in their various contemporary conceptualizations. Given this context, helping fill in this cognitive gap is one of the aims of this text.

Last but not least, there might be something of hauteur first in the belief that scholars can always tell exactly which pieces of knowledge will be useful and second in the practice of discarding theoretical considerations as useless on this account. Instead, a safer approach might be to agree with Searle on this further point:

“It is impossible to tell in advance what is going to be useful for actual research. [. . .] My instinct, though, is to think that it is always a good idea to understand the foundational issues. It is much more plausible to me to think that an understanding of the basic ontology of any discipline will deepen the understanding of issues within that discipline.” (Searle 2011, 200).

Along these lines, if the present article contributes to the understanding of the ontology of tourism, one of its goals will be achieved. Another one will be attained if an ontological foundation for the study of tourism issues from the perspectives of various disciplines²—from “hard” economics to “soft” cultural anthropology, as well as at inter- (-cross, -post) disciplinary levels (Rátz 2014; Tribe and Xiao 2011)—is considered by fellow scholars and, ultimately, proven useful in varying degrees to other disciplines.

Methodological Assumptions

The adopted reasoning presented in this paper is based on deductive inferring. Specifically, we assume that all the main premises that were adopted for the construction of Searle’s basic social and institutional ontology can also be used for the construction of its one particular part, which is the ontology of tourism reality. Based on this deductive assumption and using Searle’s conceptual apparatus, we transpose the particular “components” of his social ontology (together with all the relations connecting them) to the ground of tourism realm. If we accept the appropriateness and effectiveness of the procedure proposed in this paper understood as the adopted course of reasoning and inference, then we may utilize the obtained results as the basis for creating the ontology of tourism. The main criterion of the appropriateness and effectiveness of the procedure is its logical consistency, which we leave to the readers’ judgment.

The adoption of the above logic entails an appropriate way of inference, as manifested in the structure of this paper. In addition to the introduction, discussion and conclusions, it includes the following logically-developed sections and subsections: (1) an introduction to Searle’s basic social ontology, including an explanation of his concept of biological naturalism and social background, as well as the conceptual apparatus adopted by this author; (2) the construction of the basic ontology of tourism, which includes the implementation of Searle’s ontological categories to the tourism realm, the resulting distinction of the various types of entities that make up the reality of tourism, and, finally, the establishment of the relationship between institutional facts and the so-called brute facts, in the form of which the former are observable in the world. We believe that this structure of the present study properly corresponds to the logic of our inference.

The Construction of Institutional Reality

The Concept of Biological Naturalism and the Social Background as Foundations for the Construction of Institutional Reality

As already mentioned, for the construction of the proposed ontology of tourism, primarily Searle’s approach of social ontology is applied. This author bases his ontology of the social realm on the (new) realist concept of biological naturalism (Searle 2017).³ It assumes, on the one hand, the existence of human consciousness and intentionality that function on the basis of natural, neurobiological processes occurring in our brains. But, on the other hand, both of them (consciousness and intentionality) have a subjective and qualitative nature. They can be described, depending on the aim of the given analysis, from different angles: as reducible to basic neurobiological processes, or as higher-order, qualitative features of our brains that are irreducible to meaningful lower-level components. In this latter sense, consciousness and intentionality occur as mental states, such as: beliefs, desires, hopes, intentions, fears, perceptions, etc. They are embedded in the social background, which should be understood as the set of pre-intentional (mostly socially acquired) capacities that enable intentional mental states of function. All these states have conditions of satisfactions that is, conditions under which they are satisfied or not satisfied. Importantly, human beings have the capacity to share their individual intentional states with others. This ability plays a crucial role as it enables the transition from individual intentionality to collective intentionality, which is the basis for collaboration between individuals and groups. The development of this collaboration, in turn, is possible through the language, which among humans is characterized by a complex syntax, rich vocabulary as well as generativity. It is the language that has allowed mankind to flexibly cooperate on a massive scale. According to Searle (2011), thanks to language—in particular, through performative speech acts called declarations—we are able to create a social reality, with its special form—institutional reality, which is characterized by an extremely rich and complex ontology.

In essence, what Searle’s biological naturalism proposes is that human social (and therefore institutional) reality is, on the one hand, a natural extension of the world of basic facts, but, on the other hand, it is equipped with special qualitative features, which cannot be reduced to these basic facts.⁴ Figure 1 below depicts the relationships discussed above in the form of a logically structured, hierarchical system (and process) in which specific, unidirectional, irreducible cause-and-effect relationships can be identified between its various elements and stages.

Figure 1.

The foundations of the human social and institutional reality according to Searle’s concept of biological naturalism (read bottom up).

Conceptual Apparatus of Searle’s Social Ontology

In order to better understand how this social and institutional reality has been created and has subsequently functioned, it is advisable to further define some basic concepts (Searle 1995, 2011, 7–10).

(1) Constitutive and regulative rules—these rules make up social life. While regulative rules regulate previously existing forms of behavior, constitutive rules give rise to concepts or activities which would not be possible without them. A typical example of a regulative rule is “Drive on the right-hand (or left-hand) side of the road”; naturally, it is possible to drive without regard for any rules—it is just safer to have these rules in heavy traffic. “The pawn moves one square ahead, except for the first move, when it can also move two squares ahead,” on the other hand, would be an example of a constitutive rule; one of the constitutive rules which make up the game of chess. If there were no rules of chess, there would simply be no game of chess. Typically, constitutive rules have the logical structure: “X counts as Y in context C.” To follow up on the previous example: In the context of the game of chess, moving a pawn to a square in front of it, counts as a valid move. To consider an example related to human institutions, one could say that because someone X satisfies certain legal conditions C, that X counts as Y—the president of a given country. In real life constitutive rules are implemented by the assignment of various functions, including status functions as their special type.

(2) The assignment of functions—this is a manifestation of human intentionality. Functions are always ascribed by conscious observers or users on natural objects (landscapes, waterfalls) as well as artifacts (computers, Disney Parks). In this sense, they are always observer-relative and can be assessed as good or bad from various teleological perspectives (e.g., esthetic, practical). Among all types of functions, there is one special category that plays a particular role in the construction of institutional reality—these are status functions.

(3) Status functions—they are special types of functions assigned by people to other people and objects, where the objects and the people cannot perform the functions solely in virtue of their physical structure. The performance of these functions requires that there be a collectively recognized symbolic status that the person or the object has. Typical examples of such status functions are a mayor of a given city, a 20-euro bill, or an airline ticket. In this light, status functions depend totally on collective intentionality in a sense that it is only in virtue of collective recognition that a piece of paper can be commonly recognized as a 20-euro bill or an airline ticket.

(4) Human collective intentionality—it plays a crucial role in the construction of all of the socio-institutional reality. This intentionality is necessary for the collective acceptance of constitutive rules and for the recognition of functions, including status functions. Consequently collective intentionality is also necessary to recognize all human institutions and institutional facts.

(5) Deontic powers—these are various rights, duties, obligations, requirements, permits, authorizations, and entitlements which are carried by status functions. Deontic powers provide the universal “glue” that holds the human civilization together—with the meaning as presented in the next point.

(6) Desire-independent reasons for action—a feature peculiar only to human beings. It should be understood as a logical consequence of recognition of deontic powers, in a sense that once they are recognized, they provide us with reasons for acting that are independent of our inclinations and desires.

(7) Human institutions—they are created as the final stage of the process outlined in (1)–(5) above. The process logically starts from the establishment of constitutive rules that are implemented through the collective assignment of status functions to objects and people. All of them, as holders of deontic powers, make up institutions. An entity can be considered an institution when the answer to the question: Does its existence imply some deontic powers? is affirmative.

(8) Institutional facts—these are created within institutions, so they require institutions to exist at all. The second condition is that institutional facts must also be provided with deontic powers. Thus, they are only facts by human agreement, and human agreement is necessary for the recognition of particular deontic powers assigned to them. Institutional facts are typically objective facts.

The above general concepts describe how a socio-institutional reality is logically formed. In the next section, the logic outlined will be applied to the tourism realm; and, as mentioned before, the obtained results will serve as the basis for creating the ontology of tourism.

Basic Ontology of Tourism: The Construction of Tourism Reality

In this section, we shall make an attempt at applying the general categories described above to corresponding entities in the domain of tourism. They can be understood here as the specific building blocks that make up the tourism reality. Thus:

(1) Tourism constitutive rules—a particular type of rules that create various types of tourist behaviors, actions and activities (some of them are also created by regulative rules). These rules employ the general constitutive pattern (X counts as Y in context C) to produce such exemplary forms as: person X, satisfying certain conditions C (recognized as qualifying for tourism activity), counts as Y—tourist; person X, meeting a certain condition C (a required license), is considered Y—tourist guide; company X, meeting the condition C (among others accepting a reservation), counts as Y—hotel. In all the above cases we deal with objects or people (Xs) who/which, upon assignment of tourism functions, start to play a role Y in conditions C.

(2) Tourist functions—a particular type of functions connected with tourism activity that have been intentionally and collectively assigned by people to various types of natural and man-made objects, as well as to other people. An example of a typical tourist function can be the tourist attractiveness function, which can be assigned to both natural objects as well as historical and contemporary artifacts. In this context, we may talk about the tourist attractiveness of Niagara Falls, Egyptians pyramids, and SeaWorld Park in Orlando (as respective examples). Among the whole group of tourism functions, one can distinguish a special symbolic type—the tourism status functions.

(3) Tourism status functions—a special type of symbolic functions assigned to certain groups of people and objects—not solely in virtue of their physical features but primarily through collective acceptance. They actually create the institutional realm of tourism. Some good examples of such statuses ascribed to people are functions performed by tour guides or waiters. As regards the non-human entities, tickets, or passports are good illustrations of the commonly recognized bearers of tourism status functions. They are complemented by more advanced structures, such as various tourist organizations (tourist agencies, hotels, car rentals, etc.). In all these cases, we are dealing with specific groups of tourism status functions holders which are equipped with a special type of power, that is, tourism deontic powers.

(4) Tourism deontic powers—these provide the basis for the desire-independent reasons for action—identified as various rights, duties, obligations, requirements, permits, authorizations, and entitlements carried by tourism status functions holders (people, objects, organizations). So, someone who has a tourist visa to enter a given country may expect to be admitted just by the virtue of a certain deontic power recognized by all parties to this document. Or we could expect that a car we have booked would be delivered at the right time to the agreed place by a company which accepted our order. It means that deontic powers related to the tourism realm provide us with reasons for acting which are independent of our inclinations and desires. In this sense, tourism deontic powers provide the specific “glue” that holds tourism realm together.

(5) Tourism—understood as a domain in which various institutions are created. These are based on systems of constitutive rules implemented by the assignment of functions which provide deontic powers. Within tourism institutions, tourism institutional facts are generated.

At point 5, we may address some potential reservations. First, can we qualify the rules which govern tourism activities as constitutive rules at all or should they rather be recognized as regulative rules? Certainly various forms of travel (i.e., one of the essential elements of tourism activity) had existed before tourism appeared as a specific social phenomenon. An answer in the affirmative can be substantiated by reference to the applications of general pattern: X counts as Y in context C, in the form of various examples presented in point 1). All of them clearly show the difference between a tourism activity and other types of human actions connected with travel. This difference can be captured precisely by the constitutive rules which do not just regulate but actually create tourism activity. The second potential problem relates to the question whether the rules which create various forms of tourism activity are actually endowed with deontic powers. Clearly, tourism—similarly to other general forms of human activity, such as for example, science or recreation—cannot be considered an institution in itself, for it cannot be attributed deontic powers. However, deontic powers are undoubtedly assigned to various institutional entities of tourism as well as to facts generated within them.

Figure 2 below synthesizes the information discussed above, highlighting the hierarchical nature of the logic involved.

Figure 2.

Structured ontology of tourism as a part of social realm (read bottom up).

The sentence flow shown in Figure 2 should be understood as follows:

Human beings → establish tourism constitutive rules that → are implemented → through the assignment of tourist functions that → are imposed (by people) to objects and (other) people who → become holders of tourism functions that → are provided with tourism deontic powers on which tourism institutions → are built and within which tourism institutional facts → are generated.

At the same time, it should be noted that in the logic presented here, the tourism functions first appear as a way of implementing the constitutive (and regulative) rules in the world; and then, being already assigned to people or objects, these same tourism functions make these people or objects the holders of deontic powers.

The Ontology of Entities That Make Up the Tourism Realm

After presenting the process of creating the socio-institutional reality of tourism, an attempt should now be made to understand the nature of the entities that make up this reality. In order to achieve this goal, an analysis based on three criteria (Searle 1995, 2011) is now proposed in this section. These criteria rely on the following distinctions: (1) intrinsic versus observer-relative feature of the world; (2) ontological subjectivity versus objectivity; (3) epistemic subjectivity versus objectivity.

Intrinsic features of the world are simply those that exist independently of humans. Observer-relative (understood as human-relative), in turn, are those elements which are dependent on us for their existence. In this context, physical characteristics (height, mass, velocity) of a given waterfall are its intrinsic features. On the other hand, the tourist attractiveness of that same waterfall should be treated as its human-relative feature. This feature can only be identified with a new function assigned by human beings—in this case—to a pre-existing natural object. A good test for getting at the distinction between intrinsic and observer-relative features is to ask: Would a given feature exist if there had never been any human beings? Apart from the above-mentioned distinction between intrinsic and observer-relative features of the world, we should also distinguish between the ontological and the epistemic sense in which the labels “subjectivity” and “objectivity” can be used. At the most general level, one could state that “ontological” refers to existence, while “epistemic”—to knowledge. In other words, ontological objectivity/subjectivity has to do with the mode of existence of entities; epistemic objectivity/subjectivity has to do with the status of claims about those entities.

Accordingly, one might say that a given judgment is epistemically subjective when its truth or falsity depends on someone’s feelings, attitudes, points of views, etc.; a judgment is epistemically objective when its truth or falsehood is independent of anybody’s attitudes or feelings. An example of the first type of judgment would be someone’s claim that Niagara Falls is more (or less) beautiful than Iguazú Falls, or that Egyptian pyramids are more attractive than Aztec ones. On the other hand, the following statements may be examples of epistemically objective judgments: Angel Falls is the tallest waterfall in the world; Thomas Cook organized his first trip in 1841; or, Museum X was visited by a certain number of visitors. However, in addition to the aforementioned epistemic sense of the objective-subjective distinction, there is also a related ontological sense in which “objective” and “subjective” are predicates of entities. In this sense my will to visit Niagara Falls is subjective as its mode of existence depends on an emotional response felt by me. But Niagara Falls itself, in contrast to my desire to visit it, is ontologically objective because (extremely solipsistic views aside) its existence is independent of any perceiver or any mental state, not to mention my will.

Bearing in mind the aforementioned meanings of the adopted criteria, one can now move on to the detailed analysis of the various types of entities that make up the tourism reality. They will be considered in terms of their intrinsic or observer-relative features, ontological modes of existence as well as the epistemic status of claims about them. The results of such an analysis can serve as a foundation on which the ontology of tourism might be built.

As a model case, let us look at a given waterfall, which can be considered in two principal ways:

1a—as a natural object

1b—as a tourist attraction

In the first position (1a) this waterfall should be considered an intrinsic and ontologically objective entity, about which epistemically objective claims can be formulated. In the second position (1b) the same waterfall—in virtue of its physical features—has been collectively assigned the function of tourist attraction. The assignment of any function inevitably involves a transition from intrinsic to observer-relative perspective. At the same time, granting the waterfall the status of tourist function entails a change in the way we perceive its mode of existence—from ontologically objective to ontologically subjective. As for the epistemic status of claims about the waterfall, depending on their character, they may be subjective (2a) or objective (2b).

Now, we can move on to the next two pairs of utterances about two hypothetical waterfalls and two paintings. At the beginning, however, we would like to stress the idea that what is the focus here are the different epistemic statuses of claims, or in other words, whether it is objectively possible to decide if some statement is true or false. In this sense, we believe that there is no objective way to decide whether:

2a—“Waterfall X is more beautiful than Waterfall Y”

2a’—“Painting X is more beautiful than Painting Y”

because both judgments are based on subjective impressions (feelings, beliefs, expectations). In other words, someone believing it to be true or false will not have an ultimate way to convince someone else of their opinion. It is not possible to objectively decide whether the persons who express these opinions are right or wrong. This means, therefore, that the status of both the aforementioned statements (2a and 2a’) is epistemically subjective.

On the other hand, we believe that the following sentences can be objectively decided to be true or false:

2b—“Person X said: ‘Waterfall X is more beautiful than Waterfall Y’”

2b’—“Person X said: ‘Painting X is more beautiful than Painting Y’”

In the case of disagreement, it would, for example, be possible to listen to a recording of the said conversation which would give objective evidence whether Person X really said it or not. According to the presented reasoning, we can therefore conclude that the status of both mentioned statements (2b and 2b’) is epistemically objective, that is, it does not depend on anyone’s feelings and beliefs.

Summarizing the above argumentation, we would like to emphasize that in the first two cases (2a and 2a’) we are dealing with people’s subjective opinions about two pairs of observer-relative and ontologically subjective objects (natural: Waterfall X, Waterfall Y; and man-made: Painting X, Painting Y). It is clear that both of these opinions are fully dependent on someone’s feelings, beliefs or attitudes (it does not matter whether they refer to natural objects or artifacts). And for this very reason their epistemic status should be considered subjective. The following examples (2b and 2b’) differ in this respect from the previous two (2a and 2a’), in which subjective opinions are expressed. They are presented in the form of referring to someone else’s opinions that Waterfall X is more beautiful than Waterfall Y and Painting X is more beautiful than Painting Y. Assuming that the language in which they are expressed is not challenged, in both cases (2b, 2b’) the mere fact of expressing such claims does not depend on anyone’s feelings or attitudes. We can simply state whether or not such a fact was the case. Therefore, both statements should be classified as epistemically objective, although they refer to someone’s subjective opinions about given artifacts and natural objects, which have been assigned a new function of tourist attraction.

The next examples relate to such entities as a piece of paper and a human organization that appear in the following positions respectively:

3a—as an airline ticket

3b—as an airline company

Both of the above examples (3a and 3b) are concerned with entities that differ from those listed in the previous points. They were fully created by human beings, and people assigned them specific symbolic functions, that is, status functions—not solely in virtue of their physical characteristics, but primarily on the basis of collective acceptance. These can be simple cases of various material artifacts, such as tickets or passports. However, this group also includes much more complex institutional structures that organize various kinds of tourism activities. These are travel agencies, hotel chains, airlines companies, etc. All of them involve people and use sophisticated physical objects (such as airplanes, electronic booking systems, specially equipped hotel rooms, etc.) that perform specific functions. It is worth noting here that both the simple and sophisticated artifacts as well as complex organizational structures mentioned above have one specific feature in common; they were all collectively assigned status functions and endowed with specific deontic tourist powers. At the same time, they all can only exists as observer-relative entities, which have an ontologically subjective mode of existence. Lastly, despite the fact that they have been made by human beings, about all of them epistemically objective judgments can be formulated. In this sense, establishing rules and assigning functions that enable the creation of simple artifacts, complex organizational structures or tourism attractions constitute the socio-institutional reality of tourism. And this reality epistemically does not depend on anyone’s feelings or beliefs. This means, therefore, that it can also be explored and described in an epistemically objective way.

Finally, we are left with perhaps the strangest group of entities that should be considered in terms of their role in creating the tourism reality. They are human beings that appear in the following positions:

4a—as one of the biological species

4b—as the creators and participants of tourism.

In the first case (4a), humans appear as a biological species. They are, therefore, clearly considered intrinsic and ontologically objective entities. On the other hand, in the second case (4b), we are dealing with people appearing in the role of creators and participants of the entire reality of tourism as it constitutes a part of social reality. And as such they exist as observer-relative entities in relation to other people. At the same time, their mode of existence is subjective, while their tourist behaviors, actions, and activities can be investigated and described in an epistemically objective manner.

Concluding the above analysis, it can be stated that the entire realm of tourism—as part of the human socio-institutional reality— consists of various human and non-human entities that are characterized as observer-relative and ontologically subjective. Consequently, natural phenomena (cases 1a and 4a above)—treated as entities to which no tourist functions have been assigned—cannot be qualified as parts of the tourism reality. On the other hand, it should be emphasized that it is possible to formulate epistemically objective judgments (i.e., those that do not depend on anybody’s feelings or beliefs) about entities that are relative to the observer and, at the same time, ontologically subjective (1b, 3a, 3b, 4b). The only exception are opinions in which someone’s feelings are expressed (2a, 2a’). They take the form of epistemically subjective judgments that depend on individual attitudes. And for this very reason they cannot be recognized as objective scientific claims, which should be, by definition, epistemically objective. This condition is not met in cases 2a and 2a’. Lastly, in order to complete the analysis, the specificity of cases 2b and 2b’ should be emphasized once again. They refer to cases 2a and 2a’, but, in contrast to them, the epistemic status of claims 2b and 2b’ is epistemically objective. It is possible because the very fact of expressing statements 2b and 2b’ does not depend on anyone’s attitudes, beliefs, or feelings. We can simply state whether or not such a fact has occurred.

Having a clear idea of all the aforementioned distinctions and how they can be applied to the research on tourism can help us argue that there are things which can be known objectively, securing the debate from disruptive claims of non- or defective-knowability, at the same time appreciating those important aspects of our subjects which—due to their epistemic subjectivity—remain outside the objective reach of the scholar (Sady 1995; Wittgenstein 1953).

Bearing in mind the above conclusions we are able to distinguish various ontological groups of human and non-human entities (with their specific features) that make up the reality of tourism. All of them are characterized by the observer-relative feature, although they differ in nature. They include: (1) natural and man-made objects which have been assigned the function of tourist attraction; (2) various human-made facilities (e.g., tourist technical infrastructure) as well as institutional, non-material structures and rules that perform functions necessary for the development of tourism (tourist businesses and organizations); (3) human agents who directly or indirectly create (or are involved in) the tourism reality (i.e., tourists, host communities, public, and private authorities). Having such a list of entities involved in the reality of tourism, we can now ask what their relationships with tourism institutional facts are.

Institutional Facts in Relation to Brute Facts

In the previous section (tourism) institutional facts are defined as those that arise within institutions and are characterized by deontic powers. Now, how can such facts be identified in the real world? How do they relate to the previously characterized entities that make up the reality of tourism? To answer these questions, relations between tourist institutional facts and so-called brute facts should be analyzed. Let us do that by turning to an exemplary sequence of successive facts. We buy airline tickets that allow us to travel from point A to point B, then we make this trip. At B we pay a certain amount of money for the previously booked room. This transaction enables us to stay in the hotel room for a week and to use a private hotel beach. All these facts are certainly institutional facts as they are generated within various institutions such as money, credit card operator, airline company, flight booking system, hotel reservation system, hotel company, etc. Additionally, they can certainly be ascribed deontic powers.⁵

However, how do these institutional facts show up in the real world? Are they observable at all? And if so, in what forms? Institutional facts (including tourist facts) manifest themselves as brute physical facts that can take various forms, for example: that of a piece of paper (collectively recognized as a 50-euro bill, or as an airline ticket); also as particular actions: for example, somebody’s journey understood as moving from one point to another; or spending a certain period of time by someone in a hotel room or on the hotel beach. In general, for all the institutional facts described above, there must be some physical realization because since their existence depends on common acceptance by humans, humans need to be made aware of them and this happens through brute facts—items used as tokens, sounds, gestures, and all other sorts of physical behaviors, forms etc. In other words, we are dealing with specific situations where the institutional facts are represented as brute facts. In this sense they are part of a certain kind of cause-and-effect chain linking mental, socio-institutional, and external physical worlds, thus creating a single, real world. This combination makes up the basic tenet of Searle’s (1995, 2011) new-realist social ontology, as well as Haack’s (2016) innocent realism, which presuppose the existence of a single world made up of various natural and social, multi-layered, interacting parts. Importantly, their manifestations through some brute facts do not make institutional facts less observer-relative. In a broader context, this means that the entire socio-institutional tourism reality always remains related to human beings as its creators and participants. In this way, we have obtained the ontological justification of the obvious, intuitive claim that tourism cannot exist without people.

Referring to the above conclusions, it should be noted that there is a certain (though rather small) area of overlap with Ren’s (2011) radical ontology of tourism based on the Actor Network Theory (Latour 2005; Law 2004). This author emphasizes the role of non-human entities in constructing the tourism reality (calling them “actors” and treating as equal to human agents). She also postulates the rejection of traditional distinctions between humans and non-humans, nature and culture, micro and macro in tourism research. With regard to Ren’s assumptions, we are inclined to agree that the reality of tourism consists of various human and non-human entities, which makes it highly heterogenous. However, our position is markedly different when it comes to the role of particular types of these entities, especially human actors. We cannot agree that the latter are to be equated with other types of non-human beings, an assumption which seems to be a key point of Ren’s radical tourism ontology. On the contrary, we perceive human actors as the creators of the entire tourism reality. In this process, they create constitutive rules and apply them by assignment of particular functions to individual natural and man-made objects, including non-material institutional structures. It is for this very reason that human actors cannot be treated on a par with other, non-human parts of tourism reality, which have only been created by humans.

Discussion

To what extent are the above conclusions reflected in the ongoing discussion about the ontological foundations of tourism research? Or to what extent do they make an original contribution to this discussion? Let us begin with ontological considerations about the tourism reality (some of them, like Ren’s proposal of radical tourism ontology, have already been critically analyzed). First of all, it should be noted that our basic conclusions regarding the nature of tourism are quite close to Botterill’s (2014) views formulated from the position of critical realist. This author insists that social ontology, as a part of general ontology, shares with nature a similar and layered structure. In consequence, Botterill argues (citing Benton 2009, 211) that social sciences can “aspire to the standards of empirical and theoretical rigour of the natural sciences.” Referring this to tourism, Botterill does not agree with the constructionist claim that a concept such as the exemplary ticket is merely a social construction, and states that the “. . .chemical constitution of paper and ink is the result of the powers and potentials of particular chemical properties, and [. . .] that such powers and potentials can also be detected in the social ontology of the ticket. . .” (Botterill 2014, 293). He also argues that the ticket itself, in order to perform its function, is produced by a set of institutional rules. Be that as it may, if we agree that Botterill’s institutional rules match Searle’s constitutive rules, we should stress that at the beginning of this causal process, there are the rules created by human beings, and just these rules allow certain specific functions (including status functions) to be collectively assigned to particular physical objects (such as tickets, passports, landscapes, waterfalls, etc.) and organizational structures. This conclusion is consistent with our claim that tourism as a whole is a socially created reality; a reality that exists not as a pure imagination of our minds, but in the form of the real social world that has its material representations; a world which can function meaningfully and be understood only as a human-related realm.

Consequently, we are ready to agree with the general constructivist view that tourism is a socially constructed and socially related realm. This statement should not raise any serious doubts and is rather commonly accepted. It is confirmed among others by Pernecky (2007, 2012) and Rakić (2010), who believe that within the paradigm of constructivism, we are dealing with a relativist, that is, collectively constructed ontology. To quote another statement from the former: “[t]he meaningful world of tourism—with meaning assigned to objects, roles, places, behavior, and services—has no touristic significance unless understood, accepted, enacted, and interpreted as touristic by social agents, who are a part of larger socio-cultural systems” (Pernecky 2014, 296). This explanation, formulated from a constructionist position, is fully consistent with our understanding of ontological subjectivity.

However, at this point, most of the agreement with the relativists’ (constructivists’) views ends. Pernecky (2007) and Rakić (2010) emphasize that within the paradigm of constructivism, we are also dealing with a subjectivist epistemology—treating knowledge (including knowledge about tourism) as co-created and context-dependent. This opinion has been developed in depth by Tribe (2006b) and Tribe and Liburd (2016) in their famous papers about knowledge on tourism. These authors presented an approach that could be called “constructivism in action.” To explain their main idea, they used Lewin’s (1935, 1943) force field concept and adapted it to the process of creating tourism knowledge. Tribe and Liburd defined specific factors (understood to be equivalents of Lewin’s forces) which determine researchers’ views on tourism and, in consequence, shape the process of creating knowledge about tourism. Thus, on the basis of extensive literature studies, Tribe and Liburd concluded that all researchers of social (including tourist) phenomena are strongly influenced or even determined by:

(a) their personal, individual features (Crouch 2000; Galani-Moutafi 2000; Hall 2004; Pritchard 2004; Swain 2004);

(b) their positions in the environment of contemporary academia (Becher and Trowler 2001; Berno and Butler 1996; Dyer, Aberdeen, and Schuler 2003; Hollinshead 1999; McKercher 2002; Whittaker 1999);

(c) their accepted ideology (Grimwood 2015; Tribe, Dann, and Jamal 2015) and rules (Aronowitz and Giroux 1991; Hall 1997);

(d) their government and global capital, which help determine their scientific activity (Habermas 1978; Turkle 2007).

All these factors render a distorted picture of tourism. Such a conclusion was explicitly expressed by Tribe, who, paraphrasing Rorty (1979, 1990), concluded that “tourism knowledge cannot provide a faithful representation of reality” (Tribe 2006b, 376). Analyzing the above statements in the light of new-realist arguments, we are inclined to question the constructivist claim about the subjectivist epistemology of social reality (including tourism) as understood among others by Tribe (2006b), Pernecky (2007), Rakić (2010), and Tribe and Liburd (2016). The problem, however, at least in part, seems to relate to different understandings of the underlying concepts of ontological and epistemic subjectivity and objectivity. For, when considering the outcomes presented by these authors, one should realize that they refer to the ontological, not epistemic subjectivity. We agree that the factors listed by Tribe (2006b) and Tribe and Liburd (2016) influence the way in which scholars feel, perceive and, consequently, also investigate tourism reality. This sort of factors was also noticed (in a wider perspective of all social sciences) by Searle (1995), who even captured them under the term “conceptual relativity.” His reasoning assumes that it is possible to have any number of different systems of representations, such as conceptual schemes or (even incommensurable) vocabularies, for representing (and describing) various aspects of the same reality; existing in an ontologically subjective manner.

At the same time, as proved before, it is possible to formulate epistemically objective judgments about ontologically subjective entities. Consequently, as long as we meet the necessary conditions (the truth or falsehood of formulated statements does not depend on anyone’s feelings or beliefs), we can produce epistemically objective knowledge about tourism; this knowledge will consist of true representations for which we shall be able to give some non-arbitrary and impersonal justification or evidence.

Additionally, if this argument is insufficient, let us consider another one: Accepting the above constructivist claim about knowledge disturbed by the influence of various factors, one would also have to admit that not only the social sciences are burdened with this disadvantage, but also the natural sciences, as the protagonists of the “strong programme” of the sociology of knowledge, would like it to be (Barnes 2009; Barnes and Bloor 1982, 1993; Bloor 1984). That is because the current philosophy of “hard” sciences accepts the theory-ladenness concept, which postulates that observations are always affected by the theoretical presuppositions held by the investigator (Grobler 2006; Hanson 1958; Kuhn 1962; Popper 1975). Would this mean that all our knowledge should be defective and for this reason somehow disqualified? It is difficult to choose a universally valid measurement, but surely the range of successfully applied products of “hard” sciences suggests this knowledge is as useful or nearly as useful as necessary for humans. So, the answer to the previous question given by realists (and probably also moderate relativists) would still be: “no.”

Summarizing the above considerations, we certainly cannot agree with the aforementioned claim that tourism knowledge does not faithfully reflect the reality of tourism. On the contrary, in the light of the basic principles of realism that accept the existence of an external (including socio-institutional) reality and the correspondence theory of truth (Searle 1995), it does reflect it. Clearly, this does not mean that our knowledge on tourism is already complete, it certainly is not; what is more it has, and will always have, various gaps that need to be filled (Butowski 2020a).

Conclusions and Reservations

The general idea put forward in this paper has been inspired by Searle’s (1995, 2011) considerations on social ontology. It is related to the present discussion concerning the nature of the tourism reality. Taking into account this preliminary presupposition, two main tasks have been addressed: (1) to offer a logical analysis of the ontology of tourism; (2) to analyze the consequences of the adopted ontology for the epistemology (knowledge) of tourism.

With regard to the first task, an attempt has been made to build an ontological foundation on which individual disciplines—especially those that are ready to accept at least a moderately realist approach—could develop their investigations on tourism. Such a base could serve as a common ontological platform for sciences dealing with tourism (Butowski 2020b) and taking up both its external manifestations (e.g., tourism as a socio-economic system; cf. Dwyer 2011; Mason 2017; Nash 2006) and internal determinants (tourism as psychological experiences; cf. Lai and Li 2022; Pearce 1982, 1985). The link between these two fields can be found in Searle’s reasoning that “Consciousness and intentionality are caused by and realized in neurobiology. Collective intentionality is a type of intentionality, and society is created by collective intentionality” (Searle 2011, 25). Such a rationale, anchored in the concept of biological naturalism and social background, allows one to fill the gap between the socio-institutional reality of tourism and its roots embedded in human psychosomatics and collective intentionality. It assumes the existence of some kind of an irreducible cause-and-effect relationship starting from human consciousness, through intentional mental states expressed in the form of various tourism needs, which finally are met by different, physically observable, activities and behaviors of people. These actions, in turn, being set in the social background, are easily discernible in the socio-institutional reality of tourism—a reality that has been collectively created by human beings to meet their tourist needs.

With the methodological assumptions and logic presented in the previous sections, the first four ontological questions posed at the beginning of the paper can be appropriately addressed. What entities constitute the domain of tourism? How are they formed? How do they exist in the world? And, finally, what are the characteristics of those entities? It will be demonstrated that these questions about the entities (and structures) that make up the tourism reality are best answered with the methodology developed in this paper that is based on the concept of biological naturalism and social background.

Referring to the second task related to the problem of subjectivity/objectivity of knowledge about tourism, it has been argued that it is possible to get an epistemically objective judgments on phenomena which are subjective in their nature; this is also the case of tourism. The claim stems from the general assumption that social reality actually exists and has a logical structure in which the social background, constitutive rules, and collectively accepted functions play a key role. They (together with language⁶) are necessary conditions for building human institutions and, consequently, for creating institutional facts, even if, in majority, these rules and functions are not visible at first glance (they are often hidden under various forms of brute facts). Taking into account this, we could conclude that tourism researchers would have the task to identify the constitutive (and regulative) rules implemented by functions assigned to people and objects that make up the reality of tourism. This, in turn, would lead to an explanation (in an epistemically objective way) of the principles of functioning of various tourism institutions and socio-institutional facts along with all the multi-layered relationships that occur between them. Finally, it should be possible to objectively (in the epistemic sense) explore, understand, and explain the various human behaviors, actions, and activities (embedded in their biological conditions and social backgrounds) carried out in the socio-institutional reality of tourism. It is worth mentioning here that the position held by critical realists seems to be closest to the above way of proceeding (and reasoning).

Taking the above conclusions into consideration, we can refer now to the last question of epistemic nature posed in the introductory part of the paper. To what extent are these identified entities (and structures) of tourism knowable? In our account, we defend the realist thesis that the entire tourism realm, composed of various human and non-human interrelated and multi-layered entities and structures, can be objectively knowable in the epistemic sense (as understood by Searle and as applied in this paper). Having the new-realist position defined in this way, one can also ask where the foundational mismatch with relativists’ views actually arises. It seems that this is mainly due to a misunderstanding of the distinction between ontological and epistemic subjectivity/objectivity. The supporters of the relativist positions emphasize the ontological subjectivity of tourism as the main obstacle preventing obtaining epistemically objective knowledge about tourism. The article attempts to argue that this does not have to be the case, provided that we appropriately distinguish these concepts. In the paper, we tried to prove it, and in this way, to contribute to the scientific reflection on tourism; the reflection that sometimes seems to be misleading, because it necessarily deals with entities, facts, and claims of different nature. This condition, in turn, creates a scientific uncertainty, which has led some scholars to even claim there is nothing to study objectively in tourism studies. This view we wanted to counter—and offer a systematic way to discuss such opinions.

Finally, at the very end of the article, for the sake of integrity, both in general academic terms and for the sake of the authors’ personal honesty, let us note some reservations concerning the concept of biological naturalism on which Searle based his social ontology. He presents the idea that biological naturalism is strongly monistic in nature. Thus, Searle openly rejects dualistic (distinguishing between psyche and mind) or even “trialist” (physical, mental, and cultural) visions of human being by Eccles (1982). Searle’s position on this issue, moreover, has given rise to criticisms of the whole idea of biological naturalism as over deterministic (Kim 1995) and inconsistent in terms of Searle’s declaration as a non-reductionist and his simultaneous acceptance of the monistic worldview (Corcoran 2001). After examining these objections, however, we do not see them as convincing enough to reject biological naturalism, especially when they are contrasted against other concepts of this author, such as (social) background (Searle 1995) and human free will (Searle 2011).

What instead raises our greater doubts related to Searle’s adoption of a monistic viewpoint so categorically is his open rejection of much of the legacy of metaphysical thought, especially of continental Europe, that accepts the complexity of human nature composed of separate, autonomous parts, and their importance for human cognition (Żegleń 2003; Szołtysek 2011, 2018). However, the bulk of Searle’s critique in this term seems to be the inability to use these metaphysical assumptions to construct a logically coherent social ontology that could be further tested empirically against the world, as also postulated by Haack (2016).

So why, in spite of these doubts that are concerned with the concept of biological naturalism, should Searle’s ideas on social ontology still serve as a foundation for tourism ontology? Firstly, we admit that the stance according to which the whole of human social behavior, if fully dependent on biological psychosomatics, is a risky one, as it is most likely over-simplistic, reductionist, and materialistic in nature. It primarily fails to take into account the cultural environment with its various components which undoubtedly influence people in their social activity (Znaniecki 1971). Searle, standing in a monist position, recognizes this problem and proposes the previously mentioned concept of social background (that is incorporated to the concept of biological naturalism) understood as the set of pre-intentional, socially acquired, capacities.

Be that as it may, Searle used his concept of biological naturalism in the first place to explain the logical cause-effect chain with its final stage manifested in the form of human social and institutional reality. Then, he focused on the analysis of the structure and the logical mechanism which govern this reality. We, on the other hand, begin our inquiry from Searle’s final stage. In other words, the starting point of our analysis is where Searle culminates his account. This has allowed us to build a particular ontology of tourism, taking advantage of the general ideas of social ontology proposed by Searle, in spite of certain reservations which we—and others—have every right to raise.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Leszek Butowski

1.

The term “Background”—capitalized—was used by Searle in his original works. In our article we write it in lower case, except for the first introduction referring to Searle’s concept itself.

2.

Those whose representatives are ready to accept, or, at least, are open to the stance that there exists independently of us one external world which comprises natural and social elements that are somehow knowable.

3.

The idea is quite close to Haack’s (2003, 2016) view of the social reality as being physicalist but not reductionist. This reality is an integral part of a heterogeneous and pluralistic world. The world that consists, to quote , 75–76), of “shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings.” But it is still the same only real world.

4.

The latter conclusion is even more exposed in the views of interpretivists (Salmon 1989), as well as in postulates, in which the role of culture in creating human society is strongly exposed.

5.

The concept of brute facts was introduced by . Saerle used it in his analysis in order to contrast institutional facts with a group of more basic facts—called simply brute facts. In that sense they exist (unlike institutional facts) independently of any institution. Brute facts take the form of physical phenomena.

6.

To which Searle assigns a special role of the factor without which it would not be possible to assign functions and, in consequence, apply constitutive rules. However, the issue of language, raised in tourism studies, among others, in the context of the linguistic turn by , goes beyond the scope and purpose of this article.

Author Biographies

Leszek Butowski is a professor of tourism at the University of Lodz (Poland). His academic work focuses on philosophical and methodological foundations of tourism research and ethical aspects of sustainable development in tourism. His passion is sailing and every summer he crosses European waters on his tiny boat “Lidusia”.

Stanisław Butowski is a graduate of the Institute of English Studies of the University of Warsaw. His research interests cover a range of topics related to theories of language, such systemic functional linguistics, discourse analysis, the philosophy of language as well as peircean semiotics.

References

Anscombe

G. E. M.

1958. “On Brute Facts.” Analysis 18 (3): 69–72.

Aronowitz

Giroux

1991. Postmodern Education: Politics, Culture and Social Criticism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Barnes

2009. Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory. London: Routledge.

Barnes

Bloor

1982. “Relativism, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowledge.” In Rationality and Relativism, edited by Hollis

Lukes

, 21–47. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Barnes

Bloor

1993. Mocny Program Socjologii Wiedzy [Strong Programme of the Sociology of Knowledge]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo IFiS PAN.

Becher

Trowler

2001. Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Discipline. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.

Benton

2009. “Conclusion: Philosophy, Materialism and Nature – Comments and Reflections.” In Nature, Social Relations and Human Needs: Essays in Honour of Ted Benton, edited by Hollis

Lukes

, 208–43. Basingstoke; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Berno

Butler

1996. “Cross-Cultural Research Method: Content or Context? A Cook Island Example.” In Tourism and Indigenous People, edited by Hollis

Lukes

, 376–95. London: International Thomson Business Press.

Bloor

1984. “The Strengths of the Strong Programme.” In The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science: 25. Scientific Rationality: The Sociological Turn, edited by Hollis

Lukes

, 75–94. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

10.

Botterill

2014. “Constructionism – A Critical Realist Reply.” Annals of Tourism Research 48:292–4.

11.

Butowski

2020a. Metodologia Badań Nad Turystyką. Podstawy Ontologiczne i Epistemologiczne Oraz Rozwój Historyczno-Instytucjonalny [Methodology of Tourism Research. Ontological and Epistemological Foundations as Well as Historical and Institutional Development]. Warszawa: Polskie Wydawnictwo Ekonomiczne.

12.

Butowski

2020b. “The Origins of Academic Work on Tourism: A European Perspective.” Turyzm 30 (2): 13–25.

13.

Butowski

Kaczmarek

Kowalczyk-Anioł

Szafrańska

2021. “Social Constructionism as a Tool to Maintain an Advantage in Tourism Research.” Tourism Geographies 23 (1–2): 53–74.

14.

Callon

Latour

1981. “Unscrewing the Big Leviathan.” In Advances in Social Theory and Methodology, edited by Hollis

Lukes

, 275–303. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

15.

Carroll

1872. Through the Looking Glass: And What Alice Found There. London: Macmillan & Co.

16.

Chambers

2007. “An Agenda for Cutting-Edge Research in Tourism.” In Developments in Tourism Research, edited by Hollis

Lukes

, 233–45. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

17.

Coles

Hall

C. M.

Duval

D. T.

2009. “Post-Disciplinary Tourism.” In Philosophical Issues in Tourism, edited by J. Tribe, 93–113. Bristol: Channel View Publications.

18.

Corcoran

2001. “The Trouble With Searle’s Biological Naturalism.” Erkenntnis 55:307–24.

19.

Crouch

2000. “Places Around Us: Embodied Lay Geographies in Leisure and Tourism.” Leisure Studies 19 (2): 63–76.

20.

Duim

Ren

Jóhannesson

G. T.

2017. “ANT: A Decade of Interfering With Tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research 64:139–49.

21.

Dwyer

, ed. 2011. The Discovery of Tourism Economics. Bingley: Emerald.

22.

Dyer

Aberdeen

Schuler

2003. “Tourism Impacts on an Australian Indigenous Community: A Djabugay Case Study.” Tourism Management 24 (1): 83–95.

23.

Eccles

1982. “Culture: The Creation of Man and the Creator of Man.” In Mind and Brain: The Many-Faceted Problems, edited by Eccles

, 65–75. Washington, DC: Paragon House.

24.

Echtner

C. M.

1999. “The Semiotic Paradigm: Implications for Tourism Research.” Tourism Management 20:47–57.

25.

Franklin

2004. “Tourism as an Ordering: Towards a New Ontology of Tourism.” Tourist Studies 4 (3): 277–301.

26.

Franklin

Crang

2001. “The Trouble With Tourism and Travel Theory?” Tourist Studies 1 (1): 5–22.

27.

Galani-Moutafi

2000. “The Self and the Other: Traveler, Ethnographer, Tourist.” Annals of Tourism Research 27:203–24.

28.

Grimwood

B. S.

2015. “Advancing Tourism’s Moral Morphology; Relational Metaphors for Just and Sustainable Arctic Tourism.” Tourist Studies 15:3–26.

29.

Grobler

2006. Metodologia Nauk [Methodology of Sciences]. Kraków: Znak – Aureus.

30.

Guia

Jamal

2020. “A (Deleuzian) Posthumanist Paradigm for Tourism Research.” Annals of Tourism Research 84:102982. doi:10.1016/j.annals.2020.102982

31.

Haack

1996. “Reflections on Relativism: From Momentous Tautology to Seductive Contradiction.” In Philosophical Perspectives, 10: Metaphysics, edited by Tomberlin

J. E.

, 298–314. Oxford: Blackwell.

32.

Haack

2003. Defending Science—Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

33.

Haack

2016. “The World According to Innocent Realism: The One and the Many, the Real and the Imaginary, the Natural and the Social.” In Reintegrating Philosophy, edited by Haack

, 33–55. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

34.

Habermas

1978. Knowledge and Human Interests. London: Heinemann.

35.

Hall

C. M.

2004. “Reflexivity and Tourism Research.” In Qualitative Research in Tourism: Ontologies, Epistemologies and Methodologies, edited by Goodson

Phillimoore

, 137–55. London; New York, NY: Routledge.

36.

Hall

1997. “The Work of Representation.” In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, edited by Hall

, 13–74. London: SAGE Publication Ltd.

37.

Hannan

Knox

2010. Understanding Tourism. London: SAGE Publication Ltd.

38.

Hanson

N. R.

1958. Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

39.

Hicks

S. R. C.

2019. Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism From Rousseau to Foucault. Redland Bay, QLD: Connor Court Publishing Pty Ltd.

40.

Hollinshead

1999. “Tourism as Public Culture: Horne’s Ideological Commentary on the Legerdemain of Tourism.” International Journal of Tourism Research 1:267–92.

41.

Hollinshead

2004. “A Primer in Ontological Craft.” In Qualitative Research in Tourism, edited by Philimore

Goodson

, 63–82. London; New York, NY: Routledge.

42.

Hollinshead

2006. “The Shift to Constructivism in Social Inquiry: Some Pointers for Tourism Studies.” Tourism Recreation Research 31 (2): 43–58.

43.

Hollinshead

Jamal

T. B.

2007. “Tourism and the Third Ear: Further Prospects for Qualitative Inquiry.” Tourism Analysis 12 (1): 85–129.

44.

Holstein

J. A.

Gubrium

J. F.

2011. “The Constructionist Analytics of Interpretive Practice.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Denzin

N. K.

Lincoln

Y. S.

, 341–57. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publication Ltd.

45.

Jamal

T. B.

Everett

2004. “Resisting Rationalisation in the Natural and Academic Life-World: Critical Tourism Research or Hermeneutic Charity?” Current Issues in Tourism 7 (1): 1–19.

46.

Jennings

G. R.

2007. “Advances in Tourism Research: Theoretical Paradigms and Accountability.” In Advances in Modern Tourism Research: Economic Perspectives, edited by Matias

Á.

Nijkamp

Neto

, 9–35. Heidelberg: Physica Verlag.

47.

Jóhannesson

G. T.

2005. “Tourism Translations. Actor–Network Theory and Tourism Research.” Tourist Studies 5 (2): 133–50.

48.

Kim

1995. “Mental Causation in Searle’s Biological Naturalism.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55:189–94.

49.

Kuhn

T. S.

1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

50.

Lai

2022. “Tourism in a Semantic Mirror: Retheorizing Tourism From the Linguistic Turn.” Journal of Travel Research 61:963–80. doi:10.1177/00472875211019464

51.

Latour

2005. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

52.

Law

2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Routledge.

53.

Lewin

1935. A Dynamic: Theory of Personality. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

54.

Lewin

1943. “Defining the Field at a Given Time.” Psychological Review 50:292–310.

55.

Mason

2017. Geography of Tourism. Oxford: Goodfellow Publishers Limited.

56.

Matteucci

Gnoth

2017. “Elaborating on Grounded Theory in Tourism Research.” Annals of Tourism Research 65:49–59.

57.

McKercher

2002. “The Privileges and Responsibilities of Being a Referee.” Annals of Tourism Research 29:856–9.

58.

Murdoch

1997. “Inhuman/Nonhuman/Human: Actor-Network Theory and the Prospects for a Nondualistic and Symmetrical Perspective on Nature and Society.” Environment and Planning D: Society & Space 15 (6): 731–56.

59.

Nash

, ed. 2006. The Study of Tourism: Anthropological and Sociological Beginnings. Bingley: Emerald.

60.

Nycz

1998. Postmodernizm. Antologia Przekładów [Postmodernism. Translation Anthology]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Baran i Suszczyński.

61.

Pearce

P. L.

1982. The Social Psychology of Tourist Behavior. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

62.

Pearce

P. L.

1985. “A Systematic Comparison of Travel-Related Roles.” Human Relations 38:1001–1011.

63.

Pernecky

2007. “Immersing in Ontology and the Research Process: Constructivism the Foundation for Exploring the (In)credible Obe?” In The Critical Turn in Tourism Studies: Innovative Research Methodologies, edited by Ateljevic

Pritchard

Morgan

, 211–26. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

64.

Pernecky

2012. “Constructionism, Critical Pointers for Tourism Studies.” Annals of Tourism Research 39 (2): 1116–37.

65.

Pernecky

2014. “Realist and Constructionist Shades of Grey.” Annals of Tourism Research 48:295–8.

66.

Pernecky

Jamal

2010. “(Hermeneutic) Phenomenology in Tourism Studies.” Annals of Tourism Research 37 (4): 1055–75.

67.

Phillimore

Goodson

2004. “Progress in Qualitative Research in Tourism: Epistemology, Ontology and Methodology.” In Qualitative Research in Tourism: Ontologies, Epistemologies and Methodologies, edited by Phillimore

Goodson

, 3–29. London; New York, NY: Routledge.

68.

Platenkamp

Botterill

2013. “Critical Realism, Rationality and Tourism Knowledge.” Annals of Tourism Research 41:110–29.

69.

Popper

K. R.

1975. Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford: Open University Press.

70.

Pritchard

2004. “Gender and Sexuality in Tourism Research.” In A Companion to Tourism, edited by Lew

Hall

Williams

, 316–26. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

71.

Pritchard

Morgan

Ateljevic

2011. “Hopeful Tourism. A New Transformative Perspective.” Annals of Tourism Research 38 (3): 941–63.

72.

Rakić

2010. “Tales From the Field: Video and Its Potential for Creating Cultural Tourism Knowledge.” In Cultural Tourism Research Methods, edited by Richards

Munsters

, 129–40. Oxfordshire: CABI.

73.

Rátz

2014. “Crossdisciplinarity or Tourismology? The Scientific Identity of Tourism in Hungary.” In Searching for the Scientific Identity of Tourism Research, edited by Butowski

, 35–57. Warsaw: Warsaw School of Tourism and Hospitality Management.

74.

Ren

2010. “Assembling the Socio-Material Destination: An Actor–Network Approach to Cultural Tourism Studies.” In Cultural Tourism Research Methods, edited by Richards

Munsters

, 200–8. Oxfordshire: CABI.

75.

Ren

2011. “Non-human Agency, Radical Ontology and Tourism Realities.” Annals of Tourism Research 38 (3): 858–81.

76.

Ren

2021. “(Staying With) the Trouble With Tourism and Travel Theory?” Tourist Studies 21 (1): 133–40.

77.

Rorty

1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

78.

Rorty

1990. Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

79.

Roszkowski

2019. Roztrzaskane Lustro. Upadek Cywilizacji Zachodniej [The Shattered Mirror. The Fall of Western Civilization]. Kraków: Biały Kruk.

80.

Roszkowski

2020. Bunt Barbarzyńców. 105 Pytań o Przyszłość Naszej Cywilizacji [Barbarian Rebellion. 105 Questions About the Future of Our Civilization]. Kraków: Biały Kruk.

81.

Sady

1995. “Wprowadzenie [Introduction].” In Uwagi o Religii i Etyce [Notes on Religion and Ethics], edited by L. Wittgenstein, 7–57. Kraków: Znak.

82.

Salmon

M. H.

1989. “Explanation in the Social Sciences.” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13:384–409.

83.

Searle

J. R.

1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York, NY: Free Press.

84.

Searle

J. R.

1998. Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World. New York, NY: Basic Books.

85.

Searle

J. R.

2011. Making the Social World. The Structure of Human Civilization. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

86.

Searle

J. R.

2017. “Biological Naturalism.” In The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, edited by Schneider

Velmans

, 327–36. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

87.

Souza Bispo

. 2016. “Tourism as Practice.” Annals of Tourism Research 61:170–9.

88.

Swain

2004. “(Dis)Embodied Experience and Power Dynamics in Tourism Research.” In Qualitative Research in Tourism: Ontologies, Epistemologies and Methodologies, edited by Goodson

Phillimoore

, 102–88. London; New York, NY: Routledge.

89.

Szahaj

2004. Zniewalająca Moc Kultury. Artykuły i Szkice z Filozofii Kultury, Poznania i Polityki [The Captivating Power of Culture. Articles and Sketches on the Philosophy of Culture, Cognition and Politics]. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika.

90.

Szołtysek

A. E.

2011. Filozofia Myślenia. Ontologiczne, Językowe i Metodologiczne Determinanty Myślenia [Philosophy of Thinking. Ontological, Linguistic and Methodological Determinants of Thinking]. Kraków: Oficyna Wydawnicza Impuls.

91.

Szołtysek

A. E.

2018. Filozofia Umysłu [Philosophy of Mind]. Kraków: Oficyna Wydawnicza Impuls.

92.

Tribe

2006a. “Towards New Tourism Research.” Tourism Recreation Research 30:1–3.

93.

Tribe

2006b. “The Truth About Tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research 33 (2): 360–81.

94.

Tribe

2008. “The Art of Tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research 35 (4): 924–44.

95.

Tribe

Dann

Jamal

2015. “Paradigms in Tourism Research: A Trialogue.” Tourism Recreation Research 40 (1): 28–47.

96.

Tribe

Liburd

J. J.

2016. “The Tourism Knowledge System.” Annals of Tourism Research 57:44–61.

97.

Tribe

Xiao

2011. “Developments in Tourism Social Science.” Annals of Tourism Research 38 (1): 7–26.

98.

Turkle

2007. “The Secret Power of Things We Hold Dear.” New Scientist 194 (2607): 50–2.

99.

Westwood

Morgan

Pritchard

2006. “Situation, Participation and Reflexivity in Tourism Research: Furthering Interpretive Approaches to Tourism Enquiry.” Tourism Recreation Research 31 (2): 33–41.

100.

Whittaker

1999. “Indigenous Tourism: Reclaiming Knowledge, Culture and Intellectual Property in Australia.” In Tourism and Cultural Conflicts, edited by Robinson

Boniface

, 33–45. Oxon: CABI Publishing.

101.

Wijesinghe

S. N. R.

Mura

Culala

H. J.

2019. “Eurocentrism, Capitalism and Tourism Knowledge.” Tourism Management 70:178–87.

102.

Wilson

Hollinshead

2015. “Qualitative Tourism Research: Opportunities in the Emergent Soft Sciences.” Annals of Tourism Research 54:30–47.

103.

Wittgenstein

1953. Philosophical Investigations. Basil: Blackwell.

104.

Yeoman

S. I.

Beeton

2014. “The State of Tourism Future Research: An Asian Pacific Ontological Perspective.” Journal of Travel Research 53 (6): 675–679.

105.

Żegleń

U. M.

2003. Filozofia Umysłu: Dyskusja z Naturalistycznymi Koncepcjami Umysłu [Philosophy of Mind: A Discussion With Naturalistic Concepts of Mind]. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek.

106.

Znaniecki

1971. Nauki o Kulturze [The Sciences on Culture]. Warszawa: PWN.