📚WELL-ASIA April Reading Group Update 📚

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Last Thursday, we had our April reading group on the topic of Tourism: Encounters and (Im)mobilities. We read the introduction of “Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba” by Valerio Simoni and “Tourism and Geographies in the ‘Asian Century’’ by Hee Lily Sin, Mary Mostafanezhad, and James M. Cheer.

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The chapter by Simoni (2016) is based on an ethnographic study conducted in Cuba and it includes the encounters, experiences, and insights the author has come across during his time in the field. Simoni (2016) argues that we need to shift our understanding from tourist-local and ‘host-guest’ encounters which tend to be binary and limiting (e.g. positive or negative encounters) to informal encounters that are more complex, ambiguous, and transformative. Further, particular attention is paid to the language and discourse we use to describe the relationships between locals and tourists through ‘relational idioms’ and the different forms these relations could take (e.g. hospitality, friendship, commerce). In their paper, Sin et al. (2021), critique the Anglo-Western dominance in tourism theories and knowledge production and call for decentering this dominance through the inclusion of diverse perspectives from all around the world, specifically Asia where tourism has been on the rise and which is witnessing what the authors name as the “Asian Century”. Not only do the authors call for expanding the epistemological base and knowledge production, they also emphasize the need for political and economic restructuring in the tourism industry to also include sustainability and ethics.

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In our reading group, we discussed topics relating to the two readings such as: the importance of bringing in local ideas and regional scholarship, the helpful framing of encounters, the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in re-shaping tourism, and the sustainability paradox when it comes to traveling for wellness. Thanks to our interdisciplinary team, our discussion moved beyond the two readings and brought different insights from migration studies, care and the body, conducting fieldwork, and medical anthropology.

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Stay tuned on our WELL-ASIA Linkedin page and this website for all the project updates!

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#ERCfunded

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