Ethnography in/for sustainable tourism: tensions, challenges and opportunities

This article advances the case for ethnography as a critical methodological and ethical approach in sustainable tourism research and practice. By exploring and critiquing the current use of ethnography in sustainable tourism, the paper follows a thread that traces the key “tensions,” “challenges” and “opportunities” of this approach. Along this thread, this paper introduces the ten studies in this Special Issue and outlines six key realities that tourism researchers must navigate when considering ethnography as a methodological approach, namely institutional/neoliberal; disciplinary and epistemological; colonial and decolonial; technological and post-pandemic; representational and publishing; and ontological and anthropocentric. For each of these realities, this work offers pathways for future research and ethnographic praxis. Overall, this Special Issue seeks to advance ethnographic conversations in sustainable tourism that move beyond human-centred framings. It embraces post-humanist and more-than-human perspectives that expand the methodological and epistemological horizons of tourism research by accounting for the entanglements of humans, non-humans, and environments that co-produce tourism worlds.