Beyond Tourismphobia: Conceptualizing a New Framework to Analyze Attitudes Towards Tourism

Abstract

This chapter discusses the factors that have led to the emergence of expressions of criticism toward tourism. This review serves to frame the original contribution of this text: a theoretical model that clarifies the defining features of the main attitudes towards tourism. Merton's model is here adjusted for the analysis of a new relationship between social ends and economic means. In this case, the end is economic progress. The way is the tourism, conceived as a massive social phenomenon. The relation between goals and means generates tensions. Its management derives in strategies of adaptation that include different ways of identification or discussion. The five types of adaptation of the new model are useful for addressing subject positions, political discourses, or attitudinal dispositions towards tourism. To illustrate this typology a purposive sampling of news on the tourismphobia has been selected, with no statistical generalization reflecting the constituent elements of each of the types: legitimization, innovative criticism, resignation, radical criticism, and subversive utopia.