Kinmaking: toward more-than-tourism (studies)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The field of tourism studies has entered an epoch of manifold vulnerabilities, a period in which the academic community will have to respond to the environmental and planetary crises and consider the wellbeing of not just humans but also nonhumans and multispecies. In these momentous times, it is imperative not to overlook tourism studies’ ontological, epistemological, and axiological vulnerabilities and to survey the potential viabilities. Although the blossoming criticalities in the field have greatly fuelled the urgency to correct, rectify, and recalibrate existing relational arrangements and replace these by more sustainable, just, and inclusive visions for/versions of tourism, there is still a pressing need for more conceptually, theoretically, and philosophically malleable architecture. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s scholarship on broader planetary matters, this contribution offers ‘kinmaking’ as a critico-creative, disruptive space and fitting thoughtscape for transitioning into more-than-tourism (studies). Among the key ideas covered in this paper are the dangers of epistemocentricism, the necessity for sympoietic approaches, the rise of postdisciplinary and posthuman acumen, and the overall ripeness of tourism studies to become a domain of critical relationalities.