Indigenisation of scholarship: go native but don't be naive

Many criticisms have been levelled against tourism scholarship for being too western-centric. This paper supports the call for the indigenisation of tourism scholarship but points to four concerns. Knowledge generation, whether it is by locals or not, is inherently political. Our understanding and packaging of another society and culture will always be partial. Privileging indigenised scholarship can be regressive, and help authorities in their social engineering programmes. Despite the respect for diversity in scholarship, the tourism industry is still embedded within the global and neo-liberal capitalist structures. The goal of liberating scholarship should not just rely on the symbolic and discursive, else it will just be being naïve.