The Shift to Constructivism in Social Inquiry:
Some Pointers for Tourism Studies

KEITH HOLLINSHEAD

This paper covers the recent widening of options in human inquiry in general and in Tourism Studies in particular. It argues that, as the epochal unity of the Western worldview currently de-classifies around the world, so should the normalizations of Tourism Studies research. Comparing the strengths of postpositivist (i.e., neopositivist), critical theory, and constructivist research paradigms as identified by a host of lead social science commentators in Guba (1990), this paper highlights the mutual exclusives of the three approaches, but notes that what is believed to be the enhanced fit of the latter (‘constructivism’ or its cousin approach ‘constructionism’) for local and highly-contextualized investigations, particularly in scenarios where multiple ‘truths’ (i.e., worldviews) contend against each other. Thus, ten broad shifts are explained which are representative of an overall turn towards constructivist / interpretivist thought and practice which many observers maintain is currently in motion within the human and cultural sciences. The paper reveals that while the interpretivist or hermeneutical techniques of constructivism seemingly lack the orthodox elegance of conventional positivist / neopositivist ‘natural science’ approaches, they do appear more relevant for mapping the kind of contesting and changeable realities of the differing mixed social and mixed cultural settings which are increasingly encompassed in encounters in tourism and travel. Yet the paper warns that there are inherent dangers in the precipitate non-critical deployment of constructivist lines of inquiry — a still adolescent approach to inquiry, as yet.

Keywords: human / cultural sciences, reality, methodology, social constructivism, truths, rhetoric, paradigm.