Overview
What is meaningful about the experience of travelling abroad? What feeds the impulse to explore new horizons? In Being a Tourist, Harrison analyzes her conversations with a large group of upper-middle-class travellers. Why, she asks, do these people invest their resources - financial, emotional, psychological, and physical - in this activity? Harrison suggests that they are fuelled by several desires, including a search for intimacy and connection, an expression of personal aesthetic, an exploration of the understanding of ""home,"" and a sense-making strategy for a globalized world. She also reflects on the moral and political complexities of the travels of these people. Being a Tourist draws on a wide range of social theory, going beyond current debates of authenticity and consumption. Engagingly and thoughtfully written, it will be required reading for those in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and, more generally, for anyone interested in tourism studies and travel writing.
Full Product Details
Author: Julia Harrison
Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
Imprint: University of British Columbia Press
Weight: 0.520kg
ISBN: 9780774809771
ISBN 10: 0774809779
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 15 November 2002
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
The flavor is ethnographic and particularistic; Harrison provides many conceptual frames through which to view the experiences of her interviewees, yet their own voices come through. This retention of individuality makes the book unique, providing an unusual narrative depth. The author's command of the theoretical literature is impressive ... Highly recommended. -- C. Hendershott Choice
Being a Tourist will undoubtedly come to figure as a benchmark study in the anthropology of tourism - a book to which all subsequent studies will want to refer. Finally, a study of tourism from the tourists' point of view! - David Howes, editor of Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities
""Being a Tourist will undoubtedly come to figure as a benchmark study in the anthropology of tourism - a book to which all subsequent studies will want to refer. Finally, a study of tourism from the tourists' point of view! - David Howes, editor of Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities
"""Being a Tourist will undoubtedly come to figure as a benchmark study in the anthropology of tourism - a book to which all subsequent studies will want to refer. Finally, a study of tourism from the tourists' point of view! - David Howes, editor of Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities"
Author Information
Julla D. Harrison, formerly a museum curator, is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Trent University.
