Abstract

While gender research in tourism has become increasingly important within Western academic circles, little has been written from an Asian perspective. This book is the first to address this knowledge gap and to fully explore Asian gendered identities and tourism. The chapters reflect upon the role of tourism in producing, reiterating and resisting existing gendered structures of power in Asia. The authors attempt to reconcile both Asian and Western perspectives on gender using their own personal experiences of understanding and negotiating Western and Asian identities and practices. The book paves the way for important reflections about the ontological and epistemological meanings of ‘Asia’, ‘gender’ and ‘tourism’. It is an important resource for researchers from a range of disciplines including tourism, leisure studies, Asian studies and feminist and gender studies, as well as for professionals working in the tourism industry.

Catheryn Khoo-Lattimore and Paolo Mura have produced a hugely timely analysis of gender-based relations in Asia. It will be warmly welcomed as a reflexive Asian-centric addition to the global literature on gender as a socio-cultural construct, which regulates how men and women interact in tourism settings.

The authors of Asian Genders in Tourism provide a bold reflexive response to calls for more situated embodied scholarship in Tourism Studies, embracing intersecting identities of the researcher and researched. Located firmly within Asian diversity, they demonstrate this approach’s value and show the way for future critically engaged gender analysis.

This will be a useful book for scholars interested in Asian travel experiences, and in the gendered nature of travel experiences and how these intersect with ethnicity. Taken together the chapters go some way towards filling gaps in the tourism literature both by Asians and about women travellers. The book will also be very useful for other scholars on the power of reflexivity and the usefulness of researchers situating themselves and their methods.

The editors have identified a theme and a region that certainly merit more attention. In this respect they have provided a useful contribution to the literature which, hopefully, will be a stimulus to researchers from the region as well as elsewhere, providing greater legitimacy for the use of qualitative research methods and the exploration of genders in their various manifestations, in contexts where academic research has yet to match the importance of these research approaches and topics. The book could certainly be used in a classroom setting to generate discussion on genders and tourism and the complexities of exploring their relationships.

Catheryn Khoo-Lattimore is Senior Lecturer at Griffith University, Australia and her research interests include tourist and guest behaviour, with a passionate focus on women, families and young children.

Paolo Mura is Senior Lecturer at Taylor’s University, Malaysia and his research interests focus on tourist behaviour, gender, young tourists, deviant behaviour on holiday and ethnographic approaches to research.

Asian Genders in Tourism is a deeply personal and particularly brave addition to the tourism literature as the researchers’ stories unfold throughout the chapters. The authors courageously engage in a reflexive process addressing a clear gap in the literature: gender in tourism from an Asian perspective.

This is a timely, if not long overdue, compilation of chapters furthering the work on gender and tourism. Much of the research on gender and tourism has, too often, centred on Western perspectives. Thus this book fills a significant gap, through its deliberate focus on Asia, including Asian authors and voices, and highlighting the complexities of gender from an Asian-centric point of view.