101 IDENTITY THEORY – Contributions by Carol Xiaoyue Zhang
101 IDENTITY THEORY – Contributions by Carol Xiaoyue Zhang
When reflecting on my contribution to the field, the question always centres around who I am as a researcher and whether the work I have carried out give me a clear academic identity. I hope my name can always be associated with the subject of tourism through my exploration of identity theories in international tourism. To help myself reflect on who I am as a researcher, I have drawn a reflexive contribution tree that identifies my key research contributions in which my theoretical assumptions and values are embedded. As shown in Figure 1, identity theory is fundamental for my contribution tree, which continuously nurtures my research.
In general, “identity” is fundamentally about who one is and what one believes; and the process of self-identification is always linked to the sense of belonging to a certain group (Schelesinger, 1987). Therefore, it has become an important term to understand social behaviours and practices. Indeed, the concept of identity provides the platform through which many tourism phenomena can be understood, such as cultural tourism, destination marketing, socio-cultural sustainability, group-based tourist behaviour, etc. For me, it is the diverse social categories or group-based identities that fascinates me to embark on research. As shown in Figure 1, my identity research is largely established on my research in two other disciplines, nationalism studies in political science and social identity theory in social psychology. These studies have later prompted me to extend my approach to include other group-based identities, including gender.
The first branch of the tree shows that my research is most strongly evidenced by my efforts in bridging nationalism studies with tourism. This is indeed a growing but niche area in tourism as tourism is traditionally perceived as purely leisure activities, therefore devoid from politics. However, with the increase in populism and growing global debates on national identity, understanding nationalism in the international tourism context has become urgent and important. At first glance, tourism and nationalism seem an odd juxtaposition. However, there is growing acknowledgement that as tourism contributes to the building of distinct identities and destination competitiveness, it can be used to depict the sense of a nation. National identity-making in tourism, usually done through the (re)producing and maintaining of meanings associated with cultural heritage resources, inevitably involves power struggles, conflict and negotiations. To understand this politics behind tourism, I have shown how recent socio-political changes impact people and place. Specifically, my research has focused on the ongoing identity crisis in postcolonial Chinese destinations: Hong Kong and Macau.
My first investigation of nationalism and tourism was developed from my master’s thesis at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. By recognising the increasing id