Tourism and animals
Tourisme et animaux
ViaTourism Review. International Interdisciplinary Review of Tourism
Via Tourism Review. Revue internationale interdisciplinaire du tourisme
Published on Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Abstract
Via Tourism Review is inviting submissions to the new call for papers on the topic of the relationship between tourism and animals.
Announcement
Argument
Tourism may seem characterised by a speciesist bias, only counting and accounting for humans among travellers, while animals are omnipresent in tourism, under the different roles than those of hosts and guests. Tourism, in fact, is not an exclusively human affair. On the one hand, many pets travel with tourists, and are also subject to various tourist regulations (ticket, vaccination record). On the other hand, animals are a reason for travel (animal tourism, safaris, wildlife tourism), and more broadly an important part of the tourist experience, from the tourist gaze to the tourist taste, and the likes and dislikes to which they contribute. This link between tourism and animals is not marginal. It concerns all destinations, and constitutes both an economic issue, and a discovery of the world. In addition, tourism seems to open up a space-time conducive to the development of new relationships with animals, linked in particular to environmental issues and, more specifically, to the emergence of a new animal ethic that sometimes blurs the human/animal distinction.
This call aims to understand how animals re-examine tourism not only from the point of view of tourist experiences, but also of the ethics of tourism and its development. By considering animals not only as objects of interest, but as living beings, we propose to question the role of the tourist and the responsibility of tourism at a time when the living world is experiencing multidimensional threats, leading to a 6th mass extinction of species in terms of diversity. Indeed, the living are subject to numerous reconfigurations, due to climate change, the changes in environment and ecosystems and the expulsion of a part of the living, the exploitation of the animal world and trafficking of species, industrialisation of the production of food of animal origin (Porcher, 2014). This 6th extinction is concomitant with a redistribution of ratio between domestic and wild species, the biomass of vertebrates being largely composed of domestic and companion animals, with so-called wild animals becoming the object of last chance tourism.
This call is open to contributions that fall within one or more of the following issues and questions :
Development and theming of destinations
Animals were first a development issue consisting either of controlling the proliferation of species considered harmful to tourism (mosquitoes, pigeons, etc.), or, conversely, of preserving species through various measures (national parks, zoning, etc.) - or even of opposing tourist development projects in the name of preserving certain species in their environments.
In other cases, animals are directly mobilised and involved in the development of tourism and promotion of destinations. Indeed, animals have been an important dimension of tourist imaginaries and the exoticisation of the world, and certain animals continue to appear as emblems or major motifs in the international positioning of certain destinations (but also of tour operators, hotel groups, airlines - in short, of any company involved in the development of tourism in the world).
More practically, tourism strategies target consumers with high purchasing power by promoting fishing, safari or hunting, from the Lakes region in Chile to countries famous for animal safari, or forms of itinerant tourism associated with animals (sled dogs, pack donkeys, horses, etc.). From the resource animal to the parasitic animal, this section intends to interrogate the role of animals in the development and staging of tourism projects, focusing on the plurality of approaches in destination management.
Tourist practices and their relationship with animals
Tourists interact with animals in different ways, by observing them, touching them, hunting them, participating in their care, and consuming them. These interactions are often organised in specific places (national or regional parks, zoos, animal parks, farms), which facilitate the exhibition of animals or activities related to animals, in line with various conceptions of the human-animal relationship which can be analysed, both in their historicity as well as different devices (dispositive) (Estebanez, 2010).
From the hunting of African animals in the middle of Texas to the rise of a "voluntourism" that seems increasingly focused on the question of animal, the range of tourist practices related to animals is wide. Depending on the way the tourists position themselves, the same animals are often involved in all of the practices, from predation to protection. The relationship with animals is also seen in the connection with animals brought on trips, or in working with and near animals, in a tourism setting.
Finally, the link between tourism and animals can be understood as one of the ways of highlighting a crisis in the relationships of living things, but also finding ways of overcoming it, by considering tourism as a relationship not with animals in general, but with animals in their singularities, as explored by Donna Haraway (2019).
This section should see contributions that allow us to account for this diversity (diachronic and synchronic) of practices and devices, and the conflicts generated.
Humans and animals : differentiations to be explored in the context of tourism ?
The links between tourism and animality also lead to revisiting the speciest boundaries, between the animalisation of tourists in certain discourses, and the treatment of animals as passengers (tickets, identity and health documents) and consumers.
The subject of tourist experience can also include domestic animals that go on vacation, even if this link is little studied by tourism studies (Carr, 2017). Animals can become the key influence in choice of stay, in connection to activities specific to animals and their own development. However, the hosting of domestic animals is often limited (Carr, Cohen, 2009), though certain tourist services, such as furnished tourist accommodation, can integrate the presence of domestic animals, positioning a "pet-friendly" attitude as a distinctive element of the tourist offer (Yu et al., 2020).
Furthermore, animal tourism can be part of issues related to local development, financing conservation projects, and local benefits for local populations, questioning sharing between beneficiaries, those left behind and victims of these forms of tourism, between humans and non-humans (Michel, 2015). The relationship between tourism and animals also has an ethical and political dimension, which can be described as fair or unfair (Fennell, Sheppard, 2020), particularly when the possibility of attributing rights to animals in touristic settings is questioned, or by considering them as moral agents with regards to their suffering. Tourism then becomes a battlefield in the war of compassion (Derrida, 2006). Can we consider animal action in a tourist context, by thinking of them as figures of resistance (Fahim, 2022) ? What conception of the human-animal relationship then emerges from these tourist situations ? This section questions tourism and the way it allows us to rethink the boundaries of animality on various levels (legal, ethical, moral, emotional, political).
Promotion of animals as heritage
While very present in tourism, animals are also at the heart of many heritage policies, such as horse riding, breeding, festivals, or ritual or culinary practices. Manifesting themselves in buildings, living things and immaterial things, situated between nature and culture, animals concern all contemporary heritage categories. In the context of UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage, animals seem to have a special place : practices relating to animals seem particularly effective for the expression and performance of cultural identity, particularly for tourism purposes.
However, this promotion of animal heritage is not spared of the emergence of a new animal ethic that often highlights the use of animals as problematic. Also, around the same proclamation of love and even a desire to protect animals, the heritage and tourism involving animals is developing against the backdrop of a debate which takes on the contours of that which has opposed preservationists and conservationists for several decades, and which the contributions of this section will be able to shed light on.
Methods and intersections
Finally, this intersection between tourism and animals also questions the methods of surveying tourism, which can open up to the contributions of environmental or natural sciences, or take the side of animals, in particular via non-anthropocentric (Dashper, 2018) or fictional approaches, by broadening and opening the way to animal action (Estebanez, Gouaubault, Michalon, 2012), co-creation of the tourist experience (Bertella, 2014) to the idea of animal subjectivation.
Contributions sitting at the intersection of these different approaches, and which question the notion of animality in tourism in a new way, will therefore be particularly welcome in this issue.
Terms and formats of contributions
Abstracts should not exceed 500 words and can be submitted by email to the following addresses: thomas.apchain@univ-angers.fr and sebastien.jacquot@univ-paris1.fr copy to viatourismreview@univ-paris1.fr;
by March 30th 2025.
- They can be written in French, English, German, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese or Italian.
- For accepted abstract proposals, the full paper (40,000 characters maximum) deadline is June 30th 2025.
Call coordinated by
Thomas Apchain, Anthropologist - Lecturer-Researcher at ESTHUA University of Angers, ESO Spaces and Society Laboratory.
Sébastien Jacquot, Geographer - Lecturer-Researcher at University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne - EA EIREST.
Subjects
Date(s)
- Sunday, March 30, 2025
- Monday, June 30, 2025
Keywords
- tourisme animalier, éthique animale, patrimonialisation, expérience touristique
Contact(s)
- Sébastien Jacquot
courriel : sebastien [dot] jacquot [at] univ-paris1 [dot] fr - Thomas Apchain
courriel : thomas [dot] apchain [at] univ-angers [dot] fr
Information source
- Gianluigi Di Giangirolamo
courriel : gianluigi [dot] digiangirolamo [at] univ-paris1 [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Tourism and animals », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/13gd5
