Search results

This paper aims to revolve around two problems which, though imagined as different, can be addressed altogether. On one hand, the advance of terrorism as a major threat to the tourism industry, while – on the other – we discuss the ontological nature of tourism as a rite of passage, which is vital to keep the political legitimacy of officialdom. At the time, paradoxically, social scientists shrug off tourism as a naïve commercial activity, while the main tourist destinations are being attacked by jihadism. This suggests the disinterest of ones associates to the interests of others.

The author holds the thesis that tourism derives from ancient institutions, which illuminated in the growth of Occident and the formation of hospitality. Capitalism hides the importance of tourism as a mere trivialization as a bit-player. However, a closer look reminds precisely the opposite. The recent attacks perpetrated at main destinations reveal tourism as an exemplary (symbolic) center of the West, a source of authority and power for the existing hierarchal order.

The issue captivates the attention of scholars, officials and policymakers, and at the same time, epistemologists of tourism receive a fresh novel debate regarding the origins of tourism.

It is a great paradox that tourism would be selected as a target for jihadism but at the same time a naïve activity for social scientists or at the least by the French tradition. Despite the partisan criticism exerted on tourism as an alienatory force, this work showed two important aspects, which merits to be discussed. At a closer look, tourism should be understood as “a rite of passage” whose function associates to the revitalization of those glitches happened during the cycles of production. Second, and most important, tourism accommodates those frustrations to prevent acts of separatism or the rise of extreme conflict among classes.

Fetishism has been often linked to misrecognition and false belief, to one being “ideologically duped” so to speak. But could we think that fetishism may be precisely the very opposite? The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of this at first sight counterintuitive notion. It locates the problem of fetishism at the crux of the problem of disavowal and argues that one needs to distinguish between a disavowal – marked by cynical knowledge – and fetishistic disavowal, which can be understood as a subcategory of the same belief structure of ideology.

This conceptual paper is based on literature review and utilizes examples from the author’s ethnographic fieldworks in India (2008-2013) and central Europe (2015-2019).

The paper provides a new insight into the structure of fetishism, relying on the psychoanalytic structure of disavowal, where all disavowal is ideological, but not all disavowal is fetishistic, thereby positing a crucial, often unacknowledged distinction. Where disavowal follows the structure “I know quite well how things are, but still […],” fetishistic disavowal follows the formula: “I don’t only know how things are, but also how they appear to me, and nonetheless […].”

The paper develops an original conceptualization of fetishism by distinguishing ideological disavowal from fetishistic disavowal.

This study aimed to investigate the gendered nature of craft beer (CB) consumption in Italy and Germany.

Data were collected through online surveys in Italy (N = 210) and Germany (N = 211). Based on an enhanced version of the theory of planned behaviour, mean value difference tests and moderated regression analyses with gender as a moderator were performed to test gender effects on CB consumption behaviour.

The study results provide evidence that the gap in CB consumption behaviour is not very pronounced. In the German sample, gender did not moderate the effects of the model components on behavioural intent. However, the study found significant mean differences in all model variables. In the Italian sample, gender moderated the effects of several components of the theory of planned behaviour on behavioural intention. Hence, CB consumption appears to represent an opportunity for Italian women to negotiate their womanhood in a historically masculine-dominated space.

The limitations of these data are the focus on two specific countries, the use of small-sized samples and the prediction of behavioural intentions instead of actual behaviour.

The study may help marketing managers develop appropriate marketing strategies based on a better understanding of gender-specific needs in CB consumption.

This investigation provides the first comparative analysis of gender-specific behavioural patterns in CB consumption in two European countries characterised by notably different beer cultures.