Tourism and Peace: The Need for a Paradigm Shift

This conceptual article reviews and critiques the mainstream traditions of research and scholarship on the theme of peace and tourism. It examines the primary tenets that suggest travel can wrought peace between peoples and nations, as well as that peace must prevail in situ for tourism to flourish. This article goes beyond this normative binary perspective to examine other types and scales of peace (e.g., inner peace, interpersonal peace, social peace, economic peace, environmental peace, and geopolitical peace), which tourism affects or which affect tourism. We then discuss the importance of peace in sustainable tourism development and argue that researchers need to move beyond the main traditions of academic commentary on peace and tourism and seek alternative paradigms and approaches to understanding peace more deeply and holistically.