Tourism Studies: Economics, Sociology, Geography, And Anthropology

In tourism phenomenon, researchers study about the impact of several disciplines impacting on tourism studies. There are five main disciplines in tourism research which are economics, sociology, psychology, geography, and anthropology. According to Sheldon (1990), journals from variety of disciplines are favour by all the researches as references for economics, business studies, marketing, psychology, anthropology, and geography. The variety of disciplines also gives an impact to tourism studies where there are other ways of method to deliver to scholar. According to Pearce, he suggests that a comprehensive approaches to investigation need to have a greater tolerance in tourism because many tourism researchers are reluctant to approach the

So researchers and educators have to relate with philosophical and methodological debates within disciplines. Last of two decades, the sociology of Tourism has become famous and contain of challenges of theoretical and methodological integration. A major debate between the researchers in social psychology related to surveys, fieldwork or studies (Mannell, 1982). Positivism has been used by scholars in human geography which research is based on subjective perspectives versus the objective. And today, they still use the traditions of physical geography and newer approaches in tourism studies. Furthermore, since 70s Anthroplogy is widely acknowledged by scholars because it approach various point of view on tourism as an element of human culture and behaviour. The conflict between interpretive and positivist approach give impacts on tourism organizations while conflict between planned versus emergent strategic behaviour in the field of strategy research. The researchers also need a good understanding of the research background related to issues in other disciplines related to strategic behaviour in their own

Kuhn and Bernstein conflicting to each other’s point of view lead to a tourism’s disciplinary dilemma. In order to solve the problem, Leiper (1981, 1990) make a clear framework for tourism studies by using general tourism theory with wide application across disciplines which is a multidisciplinary approach. Disciplines are brought together with various philosophies and techniques to meet a synthesis. According to Leiper, from the various disciplines, a clear understanding about methodological and philosophy of science issues is useful to merging the multitude of theoretical developments and also could guide and facilitate the collected body of knowledge in tourism. Therefore, the researcher should understand the methodological, ontological, metaphysical, and axiological as well as its social and main aim (Anderson, 1986:167). “There are four research platforms which focus on tourism impacts, form of development and aims to study tourism as a whole and strives for the formation of a scientific body of knowledge in tourism” (Jafari, 1990;35). Besides that, new disciplinary status or the key dimensions for the evolution of tourism studies would encourage tourism researchers in the