Special Issue: Beyond the Margins (Critical Tourism and Hospitality)

Critical Pedagogies: A Reflexive Approach to Knowledge Creation in Tourism and Hospitality Studies

Simone Fullagar^a1 c1 and Erica Wilson^a2

^a1 Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Australia

^a2 School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Southern Cross University, Australia

Abstract

Being reflexive about the conditions and claims underpinning academic knowledge is a defining aspect of critical tourism and hospitality studies. In this article we explore how criticality has been conceptualised and consider the implications for addressing a major challenge in the field: that is, surfacing the power–knowledge relations that underpin mainstream or normalised ways of thinking. We aim to be reflexive about some of the dangers that exist in relation to the oppositional stance of critical perspectives. By drawing on examples from our own and others’ critical research and teaching practices we examine how a reflexive approach can enable different types of dialogue, spaces and relationships. We draw on related work in critical management studies and debates within tourism and hospitality to argue for a critical pedagogy that embraces reflexivity as a ‘practice’ — a way of doing, thinking and transforming knowledge as we live it.

Keywords:

• critical tourism;
• reflexivity;
• critical pedagogy;
• tourism research;
• hospitality research

Correspondence:

^c1 Address for correspondence Simone Fullagar, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, 170 Kessells Road, Nathan QLD 4111. E-mail: s.fullagar@griffith.edu.au