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Recent news coverage of tourism worldwide has shown how prioritizing uncontrolled economic growth results in unsustainable visitor numbers in many destinations. Tourism as a development strategy often ignores the needs of residents—especially the less privileged—who often experience declines in quality of life including gentrification, displacement, and environmental degradation.
Teaching the Sociology of Tourism entails focusing not only on tourists, but also on host community members, who live in popular destinations but whose voices are often ignored in the planning process. In class, I often mention cases such as tours to Native destinations where White tour operators promote narratives based on stereotypes as well as so-called poverty tourism, in which wealthy visitors tour underserved areas in ways that are romanticized and disrespectful.
In such a context, how might a public sociology approach include the voices of the community in a Sociology of Tourism course? In my class, I engage with decolonial theories and strategies like guest speakers, collaborative modules, and in-class activities to do this. It is important to highlight that my class is a cross-listed Hospitality-Sociology course, which means that I constantly witness constructive dialogue between students who chose occupations in the tourism and hospitality industry and those who decided to undertake a sociological path.
Guest speakers
Having community members as guest speakers is fundamental to my approach. In my lectures on tourism in historically marginalized communities, I invite community members and partner organizations from Las Vegas’ Westside, which has historically been subject to redlining and racial segregation. Although the area experienced a cultural and economic resurgence in the mid-twentieth century—earning Jackson Street the nickname “The Black Strip”—it later experienced a decline, excluded from the city’s broader tourism economy because of systemic racism.
Westside community guests share with students their vision of the neighborhood’s future, with a focus on the strategies to prevent gentrification and displacement as well as maintain recognition as a Civil Rights and cultural tourism destination. This often leads to an engaging roundtable discussion on the importance of leveraging (often woman-led) Westside small businesses rather than allowing large corporations (such as hotel and restaurant chains) to exploit the area’s resources. Through interactive discussions, students are encouraged to reflect on participatory practices and the importance of including Westside residents’ voices in planning their own neighborhood.
Modules in collaboration
In the past few years, I have included modules on Indigenous tourism in my Sociology of Tourism courses, incorporating Native American communities’ voices, with a particular focus on how tourism can be a tool for empowerment. The first major “rehearsal” of this strategy was in October 2025, when, I taught a Zoom-based class live from the American Indigenous Tourism Conference in Choctaw, Mississippi, I taught a Zoom-based class to my students in Las Vegas. By inviting Native lecturers to join the call and intentionally keeping the conference space visible in the background, I gave students a real-life view of how this important conference operates. Following the success of this initiative, my Spring 2026 class includes three full modules in collaboration with the American Indigenous Tourism Association, with lectures led by Indigenous scholars, who also propose specific course materials.
In-class activities
Finally, I use role-play activities in the classroom when explaining community member inclusion in tourism development. I usually divide students into two groups and ask them to envision a public information meeting in which a group of developers (played by one group) presents a project, such as a resort, a theme park, or a stadium, to the residents (played by the other group). After the developers’ presentations, I invite the students playing the residents to ask questions, often focusing on key sociological topics, including community well-being and environmental protection. Sometimes I ask students to play local politicians as well, asking them to reflect on the role of public policies in these dynamics from an urban sociology perspective.
The discussions are engaging, and students gain firsthand insight into the complexity of tourism planning dynamics and their many sociological implications. At the end of the activity, I explain that what theythe students just did is exactly what happens in destinations that invest in participatory planning processes. When I invite guest speakers, who are often present at similar community meetings, I ask students to share their experience with this in-class activity with guest speakers, who are often present at real-life community meetings, and compare it with real-life examples, once again bringing community voices into the conversation.
Marta Soligo is an Assistant Professor at the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Undertaking a sociological approach, her research investigates the intersections of tourism, social justice, and community studies. Specific areas of focus include overtourism, film-induced tourism, dark tourism, immigrant labor in hospitality, and gambling studies. Soligo has presented her research at conferences hosted by prominent organizations, including UNWTO (World Tourism Organization) and ASA (American Sociological Association). Soligo also serves as Visiting Professor of Sociology of Tourism at the University of Bergamo (Italy). Contact her at: marta.soligo@unlv.edu
Looking to teach and conduct research on religion? ASA has shared Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures datasets See here.
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A section of my Sociology of Education course is devoted to primary and secondary education policy. We tackle one of the biggest policies that has shaped K-12 education —school choice. I assign my recent book, Kindergarten Panic: Parental Anxiety and School Choice Inequality, as well as short videos and popular opinion news articles to provide context for the discussion. In a short 75-minute seminar, I have found that diversifying my pedagogical approach by alternating discussion, group, and independent activities ensures students understand policy impacts across multiple levels. I do this by splitting the class into intervals–a 15-minute lecture and personal reflection, and 30 minutes each for a team project and an independent visual analysis. Each class module centers on a different instructional method and policy lens. I find this mode of teaching pairs well with a lesson on policy because my goal is to encourage students to think about policy from multiple perspectives.
Mini-Lecture and Personal Reflection
To begin our conversation on policy, we explore personal experiences and reflections. I ask students to reflect on the schools they attended and how school choice might have shaped their educational contexts. We turn next to a broader discussion of policymaking and policy experiences based on the assigned reading. We cover the major debates and students evaluate key questions and arguments for and against school choice. I intentionally develop questions that encourage students to think about how policy has impacted their own lives, how policy appears in current news outlets, and how policy is experienced differently by various actors in the education sector. Grounded in an understanding of how a policy like school choice shapes student learning, students are ready to apply these frameworks in an interactive activity.
Active and Peer Learning
In the first guided group activity, students apply their understanding of policy in a role-playing activity. I use the “School Choice and Inequality: Choosing Schools Activity” developed by Alanna Gillis and published in the Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology. Students evaluate family descriptions—families with varied income levels and racial and ethnic backgrounds who are all deciding on a school for their child. As students role play as a parent with an elementary-aged child, they think through the available options and consider how the introduction of a new policy shapes decision-making for families. I use this conversation to demonstrate how a policy like school choice, while intended to reduce inequality, may actually create great constraints and barriers for many families.
Project-Based Learning and Visual Analysis
To wrap up our policy discussion, we circle back to media representations and visuals in an independent activity. Here, I allow students to choose which visuals (1. charter school websites, 2. charter school advertisements, 3. school choice movie trailers/posters) they would like to examine. I ask students to think about how messages about charter schools and traditional public schools are disseminated by deciphering and comparing advertisements, websites, and movie trailers. Students can pick from a list of national charter school websites or school choice movie trailers. After examining their chosen media depiction, students share the messages that are transmitted. As a class, we think about how these media visuals shape on-the-ground perceptions for families and the overall effectiveness of policies.
Building Critical Frameworks
By the end of the seminar, students gain a deeper understanding of policy and why policy matters, potentially opening their eyes to new career possibilities, the news and media, and even future research questions they might explore for a senior thesis or a research paper. I see this most clearly on students’ open-response midterm exams and their final school district projects. In course reviews, students also share their appreciation for the real-world applicability of the course material.
I find that this varied mode of teaching works across classes in the social sciences and is particularly useful for seminars as well as introductory and more advanced courses. Diversifying the ways we approach policy in the classroom setting also teaches students to think critically about the frameworks they use in their everyday lives to evaluate policy. More broadly, these activities make the classroom a more inclusive space, reducing barriers to participation and engagement and providing students with room and flexibility to interweave their social locations and lived experiences.
Bailey A. Brown is an assistant professor of sociology in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Spelman College. Brown researches and teaches on the sociology of education, research methods, urban sociology, race and ethnicity, and inequality. Brown is the author of Kindergarten Panic: Parental Anxiety and School Choice Inequality (2025).
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