Readings for Monday January 29, 2007
If you have difficulty getting hold of Dean MacCannell's The Tourist (a copy is on reserve in Bobst), please read these articles instead.
These readings, which span the period 1973 to 2001, begin with the emergence of interest in tourism in sociology, inaugurated in large measure by the publication of MacCannell's The Tourist. In the essay found here, one of MacCannell's core concepts (the role of front and back regions in the staging of authenticity), derived from Goffman, is explored. Erik Cohen, also a sociologist, offers a typology of tourist experiences, which is part of his more general concern with the concept of the tourist and a typology of tourists. Recommended is his 1984 article on the sociology of tourism, where he outlines tourism as a system. Adler, a sociologist, is of special interest to us for her attention, as early as 1989, to travel as a performed art; she pays special attention to the relationship of the history of tourism to the history of art and examines artistic practices that are at one and the same time travel practices. Franklin and Crang, geographers, offer a manifesto of sorts for the "new tourism," upon the launching of the new journal Tourist Studies. Recommended as well is Bauman, a Polish born and trained sociologist, who suggests what a postmodern perspective might offer when tourism and its history become an allegory of sorts for contemporary life.
In addition to anything at all that you find of interest in these readings, here are some additional angles:
1. Based on these readings, how might you define the "tourist"?
2. Where in any of these readings do you see useful concepts and methods for studying tourism today, especially in relation to a project you might do for this class?
3. Where in these readings do you find opportunities for suggesting what a performance studies approach to tourism might be? Are there relevant concepts or concern with particular phenomena or kinds of practices (and ways of looking at them) that might figure in such an approach?
Please read:
MacCannell, Dean. 1973. Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings. American Journal of Sociology 79, no. 3: 589-603.
Cohen, Erik. 1979. A phenomenology of tourist experiences. Sociology 13, no. 2: 179-201.
Adler, Judith. Origins of Sightseeing. Annals of Tourism Research 16, no. 1 (1989): 7-29.
Franklin, Adrian and Michael Crang, The trouble with tourism and travel theory? Tourist Studies 1, no. 1 (2001): 5-22.
Recommended:
Cohen, Erik. 1984. The Sociology of Tourism: Approaches, Issues, and Findings. Annual Review of Sociology 10: 373-92.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1996. From pilgrim to tourist--or a short history of identity. In Questions of cultural identity, eds. Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay. London, Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage, 18-36.