Fiona Eva Bakas
@ulusofona.pt
Tourism Department
Lusofona University
RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS
Social Sciences, General Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Scopus Publications
Scholar Citations
Scholar h-index
Scholar i10-index
Scopus Publications
Nancy Duxbury, Fiona Eva Bakas, and Cláudia Pato Carvalho
Emerald
Purpose Culture is increasingly recognized as a key component of local development, but this attention is largely focused on large cities. This paper aims to focus on the ways in which the innovative, participatory action-research (PAR) methods of IdeaLabs and community intervention workshops are used by two projects with solidarity economy enterprise (SEE) participants to activate place-based cultural resources for local development in small communities. Design/methodology/approach An in-depth reflexive analysis undertaken by researchers involved in the two projects, taking a feminist ethics of care perspective, demonstrates the ways in which these two PAR methods promote local development with the goal of fighting against the economic, social and cultural degradation of small cities and rural areas. Findings The PAR methods used by the two projects examined stimulate place-based local development initiatives through collaboration and knowledge co-production among participants and researchers. The projects go beyond an instrumental view of the use of culture and the arts for local development to innovate and demonstrate new methodologies for more participatory approaches. Originality/value This paper addresses a gap in social economy literature, presenting methods that can be used in PAR projects to catalyse the use of culture as a local development tool by local SEEs.
Fiona Bakas and Duygu Salman
Informa UK Limited
Inês Carvalho, Ana Ramires, and Fiona Bakas
Wiley
Alvaro Dias, Biagio Simonetti, and Fiona Eva Bakas
Frontiers Media SA
COPYRIGHT © 2022 Dias, Simonetti and Bakas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Editorial: Developing Lifestyle Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Destinations
Fiona Eva Bakas
CABI
Abstract
This chapter presents highlights from recent research into the emergence of artisan entrepreneurmediators who link artisans to creative tourism initiatives in extra-metropolitan areas (i.e. rural areas and small cities) in Portugal (Bakas et al., 2018). Creative tourism is aligned with contemporary trends to revive local crafts and traditions in rural areas as it stimulates artisan entrepreneurs to co-create and co-preserve local traditions (Duxbury and Richards,2019) while engaging with the local community (Landry, 2010). In extra-metropolitan regions, economies are often fragile and small businesses often find it hard to stay solvent. 'The countryside' or the 'rural' must be considered as a place where the creative economy is differently manifested and articulated from the now standard 'creative script' based on cities (Bell and Jayne, 2010). It is imperative to understand the critical elements within a small business's operating environment or 'ecosystem' that support or thwart entrepreneurial activity (Kline et al., 2014). With artists and artisans increasingly used to represent, market, and enhance the visual image of destinations, looking more closely at the link between artisan activity and tourism is timely (Morpeth and Long, 2016).
Fiona Eva Bakas, Tiago Vinagre de Castro, and Ana Osredkar
CABI
Abstract
This chapter discusses how the principles of usercentred design and emotional mapping can be used to help tourism and culture practitioners design prototypes of creative tourism experiences. Creative tourism is a novel interpretation of cultural tourism that incorporates within the tourism experience the dimensions of active participation, creative self-expression, learning, and community engagement (Duxbury and Richards, 2019), underlined by an immersive connection to place. On one hand, to create successful creative tourism experiences, it is important that the tourism experience designers empathize with the end users/participants and identify with their needs and motivations. By adopting a user-centred design approach, this empathy can be achieved in practical ways and then included in the design of the final tourism experience. On the other hand, emotional mapping deepens engagement with places, fostered by a multisensorial immersive exploring exercise that challenges participants to link places to their own emotions and feelings.
Fiona Eva Bakas, Nancy Duxbury, and Sara Albino
Emerald Publishing Limited
Nancy Duxbury, Fiona Eva Bakas, Tiago Vinagre de Castro, and Sílvia Silva
MDPI AG
Creative tourism is a relatively new field of research with most attention directed to creative tourism activities in large cities. Little research has been conducted on creative tourism development strategies in extra-metropolitan contexts. The CREATOUR project aimed to improve understanding of the processes (under different conditions and situations) through which creative tourism activities can be developed, implemented, and made sustainable. This article reports on a national analysis of approaches developed by the project’s participating organizations to offer creative tourism initiatives. At an organizational level, we found five main models: Stand-alone offers, repeated; series of creative activities and other initiatives under a common theme; localized networks for creative tourism; small-scale festivals that include creative tourism activities; and creative accommodations. At a broader community level, creative tourism initiatives can inspire new ideas and avenues of activity and contribute to cultural vitality and potential regeneration dynamics through reinforcing distinctive elements of local identity, instigating flows and connections between the locale and the external, and serving as platforms for local collaboration, exchange, and development. In the time of COVID-19, enhancing connections with other organizations locally and regionally can contribute to wider initiatives and the development of community-based regeneration strategies.
Nancy Duxbury, Fiona Eva Bakas, and Cláudia Pato de Carvalho
Informa UK Limited
Abstract Within tourism research, there has been little attention to research–practice knowledge exchange during the research process nor to practice-based research. This article examines a research-and-application project on creative tourism in which research–practice collaboration is explicitly foregrounded and made central. Through a reflexive process, the challenges this hybrid approach embodies and the pragmatic dilemmas that accompany the complexities of building closer research–practice relations and capturing practice-based knowledge are examined in three strategic areas: developing spaces for ongoing knowledge exchange, enabling practitioners to take on the role of co-researcher, and fostering researchers’ close attention to the application side of the project. In the context of the CREATOUR project, hybrid roles question who can do research, reinforce consideration of the added value of research processes for practitioners, and lead researchers to go beyond traditional research activities, with this ‘disruptive’ context causing tensions, uncertainties, and dynamic co-learning situations. Ongoing interactions over time are necessary to build relations, understanding, and trust, while flexibility and responsiveness are vital to address emerging issues. Training on research–practice collaboration, knowledge transfer, and mentorship techniques for both researchers and practitioners is advised. Challenges in integrating practice-based knowledge directly into research articles suggest a customized communication platform may be a useful ‘bridging’ mechanism between practice-based and academic knowledge systems.
Fiona Eva Bakas, Nancy Duxbury, Paula Cristina Remoaldo, and Olga Matos
Emerald
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address the gaps in research on strategic planning for the social impacts of small-scale events in rural areas and small cities. This is achieved by investigating the social utility inferred by small-scale art festivals with a creative tourism element in terms of increasing social capital and positive social change, from an event stakeholder perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe identified gap in knowledge is addressed by using interviews and fieldnotes from participant observation to co-create meaning with the organizers of four small-scale art festivals in small cities and rural areas in Portugal. Theoretical frameworks relating to creative tourism development and social capital creation are used to analyze the social utility of small-scale art festivals.FindingsCreative tourism activities are integrated within small-scale art festivals in small cities and rural areas in various ways, mainly through art-related workshops. Significant empirical data give insight into how small-scale art festivals create social value by increasing the host community’s pride and reinforcing the social fabric of the festival’s local and “portable” community, in part through these creative tourism activities.Research limitations/implicationsOne of the limitations of this study is that it focuses on the perspectives and insights of the festival organizers. An analysis of the festival participants’ views, local community stakeholder analysis and community impact analyses would offer further insights into how the creative tourism experiences and other moments of shared meaning generation within small-scale art festivals influence the creation of social utility.Originality/valueThis paper offers insights into how creative tourism activities are being integrated into small-scale art festivals in small cities and rural contexts, and how these activities foster social connections among festival participants and with the local community. This addresses significant gaps in the literature on strategic planning for the social impacts of events, particularly in the context of small-scale events in rural areas/small cities, and the strategic value of including creative tourism activities within small-scale festivals.
Fiona Eva Bakas, Nancy Duxbury, and Tiago Vinagre de Castro
Emerald
Purpose Given limited research about how artisans become integrated into tourism, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence of artisan entrepreneur–mediators who link artisans to tourism in rural areas and small cities in Portugal. Using social embeddedness as a conceptual framework, this paper views artisan entrepreneur–mediators as existing within an entrepreneurial ecosystem. The paper investigates their role within this ecosystem and how social networks influence the artisan entrepreneur–mediators’ roles in connecting artisans to creative tourism. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on new (2017 and 2018) empirical evidence developed through two rounds of semi-structured interviews of five artisan entrepreneur–mediators. Findings This paper finds that artisan entrepreneur–mediators in rural areas or small cities take on multiple roles as networking agents who organize and offer creative tourism experiences, providing the missing link between artisans and tourists. An analysis of the nuances of the operations of these artisan entrepreneur–mediators suggests that high levels of social embeddedness within local rural communities are important in order for these neo-rural entrepreneurs to attain their goals. Originality/value Originality lies in the identification of a gap in artisan entrepreneurship literature in a rural context. It is the first time that a critical analysis of artisan entrepreneur–mediators who facilitate the link between artisans and tourism is carried out in terms of social embeddedness, their roles and connections to creative tourism, and types of community engagement.
Carlos Costa, Zélia Breda, Fiona Eva Bakas, Marília Durão, and Isabel Pinho
IGI Global
A significant challenge faced by the tourism and hospitality industries in a rapidly changing world, is the ability to sustain organisational growth. Some of the main strategies for achieving organisational growth are those related to innovation, internationalisation and networking. Addressing tourism studies' contemporary shift to a focus on social influences, this study investigates the relations between gender and organisational growth. Qualitative analysis of focus groups with managers from the seven administrative regions in Portugal provides an in-depth account of tourism and gender issues based on empirical evidence. Viewing the ways in which tourism managers contribute to organisational growth through the angle of gender, this chapter provides a compelling account of the delicate and often invisible interactions between economic and social transactions. Results illustrate how women as a labour source are paradoxically viewed as both an asset and an impediment to organisational growth strategies.
Fiona Eva Bakas
Cognizant, LLC
Addressing the theme of tourism as a social force, this article approaches a subject upon which limited research has been undertaken: children's role as economic actors in tourism. As the concept of children as economic actors comes into antithesis with UN models of childhood as a care-free time, family business literature illustrates how children often do take on economic roles. Based on empirical research conducted in Crete, Greece in 2012, the ways in which the political economy of tourism shapes and is shaped by children's roles as economic actors is explored. A feminist economics angle is adopted, viewing productive and social reproductive elements as of equal importance for representations of the economic reality. Participant observation over a 3-month period and 14 ethnographic interviews with tourism microentrepreneurs who make handicrafts primarily for sale as souvenirs inform this article. Thematic analysis highlights how tourism's intense and seasonal nature accentuates cultural expectations and economic pressures, bringing about a metamorphosis in children's roles. Although when they are very young, children themselves constitute a major social reproduction task, when they are older, they have a significant input into the political economy of tourism as they transform into replacement entrepreneurs and domestic helpers during the busy peak season. Investigating how children's economic roles are seasonally formed and the effect children's economic activities have on their parents' gendered entrepreneurial roles, this article provides an exciting insight into children's roles within tourism labor.
Fiona Eva Bakas, Carlos Costa, Zélia Breda, and Marília Durão
Cognizant, LLC
Tourism is a highly gendered industry, with strong horizontal and vertical segregation of occupations and this inevitably contributes to an elevated gender wage gap in comparison to other industries. This article investigates some of the underlying causes of the gender wage gap and the ways in which gendered stereotypes and gender norms continue to influence tourism labor relations. Challenging the idea that women "choose" to accept lower wages than men as a neoliberalist rationale that has little bearing on reality, this article adopts a feminist economics lens and investigates how the gender wage gap is created and perpetuated in Portugal's tourism industry through a thematic analysis of tourism managers' narratives from focus groups conducted in 2013 and 2014. Viewing individual choice as a myth, the politico-economic conditions that inform people's actions according to gender roles they are expected to perform are explored. The most frequent gender equality measure adopted by tourism companies in Portugal is ensuring that remuneration is set according to objective criteria, which demonstrates the perceived importance of eradicating the gender pay gap. Despite this, thematic analysis of focus group narratives reveals a persisting inequality within tourism labor. These reveal that horizontal segregation, gendered geographical mobility, and the prevalence of men in hierarchical positions contribute to the maintenance of the gender wage gap in tourism, illustrating a contradiction between the perceived eradication of the gender wage gap and its continuing existence. This article therefore represents an exploration into the ways in which the gender wage gap within tourism is created and maintained.
Fiona Eva Bakas
Elsevier BV
Carlos Costa, Fiona Eva Bakas, Zélia Breda, and Marília Durão
Elsevier BV
Carlos Costa, Fiona Eva Bakas, Zélia Breda, Marília Durão, Inês Carvalho, and Sandra Caçador
Elsevier BV
C. Khoo-Lattimore and E. Wilson
Apple Academic Press
Women and Travel: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives is a fascinating look at the behavior, motivations, experiences, and needs of women as tourists and travellers, drawing on both historic and contemporary eras. Surprisingly little research has explored key issues, experiences, and opportunities in the context of women’s travel. This revealing volume fills this gap, exploring the discourses, debates, and discussions about women, travel, and tourism.
With an international roster of contributors from diverse regions of the world, the book celebrates a variety of women’s voices. Khoo-Lattimore and Wilson deliberately sought to include nontraditional and non-Western perspectives on women’s travel, with inclusions of Asian solo female travelers; Islamic women travellers and the constraints placed on them; and women who cannot travel (or choose, for whatever reason, a ‘home holiday’).
This enlightening volume brings together scholars from the broad areas of tourism, hospitality, geography, and leisure studies to examine how and why women travel. The chapters bring light to perspectives from different countries, cultures, backgrounds, and religions, and utilize different methods, approaches and styles of presentation.
Women and Travel: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives will be of interest to academics and graduate students from a range of disciplines, including tourism, leisure studies, sociology, cultural geography, anthropology, feminist and gender studies, business, economics and management; as well as professionals working in the tourism industry, particularly those with an interest in niche markets and segmentation.
Fiona Eva Bakas
Emerald
PurposeThis paper aims to contribute to entrepreneurship theorising by highlighting the salience of feminine caring positions in creating novel entrepreneurial roles and investigating how these roles contribute to community resilience. Using a critical feminist economics lens, alternative conceptualisations of the economy are expanded upon to reveal how an economic externality influences entrepreneurial discourse, gender roles and community resilience.Design/methodology/approachIn this interpretive approach, empirical evidence is drawn from six months of intensive ethnographic research with 20 tourism handicraft micro-entrepreneurs in Crete and Epirus, Greece, in 2012 and hence in the context of a macroeconomic crisis. Ethnographic interviewing and participant observation are used as the methods to achieve the research objectives.FindingsThematic analysis is used to investigate how gender roles and entrepreneurial roles interact and how this interaction influences community resilience to an economic crisis. Using the critical theory to critique neoclassical economics interpretations of entrepreneurship, it becomes evident that politico-economic structures perpetuating feminised responsibility for social reproduction configure feminine entrepreneurial roles, and these roles have a positive effect on increasing community resilience. By conceptualising entrepreneurial involvement as being primarily for community gain, participants highlight how feminine entrepreneurial discourse differs from the neoclassical economics entrepreneurial discourse of entrepreneurial involvement being primarily for individual gain.Social implicationsThis paper contributes to theoretical advancements on the role of gender in entrepreneurship and community resilience by investigating the entrepreneurs’ gendered responses to an exogenous shock. Providing insight into the role gender has in entrepreneurial adaptation and sustainable business practices means that new policies to combat social exclusion and promote rural development can be formulated.Originality/valueThe theoretical interplay between gender and entrepreneurship is investigated from a novel angle, that of critical feminist economics. The relationship between feminised interpretations of entrepreneurship and community resilience is brought to light, providing a unique insight into entrepreneurial resilience.
Carlos Costa, Zélia Breda, Fiona Eva Bakas, Marília Durão, and Isabel Pinho
IGI Global
A significant challenge faced by the tourism and hospitality industries in a rapidly changing world, is the ability to sustain organisational growth. Some of the main strategies for achieving organisational growth are those related to innovation, internationalisation and networking. Addressing tourism studies' contemporary shift to a focus on social influences, this study investigates the relations between gender and organisational growth. Qualitative analysis of focus groups with managers from the seven administrative regions in Portugal provides an in-depth account of tourism and gender issues based on empirical evidence. Viewing the ways in which tourism managers contribute to organisational growth through the angle of gender, this chapter provides a compelling account of the delicate and often invisible interactions between economic and social transactions. Results illustrate how women as a labour source are paradoxically viewed as both an asset and an impediment to organisational growth strategies.