Coordenators:
Natália Azevedo [FLUP]
Graça Joaquim [ESHTE]
João Filipe Marques [FEUAlg]
Public sociology engages with tourism in a paradoxical way: as a global social fact, vividly illustrated by its near-extinction during the recent COVID-19 pandemic and by the subsequent apparently unstoppable growth worldwide. Tourism mirrors the intrinsic contradictions of our world and poses diverse challenges to both scientific analysis and political intervention.
There is probably no other duality of human behaviour as mutually exclusive as tourism and war. Yet one of the widely held convictions of the last seventy years appears to have been dissolved by reality: that international travel—wholly or partly touristic—would gradually bring imperialist impulses to an end. At the time we are writing this call, two wars, still regional but expansionist in character, threaten to develop into a new global conflict. Even if it is not among the first victims of wars, tourism is also implicated in these contexts of crisis: either because the two phenomena exclude one another, or because they are reconfigured into highly specific niches (as certain forms of dark tourism illustrate). But precisely because they are profoundly human and therefore social phenomena, the rise and/or decline of either demands deep reflection on the part of sociology.
Although it constitutes tourism’s great antithesis, war is not the only major challenge confronting the sociology of tourism today. Climate change, environmental destruction, problems of (un)sustainability, the housing crisis in major cities, persistent global inequalities, and anti-tourism social movements are some of the challenges that the sociological perspective faces and that, directly or indirectly, (re)define tourism as an object of analysis.
This call for papers/posters from the Thematic Section Sociology of Tourism is aligned with the general call for papers for the 14th Congress, whose general theme is ‘Futures under Construction: Sociology in the Public Sphere’.
It is an imperative that tourism practices and the phenomena associated with them be subject to governance processes and public policies; for that very reason, they constitute privileged objects for a sociology of the public sphere. The 14th Portuguese Congress of Sociology will seek to foster reflection on the relationships between sociological research, public policies, and the diverse forms of social intervention and social transformation.
It is in this context that the Thematic Section Sociology of Tourism invites all sociologists and social scientists from other disciplinary fields who take tourism phenomena, in their multiple configurations, as objects of study, reflection, or intervention, to submit proposals for papers and/or posters to the 14th Portuguese Congress of Sociology, which, fittingly, will take place in a pre-eminent tourist territory—the Algarve—between 22 and 25 March 2027.
This invitation is addressed not only to academic colleagues who devote their research and teaching to tourism, but also to all those for whom tourism forms part of their professional activity at, for example, municipal, associative, or business levels.
Proposals, in addition to theoretical essays, must be formulated presenting their theoretical framework, objectives, methodologies used, results and conclusions.
Professional contributions can take the form of experience reports, including context, objectives, actors involved, methodologies, activities developed, and key learnings.
Proposals must be submitted via the personal area by the deadline specified in the submission guidelines.
Proposals may be submitted in Portuguese, English, Spanish or French.
The maximum length of the abstract is 2,500 characters (excluding spaces).
Evaluation will consider the clarity of objectives, methodological adequacy, relevance of results, and the overall quality of the proposal.
The Congress will take place in person at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Algarve, in Faro, from 23 to 25 March 2027, and may include online sessions on 22 March. At the time of submission, authors must indicate whether they intend to participate in person or online.
All the authors will be invited to submit the full papers for publication in the Congress Proceedings.
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