Becoming Through Tourism_final_published.pdf (original) (raw)
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The purpose of this article is to gather together a number of conceptuai or theoretical points drawn from the wider social anthropological discourse on the nature of experience. It advances understandings of the anthropology of experience through the medium of tourism. In turn it also illuminates understandings of the nature of tourism experiences. The article is largely a theoretical piece that is illustrated with details drawn from an ethnographic study of two charter tourism resorts-Palmanova and Magaluf-in Mallorca. Therefore, in an attempt to elucidate more carefully what experience means, it draws on the discussions of 'experience' in the wider anthropological literature, most notably the existential anthropology of Michaei Jacltson and The Anthropology of Experience (Turner and Bruner 1986), and makes links to the writings of Pierre Bourdieu on the concepts of'habitus' and 'field', bringing them to bear on the subject of tourism.
Hazel Andrews BECOMING THROUGH TOURISM : IMAGINATION IN PRACTICE abstract
2017
This paper re-considers the role of tourism imaginaries which have emerged as a dominant paradigm in the study of tourism in recent years. The work examines the way in which they are seen as structuring devices for the enactment of touristic practices and argues that such an approach continues to facilitate the schism which erupted between the imagination and the world of the real wrought by the Enlightenment. Based on ethnographic fieldwork involving periods of participant observation on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, the paper demonstrates that not all of tourists’ experiences can be pre-imagined and, drawing on phenomenological and existential perspectives in anthropology, goes on to argue that understandings of touristic practices emerge in the doing and being of tourism.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2020
Tourism affects the lives of an increasing number of people across the world and has been growing and diversifying immensely since the turn of the 21st century. Anthropological approaches to tourism have also expanded from the early contributions of the 1970s, which tended to focus on the nature of tourism and its “impact” on peripheral host communities. These first interventions see anthropologists theorizing tourism as a “secular ritual,” studying its workings as a process of “acculturation,” and countering macroeconomic views of tourism’s potential for the economic development of peripheral societies by underscoring instead its neocolonial and imperialist features. Tourism is linked to the exacerbation of center-periphery dependencies, seen as an agent of cultural commoditization and responsible for the promotion and dissemination of stereotypical images of people and places. Moving beyond the impact paradigm, which has the disadvantage of portraying tourism as an external, disembedded, and imposed force on a passive population, constructivist approaches highlight its creative appropriations and integral role in the reinvention of culture and traditions. Anthropologists pay attention to the varied range of actors and agencies involved in tourism, accounting for the multi-scalar dimensions of this phenomenon and the uneven circulation of images, discourses, and resources it engenders. Tourism exerts a powerful global influence on how alterity and difference are framed and understood in the contemporary world and contributes to the valorization and dissemination of particular views of culture, identity, and heritage. Tourism is increasingly intertwined with processes of heritage-making, whose study helps advance anthropological reflections on cultural property, material culture, and the memorialization of the past. A key source of livelihood for a growing number of people worldwide, tourism is also becoming more and more associated with development projects in which applied anthropologists are also enrolled as experts and consultants. The study of the tourism-development nexus continues to be a key area of theoretical innovation and has helped advance anthropological debates on North–South relations, dominant responses to poverty and inequality, and their entanglements with neoliberal forms of governance. Given its diffuse and distributed character, tourism and touristification have been approached as forms of ordering that affect and restructure an ever-growing range of entities, and whose effects are increasingly difficult to tease out from concomitant societal processes. The ubiquitous implementations of tourism policies and projects, the influx of tourists, and the debates, reactions, and resistances these generate underscore, however, the importance of uncovering the ways tourism and its effects are being concretely identified, invoked, acted upon, and confronted by its various protagonists. Research on tourism has the potential to contribute to disciplinary debates on many key areas and notions of concern for anthropology. Culture, ethnicity, identity, alterity, heritage, mobility, labor, commerce, hospitality, intimacy, development, and the environment are among the notions and domains increasingly affected and transformed by tourism. The study of tourism helps understand how such transformations occur, uncovering their features and orientations, while also shedding light on the societal struggles that are at stake in them. The analysis of past and current research shows the scope of the theoretical and methodological debates and of the realms of intervention to which anthropological scholarship on tourism can contribute.
Envisioning Eden: Mobilizing imaginaries in tourism and beyond
2010
As tourism service standards become more homogeneous, travel destinations worldwide are conforming yet still trying to maintain, or even increase, their distinctiveness. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Arusha, Tanzania, this book offers an in-depth investigation of the local-to-global dynamics of contemporary tourism. Each destination offers examples that illustrate how tour guide narratives and practices are informed by widely circulating imaginaries of the past as well as personal fantasies of the future. The author reveals how local guides in Yogyakarta and Arusha insure the continued reproduction and localization of tourism fantasies, but they also use the privileged contact with foreigners to foment their own imaginations of "paradise on earth." The book focuses on the human mechanics of globalization, cosmopolitan mobility, and the role of the imaginary in giving people’s lives meaning, demonstrating essential ways in which ethnographies of tourism and travel contribute to ongoing theoretical and methodological debates about the local–global nexus.
Anthropologies of Tourism: What's in a Name
Antropología del turismo en países en desarrollo: Análisis crítico de las culturas, poderes e identidades generados por el turismo" [Anthropology of tourism in developing countries: A critical analysis of the cultures, powers, and identitities generated by tourism].
TOURISM REFLEXIVILITY AND PROCESS
Tourism is a social phenomenon that encompasses, invades, and connects all 13 spheres of social life, creating a specific narrative that gives meaning to the prac- 14 tices of what ‘‘being tourist’’ signifies. If mobilities and migrations are interpreted 15 as universal vehicles for emancipation that historically transcended the boundaries 16 of nations, there is no reason to think tourism is less important. For that reason, 17 the study of tourism merits inter-disciplinary endeavors with the end of under- 18 standing to what extent agency and structure connects. Throughout this work, 19 Margarita Barreto introduces readers to an all-encompassing framework of the 20 potentials, risks, and limitations in viewing tourism as a scientific discipline. This 21 edited book consists of six well-written chapters by different authors (Alejandro 22 Otamendi, Marcela Paz-Herrera, German Pinque, Ana Marı´a Costa-Beber, Raque 23 Lunardi, Patricia Torres-Fernandez, and Fabian Flores). The project was inspired 24 after the IX Argentine Conference of Social Anthropology (CAAS) held in 2008 25 at the National University of Misiones, Argentina. The main topic of this event 26 has been the epistemological boundaries of anthropology and tourism. What is 27 remarkable in the high-quality of this book is the fact no financial support was gi- 28 ven to Barreto and her collaborators. To be more precise, the experience of this 29 event left more than expected, and the different selected manuscripts were com- 30 piled into a coherent work thanks to individual efforts of authors.
Encounters between people and collectives in touristified scenarios can be studied as relations between alterities. Many studies contribute neither to making an advantageous use of those encounters as the object of study or understanding their richness; these studies tend to avoid their problematisation as multidimensional human relationships. This way, some theoretical-methodological and epistemological turns can shed some light on the barriers in this respect. Among them, the current paper suggests considering current tourism as mobility, placing it in the social sciences and humanities as an epistemological and theoretical-methodological substratum, where there can be research of concrete experiences with qualitative methods to account for empathic or conflictive aspects while still considering the historical interpretations and the influencing discourses between ones and others.