A Socio-Anthropological Dialogue on Tourism: A State of the Question
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25145/j.pasos.2026.24.059Keywords:
socio-anthropology of tourism, tourism as a total social fact, touristification, Marxist fetish, rematerialisation, culturalist turn, transdisciplinarity, heritagisation, SOCANTUR, political economy of tourismAbstract
This paper presents a chronicle of the socio-anthropological dialogue held as part of the Fifth International Congress of Sociology and Anthropology of Tourism (SOCANTUR), which took place at the Universidade da Coruña from 11 to 13 June 2025. The session, coordinated by Antonio Miguel Nogués-Pedregal and featuring the contributions of Camila del Mármol and Alejandro Mantecón, examined the current state of socio-anthropological research on tourism, questioning dominant frameworks and organising discussion around the question of the discipline's object of study. Del Mármol proposed conceptualising tourism as a fetish in the Marxist sense, one that renders invisible the social relations underpinning it, whilst simultaneously emphasising the need for a transdisciplinary and holistic perspective that avoids the excessive compartmentalisation of the phenomenon. Mantecón, in turn, argued for a rematerialisation of tourism studies drawing on Marx and Bourdieu in response to the excesses of the culturalist turn, and called for the establishment of biophysical and ethico-political limits on tourism. The dialogue rejected conventional debate structures in favour of a more open and dialogic mode of participation, highlighting both the richness and the challenges that epistemic abundance poses for socio-anthropological research on tourism.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Fátima Santos Izquierdo Bueno, Raúl Travé Molero
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