Mason, Peter (2025) Book review: Bruce Prideaux and David Beirman (eds), Handbook on crisis and disaster management in tourism (Edward Elgar, 2024) 430 pages. Journal of Qualitative Research in Tourism. pp. 1-3. ISSN 2632-9689
This edited book has 25 chapters and is part of the series of Edward Elgar’s research handbooks in Tourism. The authors represent several different countries affected by crises and disasters at the time the book was published, although just under a half were based at Australian or New Zealand universities/institutions. Nevertheless, over a third were working in the USA, there were several based in the UK, and others in Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Ghana and Saudi Arabia, indicating the international perspectives in the book. The objective of the book, according to the editors, is to explore the diversity of the issues, and they decided to bring together ‘a collection that includes theoretical perspectives, case studies, methodologies and a selection of chapters from non- academic authors who have first-hand experience of working in crisis situations' (p. xiv).
The book explores seven themes, according to what is provided by the editors in Chapter 1. As the editors indicate, a number of themes cover more than one chapter; hence, the book is not structured in such a way that the themes are discrete or in the sequence shown below, but instead are spread over several chapters:
• The lifecycle approach to crises and disasters (12 chapters)
• COVID-19 responses (six chapters)
• Academic research-theory building (four chapters)
• Practitioners’ perspectives on crises and disasters (four chapters).
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