For several decades, tourism has mainly been identified as an activity that helps people escape their everyday routines, contributes to understanding between cultures, and promotes economic wellbeing. These assumptions have been questioned in both the public sphere and academic research, however. In this context, tourism research is increasingly drawing on ethical frameworks to support its criticism of tourism. Some of the most outstanding research on this issue is by Dean MacCannell, Emeritus Professor at the University of California at Davis and (...) author of one of the seminal works of the social theory of tourism: The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (1976). MacCannell examines the moral and ethical aspects of tourism in all his writing, but they are the focal point of his book The Ethics of Sightseeing (2011), in which he identifies the tourists’ responsibility to mediate between their understanding of their own pleasure and the ethical repercussions of the late modern imperative, “Enjoy!”. During the Touriscape congress in Malaga, Spain, in February 2018, MacCannell talked about ethics and tourism with José Luis López, who prepared this interview for Recerca. (shrink)

"Neue Potentiale einer erweiterten technischen Verfügungsgewalt machen das Mißverhältnis zwischen Ergebnissen angespanntester Rationalität und unreflektierten Zielen, erstarrten Wertsystemen, hinfälligen Ideologien offenbar." Die Ursachen und Folgen dieses Mißverhältnisses (und die Möglichkeiten seiner Aufhebung durch Reflexion) sind das Thema der vorliegenden Aufsätze von Jürgen Habermas; er untersucht, auf welche Weise die Gewalt technischer Verfügung in den "Konsensus handelnder und verhandelnder Bürger zurückgeholt werden kann", wie Technik, Wissenschaft und Demokratie unter den Bedingungen der fortgeschrittenen Industriegesellschaft zu vermitteln seien.

Here, for the first time in English, is volume one of Jurgen Habermas's long-awaited magnum opus: The Theory of Communicative Action. This pathbreaking work is guided by three interrelated concerns: to develop a concept of communicative rationality that is no longer tied to the subjective and individualistic premises of modern social and political theory; to construct a two-level concept of society that integrates the 'lifeworld' and 'system' paradigms; and to sketch out a critical theory of modernity that explains its sociopathologies (...) in a new way. Habermas approaches these tasks through a combination of conceptual analyses, systematic reflections, and critical reconstructions of such predecessors as Marx and Weber, Durkheim and Mead, Horkheimer and Adorno, Schutz and Parsons. Reason and the Rationalization of Society develops a sociological theory of action that stresses not its means-ends or teleological aspect, but the need to coordinate action socially via communication. In the introductory chapter Habermas sets out a powerful series of arguments on such foundational issues as cultural and historical relativism, the methodology of Verstehen, the inseparabilty of interpretation from critique. In addition to clarifying the normative foundations of critical social inquiry, this sets the stage for a systematic appropriation of Weber's theory of rationalization and its Marxist reception by Lukacs, Horkheimer and Adorno. This is an important book for degree students of philosophy, sociology and related subjects. (shrink)

This paperback edition contains a new greatly expanded bibliography of Habermas's work.

In this essay the author examines the burgeoning industry of ecotourism, analyzing definitions of "ecotourism" and exploring a number of compelling issues raised by the recent trend in worldwide tourism. She then examines three sample codes of ecotourism: one site-specific (Antarctic Traveller's Code), one from a major environmental group (National Audubon Society), and one developed by a consultant for a travel research firm (Code for Leisure Destination Development). The presuppositions, value, and limitations of these codes are then analyzed. On the (...) basis of this analysis, the author proceeds to a discussion of the frameworks for negotiating discourses about ecotourism. Stark argues that the limitations detected in the sample codes of ethics for ecotourism would be fruitfully addressed by J rgen Habermas's discourse ethics augmented by the feminist ethical and political theories of Seyla Benhabib who draws on the work of Hannah Arendt. While bracketing the debates surrounding the justification of Habermas's principle of universalizability, the author argues that the overemphasis on the rational aspects both of the principle itself and on the notion of "rational trust" stand in need of a corrective if discourse ethics is to be used successfully in negotiating real-life conflicts. Stark argues for a kind of "application discourse" using the feminist ethical and political theories of Benhabib drawn from Arendt's work in which "associational public spaces" are created through relational processes in the acts themselves of meeting and discourse. The author claims that Benhabib and Arendt's works contain fruitful theoretical approaches that also leave room to deal with policies and practical applications as debates about ecotourism increase around the world. Far from exhausting the possibilities, this essay opens up the connections between these theoretical approaches and a new area of environmental concern-- ecotourism. (shrink)

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays published over the past five years reclaim the relevant themes of the Frankfurt School, which counted Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, Franz Neumann, and Albrecht Wellmer as members. They also engage with Kant, Freud, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Michael Walzer, whose work on morality, history, (...) democracy, and individuality intersects with the Frankfurt School's core concerns. Collected here for the first time in English, Honneth's essays pursue the unifying themes and theses that support the methodologies and thematics of critical social theory, and they address the possibilities of continuing this tradition through radically changed theoretical and social conditions. According to Honneth, there is a unity that underlies critical theory's multiple approaches: the way in which reason is both distorted and furthered in contemporary capitalist society. And while much is dead in the social and psychological doctrines of critical social theory, its central inquiries remain vitally relevant. Is social progress still possible after the horrors of the twentieth century? Does capitalism deform reason and, if so, in what respects? Can we justify the relationship between law and violence in secular terms, or is it inextricably bound to divine justice? How can we be free when we're subject to socialization in a highly complex and in many respects unfree society? For Honneth, suffering and moral struggle are departure points for a new "reconstructive" form of social criticism, one that is based solidly in the empirically grounded, interdisciplinary approach of the Frankfurt School. (shrink)