Challenging heteronormativity in tourism studies : locating progress

This article reviews work that challenges heteronormativity in tourism studies primarily from, but not restricted to, the discipline of geography. Indeed, tourism studies has benefited greatly from the growth of interdisciplinary research between geography, anthropology, sociology, as well as more recent interactions with queer, gender and leisure studies. In this context, as geographers, our aim is to use an explicitly geographical perspective to provide critical insights into recent research which contests, reinforces, or omits to challenge heteronormative positions in tourism studies. To this end, we provide four thematic 'locations', or scales, through which to review progress of this inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary literature: the globalization of sexuality; marketing the (homo)sexualized nation; touring the (homo)sexualized city; and the tourist body as a gendered and sexed subject.