Marie-Françoise Lanfant  [ marie-francoise.lanfant@wanadoo.fr ]

 

I would like to take advantage of the Wageningen Conference to raise some basic problems about the sociological questioning face to the development of tourism at a world scale. I am working now on my own approach of constructing
"international tourism" as a research field for Sociology. I have just acheived a writing about my personal involment in this subject. I would like to present a sort of synthesis clarifying the framework of references at the departure of the research and the main steps of the way I followed until the present consequences. Provisional Title: "Constructing "international Tourism" as a Sociological Subject: Epistemological and Methodological Problems : Dead-ends and Challenges for Sociology".
Abstract: This paper fits in the line of the International Sociological Association Research Committee (ISA/RC5O) program that I have been supporting since its creation( l990). An important volume of data and reflections was collected thanks to regular symposia organised in the frame of this committee. The titles are eloquent: l99O:Madrid:"Tourism in the World : Unity and Diversity (Le tourisme dans le monde: Unité et Diversité)
1992: Nice: "International Tourism Between Tradition and Modernity"
1994: Bielefeld:"International Tourism Displaces the Boundaries"
1996: Jyvaskula: "Paradigm in Tourism Researches"
1998: Montreal: "International Tourism: Relocating Sociology""
2001: Liège "Worldscape 21": "Prospects for International Tourism and Outlooks for Society and Culture around the Globe"
2002: Brisbane: "The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World"
2004:Mytilène: "Understanding Tourism: New Data and Theoretical advances"

Reading back on the publications (especially "The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World") and writings issued from these meetings, and on the basis of my own experience I intend to bring out the problems in brackets we have to elucidate.