Critical realism, rationality and tourism knowledge

Positivism has been criticized on legitimate grounds for its absolutist and universalist claims. The tightening methodological binds that accompanied Positivism have been adequately criticized in the tourism academy. However, since the fruitful and enriching reaction of the interpretive, linguistic and critical turns another imbalance seems to penetrate tourism knowledge production, the disappearance of reality and the concomitant spread of a paralyzing relativism. Critical realism will be proposed as the route to regain ontological awareness within tourism scholarship, with the mild reservation that reality is not completely rational. Hegel’s equation of reality with rationality will be rejected through an analysis of the irrational in the social world and by reference to the Dionysian impulse.

► Mapping the tension between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, universality and particularity.
► A discussion of contextualized voices created by particularistic constructionism.
► Countering the resultant paralyzing relativism by introducing critical realism.
► Challenging the limited intelligibility of reality and embracing the irrational.
► Promoting an ontological renaissance in the tourism academy.