Research Commons
      • Browse 
        • Communities & Collections
        • Titles
        • Authors
        • By Issue Date
        • Subjects
        • Types
        • Series
      • Help 
        • About
        • Collection Policy
        • OA Mandate Guidelines
        • Guidelines FAQ
        • Contact Us
      • My Account 
        • Sign In
        • Register
      View Item 
      •   Research Commons
      • University of Waikato Theses
      • Higher Degree Theses
      • View Item
      •   Research Commons
      • University of Waikato Theses
      • Higher Degree Theses
      • View Item
      JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

      Experiences of care at the nexus of intellectual disability and leisure travel

      Gillovic, Brielle
      Thumbnail
      Files
      thesis.pdf
      4.044Mb
      Citation
      Export citation
      Gillovic, B. (2019). Experiences of care at the nexus of intellectual disability and leisure travel (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)). The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/12833
      Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/12833
      Abstract
      This thesis explores lived experiences of care at the nexus of intellectual disability and leisure travel, notably among a sample of carers and people with intellectual disabilities, whose voices are otherwise absent in much previous tourism scholarship. The originality of this research therefore lies in its approach, which favours the cognisance of situated, contextual and value-laden care experiences between self and other, privileging subjective and inter-subjective ways of knowing, and humanising the intricacies of the participants’ individual, relational and emotional lives.

      In this way, this thesis seeks to honour the participants’ authentic voices, positionalities and subjectivities as they narrate their lived experiences. It offers, thus, a person-centred, strengths- and abilities-based approach to inclusive tourism research. As such, this research adopts a Heideggerian interpretive phenomenological approach, exploratory in its nature and qualitative in its design. The data has been collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviewing with fifteen carers and nine people with intellectual disabilities. The data was then thematically analysed, inductively eliciting a depth and richness of meaning embedded in the participants’ experiential knowledge, iteratively and recursively negotiated with the theoretical knowledge.

      Findings of this thesis define the leisure travel phenomenon both as a meaningful experience in and of itself, and as the situated context in which carers and people with intellectual disabilities make sense of, and ascribe meaning to, their lived experiences of care. The analysis reveals three key emergent themes: giving, attunement, and (in)visibility. Experiences of care at the nexus of intellectual disability and leisure travel, indeed, are a labour of love. They reflect a complex and dynamic (re)negotiation of the paradoxical tensions involved in being in between two worlds, and span practical, emotional and socio-political caring spheres. This thesis concludes with implications for (re)imagining the transformative potential of tourism through an ethic of care as an ethos to guide our social relations, wherein we meet one another morally.
      Date
      2019
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Name
      Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
      Supervisors
      Cockburn-Wootten, Cheryl
      McIntosh, Alison J.
      Darcy, Simon
      Publisher
      The University of Waikato
      Rights
      All items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
      Collections
      • Higher Degree Theses [1714]
      Show full item record  

      Usage

      Downloads, last 12 months
      321
       
       

      Usage Statistics

      For this itemFor all of Research Commons

      The University of Waikato - Te Whare Wānanga o WaikatoFeedback and RequestsCopyright and Legal Statement