ABSTRACT
Anthropology has made four types of contribution to the research and study of tourism: epistemological-theoretical-conceptual; methodological; accumulated anthropological knowledge from tourism and the influence of anthropology on tourism studies and research; and ethical and deontological contributions. When anthropology focuses on tourism, it does not interpret it from a single point of view, but rather presents a diversity and plurality of views and theoretical approaches that have been evolving and becoming more complex over time. Some authors have attempted to summarise and organise this diversity of axes and approaches. The anthropological tradition emphasises the ethnographic method as a solitary initiation in prolonged direct contact with the Other, as a somehow mysterious process through which one learns the practice of the anthropological office of ethnographer. However, at present tourism ethnography is changing the very notion of ethnography by converting it into a method of co-investigation, participatory research and co-authorship in some cases.
