Interpretive approaches to research with rural communities: privileging emotion in tourism encounters

Interpretivism is rooted in the belief that all human knowledge is contextual, rooted in language, and comprised of shared meanings. Interpretive researchers strive to understand phenomena through the meanings that people assign to them. Through research, the researcher and the participants engage in the co-construction of knowledge and each one’s experiences, beliefs, and prior understandings play a role in how that knowledge is produced. In rural tourism and community development, an interpretive framework is a values-based tool which can foster trusting relationships between the research and participant. Central to this approach is an effort to understand and conceptualize the world from the participants’ situated perspectives. It permits the researcher to better understand the subjective assets the community possesses: assets which are central to participants’ understandings of their home place which can be leveraged in order to determine the most sustainable and locally appropriate paths towards developing local tourism.