In this critical review article an adopted framework from critical theorists will be introduced in order to question the alleged neutral objectivity in social scientific discussion. This old discussion-on value free science-becomes increasingly evident through the illustration of the relevant example of how academics concealed their positions of neutrality just before the 86th annual tourism conference of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), October 2010 in Jerusalem. This critical review article continues by analyzing the relatively high amount of email reactions to a Palestinian tourism scholar who called for support from the tourism academic community for the rejection of Jerusalem as the place where the conference will be held. On the basis of this material, three categories of reactions will be introduced and organized as a normative, critical discussion. In this discourse, an emancipatory perspective on this topic will be presented. This emancipatory knowledge will give voice to the marginalized and less heard voices in this region. With these voices a counterdiscourse can be organized in this region in which Arendt's "agora" will be introduced as a place of plural discussions. The intention of this revitalized critical discussion is to create a climate of broader enlightenment that ultimately goes beyond the perspectives of individual parties.
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In this review article, the authors contextualize the contemporary practice of medical tourism in terms of the concept of worldmaking, which was introduced (in this journal) with two articles a year or two ago by Hollinshead. Here, the authors first contextualize medical tourism in terms of "worldmaking" per medium of the observations of the corporeal realms identified by Alexis de Tocqueville almost 200 years ago. In 1835, de Tocqueville wrote with enthusiasm tinged with nostalgic regret about the new world of American democracy that he then saw as the world of the future. A serious rupture in history took place of which he became a most relevant critic. But there have been (according to Mainil, Platenkamp, and Meulemans) many ruptures since then: that is, there have been short periods of "in-between worlds" that became ever more anchored in the timeline of Western history. Today, they argue that tourism as a field of expertise, practice, and knowledge is intertwined with several other networks of expertise. It is responsible (itself) for many small "ruptures" in these modern times. Mass tourism can be seen as such a shift. Sustainable tourism and the attention paid to climate change would be another such shift. And the authors of this review argue that an interesting and deep-seated case in this regard is medical tourism. They argue here that medical tourism has a great deal of worldmaking capacity, especially by means of the Internet and international marketing tools. It arises in the interstices of the interacting networks of a global world. It crosses borders in line with emerging power structures in a global network, but it also meets local resistance or regional obstacles that are related to other networks. In between these worlds of human experience, various interactions of perspectives on the concept of health itself come to the surface. Within the field of medical tourism different stakeholders play a role in a worldmaking process. Our reviewers from the Low Countries thereby argue that medical tourism itself is responsible for a Tocquevillean rupture within and across our global network society. In their view, medical tourism also constitutes a new hybrid-that is, as a hybrid medical paradigm that seems to be appearing within the performative and productive world of tourism.
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