The performativity and institutionality of 'Islamicness' in 'Islamic tourism': defining a field and proposing a research agenda

This article suggests that Islamic tourism be theorized not as a type of tourism but as a subject area that conceptualizes tourism as an institutional field in which different actors at micro, meso, and macro levels discursively and performatively co-constitute multiple realities for Muslim populations. This conceptualization can: 1) enable researchers to shift away from the existing constraining definitions to one that allows them to examine how tourism both shapes and is shaped by social, economic, cultural, political, ideological, emotional, psychological, and environmental realities of Muslims; 2) help situate tourism in a broad spatial-temporal institutional setting wherein Islamicness is not a pre-determined entity but is a fluid concept in constant processes of 'becoming' (i.e., being shaped by other entities) and 'making' (i.e., shaping other entities); and 3) help foster reflexivity and critical thinking by drawing attention to the institutional and historical structures within which Islamic/halal tourism research has emerged and evolved.