Listening and tourism studies

Drawing upon critical social theory on embodiment this article offers a contribution to the field of tourist performance through a focus on listening. Research findings on a classical musical festival in Australia are presented to argue that exciting challenges are available to tourism research when closer attention is given to the sonic knowledge of listening. The article discusses the conceptual and methodological implications when attention turns to the ear and then describes how festival attendees listened offers insights to how they conceived of themselves in and through time and place. Taken together, listening bodies offers an exciting future research agenda for tourism studies.