ABSTRACT
In dollar terms, tourism is the largest service industry in the world. It is also responsible for the largest movements of people during peacetime. Many developing countries have chosen it as their route to prosperity and progress. Sponsored by governments, regulated by international agencies and promoted by multinational companies, tourism affects virtually every region and nation of the world. That is why tourism has the potential to be a powerful social force, capable of instigating positive social, political and environmental change. However, academic studies of tourism are very often the domain of management schools where tourism is designated a “leisure industry” and analysed only according to cost effectiveness. Or confined within history and sociology departments where the social impacts of tourism are debated. Influenced by perspectives from peace and conflict studies, this chapter proposes a new interdisciplinary approach. In formulating the first “peace through tourism” tertiary course in Australia as a collaborative teaching and learning project, the tensions between business management and social science approaches offer a critical space in which to analyse “peace tourism”. Our pedagogy of tourism includes the voices of people who are seldom heard coupled to analyses that expose injustice.
