Exploring the use of hermeneutics as a research methodology within tourism contexts

Various research methodologies have been employed to explore the myriad of topics that are part of tourism enquiry. While researchers have used a multiplicity of qualitative approaches, there are no studies however, that investigate the use of hermeneutics in understanding tourism experiences. As the breadth and significance of hermeneutics grows, it challenges the hegemonic role of positivist thought in Western scholarship and the ways in which Western thinking generally has framed its ways of understanding the world. The paper begins with an analysis of key hermeneutic concepts such as understanding, interpretation, application, foreknowledge, prejudice, iI-thou relationships and fusions of horizons, followed by an identification of pertinent issues about research validity, such as the place of objectivity and prejudice. Hermeneutics is an appropriate research methodology to underpin tourism studies because it acknowledges the contextuality of findings which are located in time, space and culture, and recognises that researchers inevitably bring subjectivity to their research. Furthermore, it acknowledges multiple perspectives in the inquiry and challenges the need to validate research findings only when they can be replicated and generalised.