Elite interview, tourism governance and post-disaster recovery: evidence from post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand

Despite the long tradition of fieldwork in tourism studies, there is only limited reflection on the role of fieldwork in current literature. A great extent of excellent methodological notes is not published in academic journals and those few contributions that are eventually published are often in an abbreviated and sanitized form to meet the aims, scopes and readership of such journals. In addition, methods literature is surprisingly scant when it comes to the relationships between researchers and the so-called elites. This is further evident in urban studies with regards to post-disaster recovery and the rebuild of urban tourist spaces. This manuscript seeks to fill the current gap in the flied by providing a reflective methodological account on fieldwork and elite interviewing for tourism governance in post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand. It does so by implementing a framework addressing key points in elite interview process, with emphasis on access to fieldwork, power relations, positionality, rapport and ethical issues. The manuscript presents aspects of fieldwork, spatiality and power relations that tend to be overlooked in the literature. Albeit being context-specific, it is argued that the evidence from this study can also have relevance to the understanding of fieldwork in other urban tourism contexts.