Tourism and the horizons of becoming: the gestation of an ongoing posthuman/post-qualitative inquiry agenda

Abstract

This study is formed of two main strands. Firstly, this thesis intends to set up a future inquiry agenda where matters of becoming experienced by British Muslim women can be understood. The experiences of British Muslim women who travel internationally will be inspected in order to shed light on how their trajectories of becoming are constructed. Secondly, this thesis will attempt to evaluate the current thinking capacity of the Humanities / Social Sciences and the applied field of Tourism Studies when conceptualising mattes of becoming for these said British Muslim women. This inquiry is heavily guided by the post-humanist philosophies of Deleuze and Braidotti. These hallmark conceptualists will guide how this inquiry approaches and conceptualises becoming, the creation of new possibilities for thinking and in how awarenesses are generated in the understanding of the relationalities between faith / spirituality / mobility / travel / gender. Post-qualitative inquiry will shape the approach to methodology, which is highly emergent, indeterminate and warns against pre-assumptive decision making before the researcher has spent time understanding matters ‘in the field’. Continuing with the Deleuzian intuitions that run throughout this thesis, there are no final, concrete conclusions, instead the last half of this thesis deals with a range of critical implications and future prospects which have been generated in relation to the aims and objectives of this inquiry. Chapter 4, The Implications, explores 10 critical pathways inspired by the nomadic logic of Braidotti (2011) and Deleuzian philosophy to create new visions of subjectivity and more dynamic possibilities of thinking within Tourism Studies as an applied field. Leading on from this, Chapter 5, The Prospects, details 22 areas for possible future inquiry. These 22 possible ‘lines of flight’ dance across the main themes which have been explored in the thesis and display the potential rhizomatic, emergent directions this study could take. Finally, because the 22 areas of possible study are vast and wide ranging, the last chapter, The Recommendations, then go on to select 10 inquiry agendas with more specific areas of investigation which shed light on how the becoming of British Muslim women could be approached through future research. As stated above, this last recommendations chapter focuses on how a selection of these insights and implications can be taken forward to carefully curate a future inquiry agenda based specifically around (i) the inheritances of Islam, (ii) British Muslim women, (iii) matters of spirituality and pilgrimage, (iv) the power of tourism and travel, (v) matters of belonging, (vi) exercise of researcher awareness, (vii) acts of living and aspiration, (viii) deficits of hailed understanding within Tourism Studies, (ix) role and function of research institutions in Tourism Studies and (x) post-human orientations towards globalisation and mobility.