Trajectories of embodiment in Tourist Studies

2021 ◽  
pp. 146879762199030
Author(s):  
Phoebe Everingham ◽  
Pau Obrador ◽  
Hazel Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Body ◽  
Tourism Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Body Practices ◽  
The Way

In this article we map the 20 year trajectory of theorising embodiment in Tourist Studies. From its inception in 2001, embedded within the turn in the social sciences towards embodiment, Tourist Studies has paved the way in pushing the boundaries of theorising the links between embodiment, sensuality and performativity. Tourist Studies has opened up novel trajectories in tourism research away from the traditional focus on vision, towards multi-sensual analysis including the role of taste, smell, touch and sound. In this article we draw attention to these important contributions in understanding the body-practices and body-subjects within tourism, including work that utilises non-representational analyses, relational materiality, affect, more-than-representational and more-than-human. About 20 years on we remind readers of what theorising embodiment can bring to understanding encounters in tourism spaces, and specifically how attention to embodiment moves analysis away from fixed and static notions of culture and power, towards dynamic interplays between bodies and more-than-human modalities.

scholarly journals Tourism Carbon Kuznets-Curve Hypothesis

2020 ◽  
pp. 004728752091527
Author(s):  
Emmanouil F. Papavasileiou ◽  
Panagiotis Tzouvanas
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Kuznets Curve ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Tourism Research ◽  
Performance Orientation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Reporting Process ◽  
Carbon Performance ◽  
Robust Result

Since the introduction of the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis in the mid-1990s, the inverted U–shaped relationship between economic development and carbon emissions has remained a subject of debate in the social sciences. We engage tourism research in this debate, in a fourfold manner. First, we offer a systematic literature review concerning the role of tourism in the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis using a protocol-based reporting process. Second, we present the level of consensus with the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis and the conceptual gaps in the identified literature (n = 22). Third, we introduce an emerging concept, offering a novel tourism corporate/performance orientation to the carbon Kuznets-curve hypothesis. Fourth, we provide evidence of empirical validity using different econometric techniques from an international tourism corporation (n = 86) data set (2005–2018). The inverted U–shaped relationship between measures of economic and carbon performance among tourism corporations is a robust result under many different specifications.

Solitude and Meditation

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-161
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bommarito
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Solitary Confinement ◽  
Perceptual Sensitivity ◽  
Pace Of Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
Time And Energy ◽  
Meditative Practices ◽  
The Way

This chapter describes the role of solitude and meditation in Buddhism. Solitude does play an important role in many Buddhist practices. The problem one is out to solve is very difficult and the intellectual, perceptual, and emotional habits that stand in the way are deep-seated. This means that attacking the problem requires focused time and energy. Establishing some distance from the diversions and pace of life allows the space to confront the problem in a sustained way. Many practices involve not only sustained focus, but also a greater degree of perceptual sensitivity to what is happening in the body and mind. It is not just being away from distractions that helps, but being away from the demands of the social world. Buddhists, particularly those who specialize in meditative practices, can take retreats that last for years. For those just starting out, such long periods of solitude can be dangerous. There is a reason that solitary confinement can be traumatic: Being suddenly alone for long stretches without preparation is psychologically risky.

What Can Mechanisms Do for You? Mechanisms and the Problem of Confounders in the Social Sciences

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 210-231
Author(s):  
María Jiménez-Buedo ◽  
Juan Carlos Squitieri
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Causal Association ◽  
Spurious Association ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mechanistic Reasoning ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Way

The idea that mechanisms are crucially important to differentiate between genuine and spurious causal relations is ubiquitous both in the philosophical and in the social scientific literature. Yet philosophers of the social sciences have seldom attempted to spell out systematically the way in which mechanistic reasoning or evidence are concretely used to deal with spurious association and the problem of confounders in the social sciences. In this paper, we analyze two recent such accounts, proposed by Harold Kincaid and Daniel Steel. We show how these two accounts radically differ in their notion of mechanism (a process account, and a complex system account, respectively), and how this ultimately impacts in the way in which they understand the inferential role of mechanisms in the social sciences. We then confront both accounts with the details of a well-known controversy around the purportedly causal association between the legalization of abortion and the subsequent fall in criminality in the United States. We show the limitations of both accounts in representing accurately the role of mechanistic evidence and hypotheses in practice.

scholarly journals Sociology of the Body—Teaching Embodied Approach through Autoethnography

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominika Byczkowska-Owczarek ◽  
Honorata Jakubowska
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Body ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Methodological Development ◽  
Teaching Sociology ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Sociology Of The Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

The article presents and discusses the way of teaching sociology of the body whose aim is to allow students to become familiar with embodied methodology and make them methodologically sensitive. The research tasks given to the students are based on analytic autoethnography which influences the students’ methodological development. Examples of the students’ works are presented and discussed, particularly in terms of the advantages they might bring in the educational proces and difficulties that they may cause to both the student and the teacher. As the most valuable benefits deriving from this way of teaching the authors indicate: raising methodological sensitivity, the ability to link embodied experience and knowledge with theoretical concepts, self-understanding in terms of social processes, but also putting into practice the perspective of embodiment in the social sciences. The courses of the sociology of the body in Poland and their status at Polish universities are presented as the context. The authors claim that the skills learnt during this course are crucial for students of sociology and for their methodological competencies, not only in the field of sociology of the body.

Expert Testimony in the Social Sciences: A Historical Overview of Contemporary Issues

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Lawrence Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Expert Testimony ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

In this brief reconsideration of the roles experts may play in legal proceedings - and concentrating on the role of social scientists in particular - it may, therefore, be useful to revisit some very familiar issues and to address some seemingly peripheral matters that are nevertheless quite central to the way we think about the involvement of experts in legal cases. For purposes of introducing some of these issues it may be helpful to focus on three interrelated concerns: the ascertaining of expert qualifications, the role of evidentiary procedure, and the extra-judicial use of social information.

Concluding Summary

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie Figdor
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Conceptual Foundation ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Research ◽  
Internal And External Factors ◽  
Conceptual Confusion

Chapter 10 provides a summary of the argument of the book. It elaborates some of the benefits of Literalism, such as less conceptual confusion and an expanded range of entities for research that might illuminate human cognition. It motivates distinguishing the questions of whether something has a cognitive capacity from whether it is intuitively like us. It provides a conceptual foundation for the social sciences appropriate for the increasing role of modeling in these sciences. It also promotes convergence in terms of the roles of internal and external factors in explaining both human and nonhuman behavior. Finally, it sketches some of the areas of new research that it supports, including group cognition and artificial intelligence.

A Phenomenology of Rhythm

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lexi Eikelboom
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analytical Importance ◽  
Jazz Performance

This chapter proposes a framework for approaching the theological significance of rhythm through phenomenology, prosody, and the social sciences. In accordance with the general categories of phenomenology established by Merleau-Ponty and the “rhythmanalysis” of Henri Lefebvre, the chapter investigates two experiences of rhythm: approaches to analysing the human encounter with rhythm in the reading of poetry and the role of rhythm in social interactions introduced through commonalities between rhythm in conversation and in jazz performance. These explorations establish two features of rhythm that are of analytical importance for the chapters that follow: (1) the synchronic and the diachronic as two necessary but distinct theoretical perspectives on rhythm, each of which emphasizes different features of rhythm and (2) the importance of interruption for understanding rhythm’s significance.

Indonesian Historical Writing after Independence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Dutch Version ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Academic History ◽  
Artistic Representations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Military ◽  
Local Perspectives

This chapter discusses Indonesian historical writing after independence. At the time Indonesia became independent, knowledge of academic history-writing was virtually non-existent. Indonesian elites then faced the postcolonial predicament of having to adopt Western nationalistic approaches to history in order to oppose the Dutch version of the archipelago’s history that had legitimized colonial domination. Soon after independence, the military took over and dominated the writing of history in Indonesia for several decades. Challenges to the military’s view of history came from artistic representations of history, and from historians—trained in the social sciences—who emphasized a multidimensional approach balancing central and local perspectives. However, it was only after 2002 that historians could openly criticize the role of the military.

Reconsidering American Power

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
American Power ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Sponsorship ◽  
To Come

Postcolonial studies, postmodern studies, even posthuman studies emerge, and intellectuals demand that social sciences be remade to address fundamentals of the human condition, from human rights to global environmental crises. Since these fields owe so much to American state sponsorship, is it easier to reimagine the human and the modern than to properly measure the pervasive American influence? Reconsidering American Power offers trenchant studies by renowned scholars who reassess the role of the social sciences in the construction and upkeep of the Pax Americana and the influence of Pax Americana on the social sciences. With the thematic image for this enterprise as the ‘fiery hunt’ for Ahab’s whale, the contributors pursue realities behind the theories, and reconsider the real origins and motives of their fields with an eye on what will deter or repurpose the ‘fiery hunts’ to come, by offering a critical insider’s view.

The Politics of Global Health Inequalities

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-84
Author(s):  
Yusra Ribhi Shawar ◽  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Health Inequality ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Health ◽  
Political Determinants ◽  
The Social

Careful investigations of the political determinants of health that include the role of power in health inequalities—systematic differences in health achievements among different population groups—are increasing but remain inadequate. Historically, much of the research examining health inequalities has been influenced by biomedical perspectives and focused, as such, on ‘downstream’ factors. More recently, there has been greater recognition of more ‘distal’ and ‘upstream’ drivers of health inequalities, including the impacts of power as expressed by actors, as well as embedded in societal structures, institutions, and processes. The goal of this chapter is to examine how power has been conceptualised and analysed to date in relation to health inequalities. After reviewing the state of health inequality scholarship and the emerging interest in studying power in global health, the chapter presents varied conceptualisations of power and how they are used in the literature to understand health inequalities. The chapter highlights the particular disciplinary influences in studying power across the social sciences, including anthropology, political science, and sociology, as well as cross-cutting perspectives such as critical theory and health capability. It concludes by highlighting strengths and limitations of the existing research in this area and discussing power conceptualisations and frameworks that so far have been underused in health inequalities research. This includes potential areas for future inquiry and approaches that may expand the study of as well as action on addressing health inequality.

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