Picking on the poor: the contradictions of theory and neo-liberal critique. A response to Stasja Koot's paper on the contradictions of capitalism for Indigenous tourism in the South African Kalahari

The relevance of neo-liberal critique of a community-owned, but commercially managed lodge, is examined with regard to Stasja Koot's paper on “The contradictions of capitalism” published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism in 2016. Koot focuses on the ≠Khomani Bushmen's relationship with !Xaus Lodge in the Kalahari Desert. His argument locates this small facility as an exemplar of the global contradictions of capitalism in the tourism sector. My response critiques Koot's methodology, theory and conclusions. It provides the missing history of the project discussed, and details the financial evidence that cautions Koot's speculative interpretations. My analysis cautions the relevance and use of Koot's application of David Harvey's Marxist-derived theory of spatial and temporal fixes. This response's assessment is that Koot's conclusions are arrived at without sufficient supporting evidence, and that his theory-led argument conceals a myriad of contextual contradictions that question the unproblematic application of Harvey's theory into a political economic context for which it was not designed. Some comment is offered on researcher positions and responsibilities and on how to interpret responses offered by ≠Khomani sources, whose own playful (and sometimes wilful) exploitation of researchers results in information that must always be triangulated for accuracy.     

Ecological Fallacy and Covariates: New Insights based on Multilevel Modelling of Individual Data

The paper provides a new and more explicit formulation of the assumptions needed by the ordinary ecological regression to provide unbiased estimates and clarifies why violations of these assumptions will affect any method of ecological inference. Empirical evidence is obtained by showing that estimates provided by three main ecological inference methods are heavily biased when compared with multilevel logistic regression applied to a unique set of individual data on voting behaviour. The main findings of our paper have two important implications that can be extended to all situations where the assumptions needed to apply ecological inference are violated in the data: (i) only ecological inference methods that allow one to model the effect of covariates have a chance to produce unbiased estimates, and (ii) there are certain data generating mechanisms producing a kind of bias in ecological estimates that cannot be corrected by modelling the effect of covariates.     

Multivariate statistical techniques and sociological research

Both the validity and the reliability of the statistical techniques used in data processing procedures constitute an important issue concerning the validity of inferences. A critical analysis developed on the data processing techniques takes into account both their correct application and their ability to provide information from which to draw inferences with a testable relationship of correspondence between a piece of information and an inferred sentence. This paper proposes an attempt to test the use of factorial techniques used to construct indicators and of scaling techniques in order to determine semantic areas in the sociological research praxis.     

Network analysis approach to map tourism mobility

The spatial distribution of tourists is uneven and it can include some areas at regional and/or sub-regional level. The social–economic and environmental impacts of tourism, are concentrated in different areas. Some recent contributions show the usefulness and the effectiveness of network analysis (NA) approach in revising the organization of tourist facilities and services. This paper proposes to apply methods borrowed from NA to map the spatial distribution of tourism mobility in Sicily. So, we analyze the network features of tourism in a multi-destinations net. By means of traditional measures of NA, we propose to measure the links among destinations. The study aims to connect destinations, represented as nodes, to define a territorial network of tourism demand. In the specific instance, the degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality are used to localize central areas and the main routes. We test survey data collected on a sample of tourists leaving from airports and ports of the main Sicilian cities, who visited two destinations at least. Then, we study tourism mobility on those areas selected by tourists. Finally, employing measures derived from NA, the work attempts to set out territorial networks. This approach could be useful to plane tourism development policies.