ABSTRACT

Although tourism may have reached its maturity (Airey, 2008), the disciplinary status of tourism is a topic of ongoing discussion. Some see tourism as having already matured into a discipline (Goeldner, 1988; Leiper, 2000), whereas others argue that tourism is still pre-paradigmatic in the Kuhnian sense (Kuhn, 1970; Tribe, 2005). The latter position understands tourism as a field of study that crosses disciplinary boundaries (Jafari & Ritchie, 1981; Tribe, 1997).