Mapping embodiment across the nexus of gender, tourism, and entrepreneurship

Abstract

Informed by critical perspectives on embodiment, our article demonstrates how gendered assumptions reproduce and sustain particular bodies. We investigate how bodies are constructed across academic and policy literatures within entrepreneurship and tourism domains. To do so, we conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of relevant entrepreneurship, tourism, and gender scholarship and mapped thematic embodied tensions. These five thematic tensions - visible vs invisible, active vs passive, desired vs problematic, labouring vs redundant, and insider vs outsider bodies – then guided our analysis of tourism and entrepreneurship policy within Wales. Our findings highlight implications of the limited exploration of embodiment in both academic and policy literatures. Moreover, we emphasise the risk that – separately and relationally – current perspectives are epistemically recursive through the reinforcement of idealised bodily subjects.