Tourism as a complex system: sociabilities, communications and methodological challenges

Abstract

This essay seeks to instigate reflections about how the tourism system has been interpreted and represented in all its complexity, under the light of modern and contemporary thoughts. The cultural, social and communication processes among the actors involved, as well as their unpredictability, historicity and nonlinearity, characteristics of complex systems, are highlighted. The paper also discusses the methodological and epistemological challenges that researchers of the field face and suggests that the investigations take a multidisciplinary and multi methodological approach.