DINAMIA’CET -IUL — Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies

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Critical reflections on tourism: phenomenological perspectives on global-South, degrowth and the role of visual aids

Publication . Nobre, Ângela Lacerda; Gameiro, Amandine; Duarte, Rogério; Jacquinet, Marc; Pérez, Rafael

From a critical phenomenology perspective, it is possible to interpret tourism as an open arena where different players interact, thus illustrating the rationale behind their epistemic positioning. Tourism, as an economic sector, is both a product and a producer of what is happening at global level. This to-and-from mutual determinations may be exemplified by visual aids that help to map the conceptual models that shape scientific debate. The research objective of the present study is to critically explore the theoretical potential of the global-South paradigm in order to bring a better understanding of tourism, illuminating the creative tensions that are shaping this dynamic, complex, multifactorial and structuring sector. The global-South paradigm involves degrowth theories and other non-orthodox economic perspectives that determine how cities, communities and territories manage their symbolic and intangible heritage that, in turn, determine decision-making, political debate and, ultimately, the living conditions of their population. The contribution of the present research is to draw together a plethora of academic schools of thought that may help to critically identify the active forces in the tourism sector. The goal is not to offer detailed scientific evidence of the social, economic and political strains in tourism but to indicate and to highlight the potential that is already there to be explored in open reflection and in theoretical incursions, contributing to expand the horizons of thought and action of contemporary societies.

2023Journal article

Open access

Political economy and contemporary Renaissance: challenges and opportunities

Publication . Nobre, Ângela Lacerda; Gameiro, Amandine; Duarte, Rogério; Jacquinet, Marc; Pérez, Rafael

In times of severe crisis there are emergence phenomena, which are characterized by disruptive rethinking of previous, taken for granted assumptions. The aims of the present text are to explore the role played by the field of political economy scientific production as a relevant contribution to foster the debate about contemporary societies’ Renaissance phenomena, at the level of the prevailing cosmogonies that condition political action and thought. The institutional economics school of thought addresses social relations and intersubjectivity as structuring instances that condition what is and what is not possible to be thought, conceived, acknowledged and acted upon. Open inquiry research methodologies help to address the profusion of meanings that emerge from present turbulent contexts. Death and decay are part of living systems natural cycles, giving rise to new forms of growth and to new modes of existence. Modernity and Ancient thought, in Western cultures, created a separation between cosmogonies and Cosmo visions that reject or else that accept determinism and fatalism. Kairos, understood as the quality and existential experience of the passage of time, as opposed to Chronos, the quantitative and sequential idea of time, are critical to contrast deterministic influences. The crucial issue is that both Kairos and Chronos, both Modernity and Antiquity, and also both deterministic and non-deterministic influences help to explain how crises, individual and collective, institutional and civilizational, and local and global, give rise to novelty, to emergence and to renewal. Such renaissance effect is present in current times.

2023-06Journal article

Open access