TEFI9 2016 Celebrating the disruptive power of caring

Caring is rarely given serious attention. It tends to be associated with emotionality rather than rationality, weakness rather than strength. Talking about it publicly, in professional contexts, is likely to land you with the charge of naïveté for optimism. But it is precisely care—for our students, our communities, our planet—that unites our efforts at knowledge production and transmission with a larger sense of purpose. Knowing what we care about and working in service of it moves us away from a sense of inevitability for the status quo and toward alternate futures where tourism education can help to advance the good life for humanity, in the context of the ecosystem that sustains us. 

Care ethics, which place a focus on the interdependence of human beings and the importance of context, challenge utilitarian views of the world and of the role of academia. They represent a counter force to the continued onslaught of neoliberal management in higher education, which would easily have us forget about the diverse types of capital that permeate tourism education and scholarship, beyond today’s typically narrow focus on money and the reputational forms of capital that currently dominate our work. By turning our attention toward a richer variety of capitals—social, intellectual, creative—within a framework of care and commitment toward those things which we value, we invite participants to disrupt current logics and practices, and to activate change in tourism education. Please join us for an energetic, rigorous, creative, and soulful four days of intellectual growth and community-building for tourism higher education, amid the breathtaking scenery of Beautiful British Columbia. We invite contributions ranging from the traditionally intellectual to the innovative, artistic, and experiential.

At last the program you've all been waiting for! 

We invite contributions ranging from the traditionally intellectual to the innovative, artistic, and experiential. We welcome any submissions that fit within the broad theme of intersections between care and tourism education, and we especially encourage submissions relating to the following themes: 

• Moral dimensions of teaching, learning, and creating knowledge
• Ethics of care in intense but short-term relationships (as is often the case with teachers and students)
• Caring about community
• Indigenization and internationalization of higher education
• Moving beyond disciplinary boundaries
• Thinking creatively about “capital”
• Social entrepreneurship and experiential education
• Resistance to neoliberal conditions in higher education
• Equity in tourism
• Sustainability
• Environmental ethics
• Affect and emotion in tourism research and education