Hollinshead, Keith

Suleman, Rukeya

English

Digital Commons @ TRU Library (Thompson Rivers University)

Critical Tourism Studies Proceedings
Volume 2017 Article 84
2017
The Urgent Call for Soft Science Schooling Today:
The Worldwide Need for Advanced Interpretive/
Qualitative Tutelage
Keith Hollinshead
University of Bedfordshire, rukeya.suleman@beds.ca.uk
Rukeya Suleman
Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.library.tru.ca/cts-proceedings
Part of the Tourism and Travel Commons
This Abstract is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ TRU Library. It has been accepted for inclusion in Critical Tourism
Studies Proceedings by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ TRU Library. For more information, please contact kgaynor@tru.ca.
Recommended Citation
Hollinshead, Keith and Suleman, Rukeya (2017) "The Urgent Call for Soft Science Schooling Today: The Worldwide Need for
Advanced Interpretive/Qualitative Tutelage," Critical Tourism Studies Proceedings: Vol. 2017 , Article 84.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.library.tru.ca/cts-proceedings/vol2017/iss1/84
  
Title: The Urgent Call for Soft Science Schooling Today: The Worldwide Need for Advanced 
Interpretive/Qualitative Tutelage 
Author: Keith Hollinshead & Rukeya Suleman 
Affiliation: University of Bedfordshire 
Contact: rukeya.suleman@beds.ca.uk 
Session Type: Presentation 
 
Abstract:  
 
Introduction: The Need for Advanced Schooling in ‘Soft Science’ in Tourism Studies 
This presentation is one of a bedfellow pair of presentations which argues the case for the 
provision of an annual or perhaps biennial short course somewhere in the world where those 
interest in critical issues in International Tourism Studies can gain state-of-the-art schooling in 
advanced interpretive cum qualitative forms of inquiry. It is argued by the presenters that the 
Critical Tourism Studies Network should work with (perhaps) the Research Committee for 
International Tourism of the International Sociological Association (known as Research 
Committee 50 = RC50) to find a host institution able to regularly stage this advanced short 
course … or otherwise to find a mix of institutions (in perhaps Europe, North America, Asia, 
Australasia ???) that could stage such an offering on a rolling basis. While this first presentation 
makes the main case for a short course, the companion presentation (see Suleman & Hollinshead, 
this abstract book) provides some further details and insights as to how such a short course ought 
be established.  
 
Background: The Call for a Pilot Short Course on ‘Soft Science’ 
In recent decades, social science research methodologies have changed considerably, in 
some senses in small but important ways in which received ‘orthodox science’ / ‘conventional 
scientistic approaches’ are tickled or nuanced to bring favoured methods into alignment with the 
freshened outlooks of so called ‘postmoderm’, ‘postcolonial’, or ‘postdisciplinary’ conceptual 
climates of today. Sometimes, however, the changes of late decades (since the 1980s) have 
constituted tall and / or strident breaks with the old ‘proper’ and ‘designated’ laws of neutral / 
detached / universalised scientific inquiry, and some of the emergent tenets of social science 
research have witnessed large and substantive shifts in practice in homage to the aerated 
invigorations of the critical turn, the interpretive turn, the discursive turn, and to a number of 
other conceivable change-of-the-century ‘turns’. Thus, what many soft scientists now espouse 
often involves the adoption of stances or the engagement in processes which are diametrically 
opposed to the received investigative wisdoms and the ‘research religiosities’ of the mid- and 
early-late 20th century. 
In this light, it is important to inspect how the new endorsements in social science are 
affecting—even liberating!—Tourism Studies and Related Fields today. This presentation 
thereby calls for the staging of a pilot short course at a bona fide institution or university NHTV 
which has proven connectivities with Critical Tourism Studies, where needful postgraduate 
students (graduate students in North American parlance) and advanced researchers can attend an 
intensive three-day / four-day rampage through the new legitimations of the 1990s and on 
through the opening two decades of the 21st century. Such a short course should inspect the new 
thoughtlines and the freshened principles which comprise the unfolding soft science approaches 
of our time—that is, those oxygenated concerns of ontology and epistemology which have 
1
Hollinshead and Suleman: The Urgent Call for Soft Science Schooling Today: The Worldwide N
Published by Digital Commons @ TRU Library, 2017
  
broadened the possibilities of what is deemed to be ‘appropriate’ or ‘acceptable’ in advanced 
interpretive and qualitative styles of inquiry today. 
 
The Aim: The Regular Staging of a Cutting-Edge Short Course  
Hopefully, the pilot event would then be assessed and adjusted as necessary to then 
become a regular (annual or biennial) short course in soft science approaches … whether it be 
staged at that same host body or otherwise offered at different locations / different campuses 
around the world. Perhaps such a pilot short course could first be staged in 2019 after (1) 
delegates here in Mallorca in 2017 at this CTS International Conference, and (2) delegates at the 
2017 ‘International Tourism Studies’ sessions of the World Congress of Sociology (as convened 
by RC50 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in mid-2018) have had chance to have input on its 
conceivable content and contours. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
2
Critical Tourism Studies Proceedings, Vol. 2017 [2017], Art. 84
http://digitalcommons.library.tru.ca/cts-proceedings/vol2017/iss1/84


The Urgent Call for Soft Science Schooling Today: The Worldwide Need for Advanced Interpretive/Qualitative Tutelage

https://digitalcommons.library.tru.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&amp;context=cts-proceedings

The Urgent Call for Soft Science Schooling Today: The Worldwide Need for Advanced Interpretive/Qualitative Tutelage

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Digital Commons @ TRU Library (Thompson Rivers University)