Care-full academic activism for sustainable transformations in tourism

Abstract

The urgent need for radical changes towards sustainability provides an opportunity to reconsider the epistemology and methodology of tourism research. The present study discusses this opportunity by adopting the concept of deep leverage points for sustainable transformations and an ethic of care perspective. The discussion highlights the vital role that a deep form of reflexivity plays in care-based tourism research that aims at sustainable transformations. This reflexivity is identified as the core component of a conceptual model that is developed to illustrate the crucial aspects of a type of scholarly engagement that, in accord with feminist scholarship, is termed care-full academic activism. These aspects concern attentiveness and responsiveness, which relate to interconnectedness, and imagination and critical thinking, which relate to transformational agency. The present study emphasizes the communalities between the concept of sustainable transformation and the ethic of care. It provides a holistic and innovative view of care-based sustainability research and a practical guide for scholars.