Ontology and Epistemology of Tourism: A Realist Approach (Routledge Insights in Tourism Series)

By integrating social ontology and epistemology, the book offers a systematic realist account of tourism, explaining how tourist entities, institutions, and practices are constituted, how tourism reality is structured as a domain of social reality, and how knowledge about this domain can be justified. It provides a clear philosophical foundation for understanding tourism by learning how tourism reality is constituted and how knowledge about it can be justified.The book delivers these benefits through a systematic framework that integrates social ontology and epistemology, drawing on realist philosophy and Searle-inspired social ontology.It clarifies key concepts, distinguishes types of entities and facts within tourism reality, and explains the institutional mechanisms, such as collective intentionality, status functions, and constitutive rules, that structure the tourism domain.These theoretical arguments are illustrated with real-world examples from tourism practice that help explain