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Workflow management includes concepts of special interest to the business organization field and for the automation of processes within a company. However, process modeling via workflow specifications and workflow management systems can be applied in any field where a workflow exists. The use of CASE tools provides a great increase in performance in information system development but, on the other hand, these tools do not support group work and make skipped steps possible in a methodology. Applying workflow management systems as a meta‐CASE tool together with the use of cooperative methodologies – that aim to capture user requirements – can help us to solve problems related to shortcomings in monitoring, controls, and audit information system development.

In this chapter, the linkages between environment- and disaster-related issues are reviewed in the context of urban planning in developing countries. The focus is on urban areas, with the aim to understand processes in urban systems that are distinct from those in rural villages/towns. Over the past few decades, more people have started living in cities in comparison to rural areas. This shift has led to an increase in the global urban population, which became larger than the rural population in 2007 (United Nations Habitat [UNHABITAT], 2008). The majority of this urban growth has taken place in cities located in developing countries, predominantly in the Asian and African region (UNHABITAT, 2008). Furthermore, it is estimated that up to 95 percent of the total global population increase will be in cities (UNDESA, 2010). Mainly cities in low- and mid-income countries are experiencing trends of urbanization (UNHABITAT, 2008). Projections suggest that 8 out of total 29 new megacities by 2025 will be in developing countries (UNDESA, 2010); therefore, the vast amount of growth will take place in many small and medium cities (UNDESA, 2010; United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction [UNISDR], 2009).

Pressing sustainability issues face the 21st century, as identified by the Millennium Development Goals and its post initiatives, and ethical principles related to fairness, equity, and justice are increasingly important to address climate change and resource scarcities. Yet, such ethical dimensions remain surprisingly little addressed in the tourism literature. Ecofeminist critique offers insights into this gap, identifying historical antecedents in patriarchal, Enlightenment-driven discourses of science where positivistic approaches facilitate the control and use of nature and women. This chapter draws from this critique to propose a preliminary, justice-oriented framework to resituate sustainable tourism within an embodied paradigm that covers intangibles such as emotions, feelings, and an ethic of care.

This chapter explores the potential for and value of imagining a humanist paradigm for tourism studies. It explores how the idea of a “paradigm” in tourism can be conceptualized, arguing that dominant thoughtlines in other fields regarding the meaning of a paradigm are not sufficient for making sense of this idea in the context of tourism studies. The chapter introduces humanism as a philosophical position in the academy and as a lived cultural practice, explores examples of extant work in tourism studies that might be seen to provide the seeds of a humanist paradigm, and offers reflections on the value of imagining such a paradigm for our field.

In the Western thought tradition, the tourist has not been a subject worthy of intellectual musings and philosophical deliberations. Indeed, the tourist has been portrayed in primarily derisive ways. Nietzsche’s remark, “Tourists—they climb mountains like animals, stupid and perspiring, no one has told them that there are beautiful views on the way,” epitomizes the dominant attitude. Why does the figure of the tourist elicit such negative reactions? Do the sentiments perhaps imply something else, or is the tourist a doppelgänger, not anomalous or marginal but normative—a paradigmatic figure? If so, then what can be said of the poetics and politics of the tourist conceptualized as a paradigmatic subject?

The purpose of this chapter is to propose a theory which may lead to a holistic description of the mechanism of touristic phenomena. In so doing, the central discussion is to provide descriptive answers to basic questions. It will not be a sociological or anthropological discourse. Instead, it will use perspectives from environmental psychology, genetics, and a theory of information energy in elementary particle physics. The study of tourism, though it is not a distinct disciplinary field, must provide a grand theory. In this chapter, the discussions mainly focus on the concept of tourist to provide several ideas to amend its definition, which may directly correspond to an overall view of touristic phenomena.

After briefly discussing the two major approaches to the study of tourism (theoretical “why” and practical “how”), and two of their respective protagonists (Tribe and Aramberri), the focus of this chapter turns to the use of paradigms by the former group. First, the meaning of paradigm is explored and examples are provided of paradigms and paradigm shifts in tourism research. However, Aramberri challenges this theoretical position by asserting that such ideological frameworks are not paradigms at all, and are, at best, postmodern mantras. He further argues that such muddled thinking can be overcome once tourism becomes a scientific discipline, a stance firmly rejected by the theoreticians. Thereafter, the use of the word “paradigm” is examined in relation to conferences, research, and shifts, as well as such major tourism perspectives as authenticity, strangerhood, play, and conflict.

This chapter offers a new sustainability-oriented paradigm for cultural and heritage tourism studies: an integrated approach to heritage tourism and heritage conservation based on resilience. Its extensive literature review examines resilience in a range of disciplinary areas, including heritage conservation and tourism studies. An important aim is to “make visible” often neglected parameters in the interactions among social, cultural, economic, and environmental dimensions of heritage conservation and tourism. Within the broader concept of resilience, “cultural resilience” was identified as a crucial bridge between conservation and tourism. The study argues that resilience in general and its cultural forms in particular offer a potentially valuable framework vital for an integrated approach between the two in the common pursuit to manage change and uncertainty in cultural and heritage destinations. The chapter concludes with directions for further development of sustainability-oriented paradigm studies.

This chapter engages cosmopolitan and feminist paradigms of knowledge production through their shared ethics of social justice, equality, and diversity, promoting integration into an emerging postdisciplinary focus on embodied cosmopolitanism(s) as a promising way forward in tourism studies. Cosmopolitan paradigms theorize the dialectics of cultural diversity and universal rights, while feminist cosmopolitanism focuses on gender and sexuality equality and difference within this intersection. An embodied approach combines work on “the body” and “situated embodiment” with the cosmopolitan to embrace all human differences and acknowledge that the researchers’ own embodied cosmopolitanism affects research questions, ethics, and praxis toward transformation in research communities and the academy.