Tourism, symmetries and controversies: an epistemological proposal based on Bruno Latour’s and applied to research on tourism and museums

Abstract

This article proposes to be an essay on the epistemological proposal adopted by the Tourism, Culture and Society Research Group - UFF, for the development of investigations focused on the theme tourism and museums. Since tourism is a complex phenomenon and in constant transformation, questioning certainties that are based on the academic productions of the area means to broaden the analysis about the field of studies and to develop a critical sense regarding the construction of scientific facts. In addition to the existing endogenous controversies, it is even more essential to seek to understand tourism as "science under construction", one that will not offer tacit, pre-established and well-consolidated knowledge in black boxes. It is in this sense that we have adopted Bruno Latour’s symmetrical anthropology and the mapping of the controversies we have tried to describe here. In this way, a door is chosen to strengthen scientific debate, which demonstrates, as the author warns, how much the social context and the technical content are fundamental for a better understanding of the scientific activity itself, and more specifically of tourism in connection with society and related issues.