CFP: Ethics of Tourism in Times of Social Acceleration

José L. López-González (Universitat Jaume I) and Professor David Fennell (Brock University) collaborate to lauch this CfP.

Tourism has traditionally assumed a paradigm of progress driven by social acceleration, and is today subject to growing scrutiny that raises the opportunity both to critically analyze the conditions by which its legitimacy continues to be questioned, as well as to rethink which frameworks could serve as guidance.

This issue looks for reflections that take into account conditions of social acceleration in which tourism takes place. Mobility of people and capital characteristic of space-time compression; different rhythms of life that arise from competitive societies, as well as functions exercised by tourism; reconfiguration of tourism caused by acceleration of technological changes or neoliberal imperatives, for which time is money; the imbrication of tourism practices with other social practices and their implications for the management of destinations, particularly in cities; and the desynchronization shown by classical institutions when it comes to regulating practices that are subject to social demands, are some examples of this approach.

Within this context we want to suggest that, far from being a generalized acceleration towards progress, in tourism there are accelerating practices of some with decelerations and setbacks of others. This constitutes an important ethical substrate that opens up to the analysis of issues of justice, as well as character and the good life, from which this issue seeks to incorporate research that allows the ethics of tourism to address current issues and look to the future. Through the articulation between ethics and social acceleration, some of the suggested topics include: