Complementarity: bridging the tourism academic/religion divide

Abstract

The idea that theistic and mono-theistic beliefs are misguided is long standing and based on the ‘reasoned’ arguments of scientific luminaries such as Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, and Bertrand Russell, etc. (Dixon & Shapiro, 2022). Scientific knowledge, they argued is premised on the basis of observations and incremental reasoning of the natural world (Gower, 1997). The sense of what it means to be human – freedom, ethics, personal and societal values and an effort to understand our place in the universe – not only do not require the presence of a God or Gods, but in arguing that we can devolve responsibility for our rationale thinking to religious belief, we are trusting in a ‘religious method [that] is refuted by its failure’ (Stenger in INCH, 2014). Science and the scientific method have long been recognised as one of the foundational disciplines of tourism knowledge (Tribe & Liburd, 2016; Urano et al., 2022). Schweinsberg (2023) has built on this disciplinary framework in this special issue, arguing that religious faith can serve as a values-based meta narrative governing an academic’s sense of self as they seek to engage with different disciplinary perspectives. What he did not consider, however, was how academics who have a religious faith might engage constructively with tourism practices, which conflict with their own faithbased perspective. Could I as a person of faith argue that abortion tourism should be developed in a particular destination, so long as it adheres to a particular political regulatory framework? Similarly, could I recommend the establishment/ expansion of a redlight district in a township if I could prove its economic value for the region? Hollinshead (2010) once asked the Academy to look beyond its traditional colonialist and economic framings and embrace a truly post-disciplinary interpretation of knowledge. This paper asks a follow-on question; how can new knowledge producers reconcile their idea of ‘truth’ to the rationalist socio-political and economic imperatives upon which the tourism industry still ultimately relies? Tourism scholars are frequently asked to critically investigate forms of tourism, which can be seen by many in society to be ethically suspect including sex tourism, child sex tourism, suicide tourism, fertility/ reproductive tourism, abortion tourism, and slum tourism. The economic importance of such industries is well documented in particular destination localities (e.g. Brooks & Heaslip, 2019; Guiney & Mostafanezhad, 2015). However, underpinning all of the afore mentioned tourism sectors are also wider societal issues regarding: the sanctity of life; cultural stigmatisation; the marginalisation of the ‘other’, respect or disrespect of privacy, and unequal power relations; all of which religious institutions have strong, often negative opinions on (e.g. Huschke & Schubotz, 2016; Masci, 2016). Carr (2016) suggests with respect to sex tourism that academics should find ways to engage with contentious tourism in all its forms as a means of illuminating the darkest parts of the world. But, to what end? If our goal is to advocate for principles of love, respect, generosity, and forgiveness for all people then these are