Affecting solidarities: bringing feeling into feminism, empathy in employment and compassion in academic communities of crises

Abstract

While a wider context of crisis and neoliberal practices engulfing academia has triggered a variety of debilitating impacts on both education and academic working lives, tourism academia remains an insulated workplace, slowly responding to efforts corresponding to a politics of care, diversity and inclusivity. In highlighting attention to the issue of gender equity in tourism academia, this paper draws on netnographic analysis from one global electronic mailing list and analyses empirical data on the issues of ‘gender’, ‘women’ and ‘diversity’. The case study brings to the fore the urgency of addressing these issues as regards tourism academia. The latter is a space that we argue would benefit from enactments that nurture affectivities of solidarity. These are exemplified in the form of caring, compassionate and feeling fuelled inclusive workplaces. This paper aims to stimulate further debate in underscoring the need to introduce what we term ‘unbounded feminisms of solidarity and compassion’