Tourism studies and the metaphysics of presence: matters of ontology and the enlightened eye

This chapter inspects qualitative research pedigree in Tourism Studies in Asia ontologically. It provides an explanation of what ontology is (in focussing on matters of being and becoming), distinguishing it from epistemology (which focuses upon matters of knowing). In examining the received but scant literature on qualitative research (in general) across the social sciences in Asia and (specifically) within the domain of Tourism Studies there, judgement is reached that ontological awareness on the continent are not highly developed. In assessing that qualitative research in Asia is prey to considerable influence from styles of inquiry that emanate from ‘the West’, it supports the view that it is somewhat imprisoned within Eurocentric templates that do not fit well within Asian cultural/cosmological contexts. In order to catalyse more informed/relevant qualitative research activity in Asia – and particularly to galvanise more substantive approaches to ontological concerns – the authors generate a prospectus of ‘guiding light subjects’ which can (hopefully!) drive qualitative research forward in Tourism Studies, there. Yet, the chapter recognises that ontological inquiry is no easy-to-absorb craft, and so a set of ten commonplace areas of ontological difficulty (after Hollinshead) are critiqued vis-à-vis the docent (or exemplar) of Neo-Confucian thought-lines in China. Overall, the chapter is thereby developed as one that seeks to cultivate a new pool of ‘beginning poets’ (i.e. informed and enthusiastic research imagineers) who can drive soft science forward ontologically in the domain of tourism and travel and do so via practices which adroitly reflect Asian inheritances and voice consciousness.