Knowing with nature: The future of tourism education in the Anthropocene

The authors of this special issue, “Knowing with Nature: The future of tourism education in the Anthropocene”, share a concern for the future of tourism education in an era marked by global environmental crises. With its publication, we do not simply aim to evaluate the status quo of tourism education but also want to explore new avenues for more reflexive and collaborative ways of knowing with nature. Since the notion of “knowing with” is about relationships with multiple others, it can help us recognise our individual entanglements with a much wider range of creatures in the context of the Anthropocene (Ren et al., 2018; Rantala et al., 2019). Furthermore, knowing with nature can help us imagine ways of crafting our relationship to the world anew (Grimwood et al., 2018), for example, by focusing on collective learning with the natural world rather than just providing knowledge about it; by acknowledging the existence of more-than-human agency; and by paying attention to the mutual effects of human to non-human relationships (Taylor, 2017). To this end, we need more reflexive pedagogies that help learners develop the capacity to question contemporary practices in the production and consumption of tourism and critically evaluate its planning to foster more caring tourism practices (Caton & Grimwood, 2018; Fullagar & Wilson, 2012; García-Rosell, 2014; Wilson & von der Heidt, 2013).