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The Tourist
Long regarded as a classic, The Tourist is an examination of the phenomenon of tourism through a social theory lens that encompasses discussions of authenticity, high and low culture, and the construction of social reality. It brings the concerns of social science to an analysis of travel and sightseeing in the postindustrial age, during which the middle class acquired leisure time for international travel. This edition includes a new foreword by Lucy R. Lippard and a new afterword by the author.
277 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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August 6, 2019
You need to read this – my review is mere foreplay. This book slams together so many interesting ideas that it sparkles. I’ve already recommended it to five people in my real life, and that even before I’d finished reading it.
I haven’t been in the office for the last couple of days, but I emailed someone I work with today to tell him that he needed to read this. He is very keen on Peirce’s work, and I told him this was basically Peirce meets Marx meets Goffman. Three of my favourite theorists – but I could just as easily have also included Barthes, Simmell, or Levi-Strauss.
The sub-title is a reference to Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, a book I would also recommend. In that, Veblen coined the phrase ‘conspicuous consumption’ – basically saying that being rich means that you can do things to show of how well off you are that have virtually no other meaning than as an act of display. What might seem a little odd, you know, given MacCannell has referenced Veblen so obviously in the title of this, is that he hardly mentions him again.
So, what’s this all about? Marx felt that one of the major problems with capitalism was that it is premised on the alienation of labour. That is, Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations discusses how the division of labour enabled truly remarkable increases in the quantity of products that could be produced, but he also pointed out that the division of labour also required people to preform very simple tasks over and over again. He said that doing this for a long enough time makes the worker “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become”. For Marx, such work didn’t just make you stupid, it also meant that you could take no pride (or even interest) in your own work. That is, you became alienated from your own labour, and since Marx believed that labour was, in fact, the pathway to becoming fully human, this alienation from labour stopped us from becoming truly human.
The bit to focus on here is the idea that for much of our lives, while we are working in what other authors have referred to as Bullshit Jobs (yet another book I would recommend highly), is the idea that we can derived virtually zero interest or meaning from the work we do. But we humans are, if nothing else, meaning making machines. So, doing without meaning in our lives isn’t really much of an option.
If we are not able to gain meaning from our work, then we need to find some other aspect of our lives to get meaning from. In a world that is becoming increasingly secular (and I would argue that even ‘Christianity’ – particularly the amusing new forms that look more like rock concerts and that have Gods who want you to be rich – have also become increasingly ‘secular’) we gain meaning from somewhere else. And MacCannell says that elsewhere is ‘tourism’. Well, actually, from tourism or revolution (two ideas he believes are opposite sides of a coin, in some senses).
That tourism is the key meaning in our lives might seem a bit of a jump – but it is a stunningly interesting one. Unlike Veblen’s idea that conspicuous consumption is something limited to the very rich and was a way for them to display their wealth – display is still very important here, but it has become much ‘more democratic’ in the sense that almost everyone today is a tourist at some point of their lives. When I typed ‘how big is the tourism industry’ into Google just now, I found out it is ‘one of the world’s largest industries’ and generated $7.6 trillion in 2014. Tourism is big, it is certainly not limited to the super rich.
But what is it that we are touring to see? Often it is an almost unconscious search for meaning. The author spends quite a bit of time considering what makes something ‘a sight’ or a landmark. Sometimes it will be an entire city – like Paris – other times it will be much less defined – like somewhere on the open road lost on Route 66. Or the meaning of a sight might need to be defined by some other signifier before we would even recognise it as a sight at all – the example given here is a place where Bonnie and Clyde had been in a shoot-out (which today, unsurprisingly, looks like just about anywhere else), or he mentions a young boy looking at a rock brought back from the moon and saying it’s pretty cool, but really it also looks a lot like a normal, everyday rock.
In his Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman takes Shakespeare perhaps a little too literally in his ‘all the world’s a stage’ idea. He says that we have distinctly different personas according to whether we are in an area that could be defined as front stage or in one that is more back stage – that is, if you work in a restaurant, you will be all smiles and customer service while walking between the tables and pouring the wine, but you are likely to be quite different while you are in the kitchen or on your break. Goffman goes a little in the opposite direct to what MacCannell does here, in that he says that one of the problems for some women is that they have to have their customer service face on both at work and at home, that is, that they never get a time when they can let their mask slip – given their husbands expect much the same persona.
MacCannell suggests that much modern tourism is based on fake authentic experiences. In the restaurant example, this would be where you can constantly see into the kitchen from the tables. This doesn’t really do away with the back stage, any more than it provides a ‘real’ glimpse into the back stage – it just converts what had been back stage to front stage. This book suggests that so much of modern tourism is about just that – a kind of mock or perhaps partial or quasi presentation of ‘the real’ that is never quite that. We think we are seeing true and gaining a glimpse of real ‘meaning’ – but it is a cleaned-up version of the real.
In a world where we are denied meaning from our labour, we seek meaning in our travels. We have ‘bucket lists’ and we crave ‘experiences’. My eldest daughter is just back from walking the Camino. I enjoy vicariously travelling with her on Facebook, she’s one of my favourite people in the world and I learn so much from her – she has a remarkable eye for things I wouldn’t otherwise see. One of the things she said when she got home was that the oddest part of the experience was how few Spaniards she saw. She was surrounded by people from across Europe and North America and many of them were seeking some sort of epiphany – and presumably, some of them even experienced that too, possibly for no additional cost. But the Spaniards were rarely anywhere to be seen – often at work during the day and given all the walking, my daughter was sleeping early at night. The book talks of this too – since the places we live in are often also ‘tourist sites’. Except, often even when you are standing beside a group of tourists it isn’t totally clear that you are really ‘in the same space’ as they are in. The rush of most tourist experiences turns cities into virtual theme parks, but that theme park is overlayed across the city that those who live there barely notice or interact with. Even while they are literally collocated.
One of the things this book does to your brain while you are reading it is that it forces you to flick through the tourist events and locations and places you have been to yourself. What was it that made me go to the National Gallery in London? Or to 84 Charing Cross Road? Or to Baker Street Station? Or the Globe? What a bizarre set of pilgrimages. What was I expecting to learn or see or be once I’d gone to those spaces? And I kept thinking about the idea that there must be endless tourists who come to Melbourne, but that about the only time I really notice them is when I’m walking into the reading room at the State Library and they are blocking the doorway so they can take a photograph of the dome.
The more I read this book, the more I couldn’t help thinking of cinema and television as kinds of tourist worlds – where we go to escape the boredom of our day-to-day existence. I’m writing a chapter in a book with a friend at work that uses Westworld to help explain Marx. I’m trying to push the idea that even though the robots’ revolt (I’ve never actually watched an episode of the show, so, that is proving a little unusual in using it to discuss something else) that Marx wouldn’t see that as really comparable to the revolution he was considering. And that is for much the same reason tourism is a complex and contradictory form of escape from our alienated world of labour. Few of us can live our entire lives as tourists, even if we wanted to, and even if we did, it wouldn’t be clear that would be enough to put meaning back into our lives.
I borrowed this book from the library at work – but I’d barely gotten halfway through before I realised I needed to own a copy, and so I bought a second-hand copy off an online book site. In parts you might find this quite a difficult read – but persist with it – it will reward whatever efforts you make.
I haven’t been in the office for the last couple of days, but I emailed someone I work with today to tell him that he needed to read this. He is very keen on Peirce’s work, and I told him this was basically Peirce meets Marx meets Goffman. Three of my favourite theorists – but I could just as easily have also included Barthes, Simmell, or Levi-Strauss.
The sub-title is a reference to Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, a book I would also recommend. In that, Veblen coined the phrase ‘conspicuous consumption’ – basically saying that being rich means that you can do things to show of how well off you are that have virtually no other meaning than as an act of display. What might seem a little odd, you know, given MacCannell has referenced Veblen so obviously in the title of this, is that he hardly mentions him again.
So, what’s this all about? Marx felt that one of the major problems with capitalism was that it is premised on the alienation of labour. That is, Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations discusses how the division of labour enabled truly remarkable increases in the quantity of products that could be produced, but he also pointed out that the division of labour also required people to preform very simple tasks over and over again. He said that doing this for a long enough time makes the worker “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become”. For Marx, such work didn’t just make you stupid, it also meant that you could take no pride (or even interest) in your own work. That is, you became alienated from your own labour, and since Marx believed that labour was, in fact, the pathway to becoming fully human, this alienation from labour stopped us from becoming truly human.
The bit to focus on here is the idea that for much of our lives, while we are working in what other authors have referred to as Bullshit Jobs (yet another book I would recommend highly), is the idea that we can derived virtually zero interest or meaning from the work we do. But we humans are, if nothing else, meaning making machines. So, doing without meaning in our lives isn’t really much of an option.
If we are not able to gain meaning from our work, then we need to find some other aspect of our lives to get meaning from. In a world that is becoming increasingly secular (and I would argue that even ‘Christianity’ – particularly the amusing new forms that look more like rock concerts and that have Gods who want you to be rich – have also become increasingly ‘secular’) we gain meaning from somewhere else. And MacCannell says that elsewhere is ‘tourism’. Well, actually, from tourism or revolution (two ideas he believes are opposite sides of a coin, in some senses).
That tourism is the key meaning in our lives might seem a bit of a jump – but it is a stunningly interesting one. Unlike Veblen’s idea that conspicuous consumption is something limited to the very rich and was a way for them to display their wealth – display is still very important here, but it has become much ‘more democratic’ in the sense that almost everyone today is a tourist at some point of their lives. When I typed ‘how big is the tourism industry’ into Google just now, I found out it is ‘one of the world’s largest industries’ and generated $7.6 trillion in 2014. Tourism is big, it is certainly not limited to the super rich.
But what is it that we are touring to see? Often it is an almost unconscious search for meaning. The author spends quite a bit of time considering what makes something ‘a sight’ or a landmark. Sometimes it will be an entire city – like Paris – other times it will be much less defined – like somewhere on the open road lost on Route 66. Or the meaning of a sight might need to be defined by some other signifier before we would even recognise it as a sight at all – the example given here is a place where Bonnie and Clyde had been in a shoot-out (which today, unsurprisingly, looks like just about anywhere else), or he mentions a young boy looking at a rock brought back from the moon and saying it’s pretty cool, but really it also looks a lot like a normal, everyday rock.
In his Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman takes Shakespeare perhaps a little too literally in his ‘all the world’s a stage’ idea. He says that we have distinctly different personas according to whether we are in an area that could be defined as front stage or in one that is more back stage – that is, if you work in a restaurant, you will be all smiles and customer service while walking between the tables and pouring the wine, but you are likely to be quite different while you are in the kitchen or on your break. Goffman goes a little in the opposite direct to what MacCannell does here, in that he says that one of the problems for some women is that they have to have their customer service face on both at work and at home, that is, that they never get a time when they can let their mask slip – given their husbands expect much the same persona.
MacCannell suggests that much modern tourism is based on fake authentic experiences. In the restaurant example, this would be where you can constantly see into the kitchen from the tables. This doesn’t really do away with the back stage, any more than it provides a ‘real’ glimpse into the back stage – it just converts what had been back stage to front stage. This book suggests that so much of modern tourism is about just that – a kind of mock or perhaps partial or quasi presentation of ‘the real’ that is never quite that. We think we are seeing true and gaining a glimpse of real ‘meaning’ – but it is a cleaned-up version of the real.
In a world where we are denied meaning from our labour, we seek meaning in our travels. We have ‘bucket lists’ and we crave ‘experiences’. My eldest daughter is just back from walking the Camino. I enjoy vicariously travelling with her on Facebook, she’s one of my favourite people in the world and I learn so much from her – she has a remarkable eye for things I wouldn’t otherwise see. One of the things she said when she got home was that the oddest part of the experience was how few Spaniards she saw. She was surrounded by people from across Europe and North America and many of them were seeking some sort of epiphany – and presumably, some of them even experienced that too, possibly for no additional cost. But the Spaniards were rarely anywhere to be seen – often at work during the day and given all the walking, my daughter was sleeping early at night. The book talks of this too – since the places we live in are often also ‘tourist sites’. Except, often even when you are standing beside a group of tourists it isn’t totally clear that you are really ‘in the same space’ as they are in. The rush of most tourist experiences turns cities into virtual theme parks, but that theme park is overlayed across the city that those who live there barely notice or interact with. Even while they are literally collocated.
One of the things this book does to your brain while you are reading it is that it forces you to flick through the tourist events and locations and places you have been to yourself. What was it that made me go to the National Gallery in London? Or to 84 Charing Cross Road? Or to Baker Street Station? Or the Globe? What a bizarre set of pilgrimages. What was I expecting to learn or see or be once I’d gone to those spaces? And I kept thinking about the idea that there must be endless tourists who come to Melbourne, but that about the only time I really notice them is when I’m walking into the reading room at the State Library and they are blocking the doorway so they can take a photograph of the dome.
The more I read this book, the more I couldn’t help thinking of cinema and television as kinds of tourist worlds – where we go to escape the boredom of our day-to-day existence. I’m writing a chapter in a book with a friend at work that uses Westworld to help explain Marx. I’m trying to push the idea that even though the robots’ revolt (I’ve never actually watched an episode of the show, so, that is proving a little unusual in using it to discuss something else) that Marx wouldn’t see that as really comparable to the revolution he was considering. And that is for much the same reason tourism is a complex and contradictory form of escape from our alienated world of labour. Few of us can live our entire lives as tourists, even if we wanted to, and even if we did, it wouldn’t be clear that would be enough to put meaning back into our lives.
I borrowed this book from the library at work – but I’d barely gotten halfway through before I realised I needed to own a copy, and so I bought a second-hand copy off an online book site. In parts you might find this quite a difficult read – but persist with it – it will reward whatever efforts you make.
December 27, 2017
"Travellers seek authentic Hungarian peasant's dinner"
All around the world, especially in those domains inhabited by readers of Lonely Planet publications, a fine (or sometimes not so fine) distinction is drawn between "tourists" and "travellers". Almost always, "tourists" are "them", while "travellers" are "us". Tourists are somebody you can look down on, from the height of your greater awareness, cultural sensitivity, or superior poverty. In the old days, the term "pilgrim" described not only people who went to places like Mecca, Jerusalem or Rome, but also those on the "road of life". It seems to me that all travellers are tourists and vice-versa. Anthropologists too are just tourists with a more professional attitude, intent on telling others what they have found in their in-depth investigations and placing it in an academic framework. If you want to get to the bottom of this whole topic---with all the various ramifications---then you must read MacCannell's book, an essay in the (OK, somewhat arcane) field of the Anthropology of Tourism. It is not a bedtime reading book, but will stimulate plenty of thought.
The author takes the tourist as a model of modern man. He engages in a very effective piece of structural analysis; more effective in my opinion than any ever created by the Old Master, Claude Levi-Strauss. A reader of THE TOURIST will come away having understood everything, not totally baffled by mountains of jargon. The pre-modern world has not disappeared, it has been turned into zillions of tourist attractions. We, the seekers, pilgrims, or, if you like, the tourists, try to get close to the roots of our civilization, to our own origins, by visiting and looking at packaged versions of the past. Where pre-modern societies still exist to some extent, for example, among the hill tribes of Thailand, tourists make great efforts to visit them and, significantly, try their utmost to ensure that their visits are not "packaged" but "real". The tourist wants to penetrate and share the lives of "others", others who are so distinct from ourselves. Tourist satisfaction may be directly correlated to how "authentic" the experience seems to the visitors. That's why having the authentic Hungarian peasant's dinner is important. Unfortunately, you can't really share that dinner if you are travelling with forty other pilgrims in search of authenticity on a large bus. But advertising, as always, can work wonders! Fake authenticity has become the norm.
MacCannell discusses such serious topics as "commodity and symbol", "cultural productions and work groups" and how these relate to work. In subsequent chapters, entitled "Sightseeing and Social Structure", "The Paris Case: Origins of Alienated Leisure", "Staged Authenticity", "A Semiotic of Attraction", "The Ethnomethodology of Sightseers", and "Structure, Genuine and Spurious", the author covers a wide variety of fascinating subjects in a brilliant book which will definitely succeed in making you view tourism in a different way forever afterwards. The pages are crammed with insights, analysis, good examples and interesting observations. This book is the classic work of the Anthropology of Tourism. If you are starting out in the field or are just interested in thinking about tourism in modern life, this is your book. If you are a tourist along the byways of Goodreads, you might consider making a stop here. You will not find less than an authentic gem.
All around the world, especially in those domains inhabited by readers of Lonely Planet publications, a fine (or sometimes not so fine) distinction is drawn between "tourists" and "travellers". Almost always, "tourists" are "them", while "travellers" are "us". Tourists are somebody you can look down on, from the height of your greater awareness, cultural sensitivity, or superior poverty. In the old days, the term "pilgrim" described not only people who went to places like Mecca, Jerusalem or Rome, but also those on the "road of life". It seems to me that all travellers are tourists and vice-versa. Anthropologists too are just tourists with a more professional attitude, intent on telling others what they have found in their in-depth investigations and placing it in an academic framework. If you want to get to the bottom of this whole topic---with all the various ramifications---then you must read MacCannell's book, an essay in the (OK, somewhat arcane) field of the Anthropology of Tourism. It is not a bedtime reading book, but will stimulate plenty of thought.
The author takes the tourist as a model of modern man. He engages in a very effective piece of structural analysis; more effective in my opinion than any ever created by the Old Master, Claude Levi-Strauss. A reader of THE TOURIST will come away having understood everything, not totally baffled by mountains of jargon. The pre-modern world has not disappeared, it has been turned into zillions of tourist attractions. We, the seekers, pilgrims, or, if you like, the tourists, try to get close to the roots of our civilization, to our own origins, by visiting and looking at packaged versions of the past. Where pre-modern societies still exist to some extent, for example, among the hill tribes of Thailand, tourists make great efforts to visit them and, significantly, try their utmost to ensure that their visits are not "packaged" but "real". The tourist wants to penetrate and share the lives of "others", others who are so distinct from ourselves. Tourist satisfaction may be directly correlated to how "authentic" the experience seems to the visitors. That's why having the authentic Hungarian peasant's dinner is important. Unfortunately, you can't really share that dinner if you are travelling with forty other pilgrims in search of authenticity on a large bus. But advertising, as always, can work wonders! Fake authenticity has become the norm.
MacCannell discusses such serious topics as "commodity and symbol", "cultural productions and work groups" and how these relate to work. In subsequent chapters, entitled "Sightseeing and Social Structure", "The Paris Case: Origins of Alienated Leisure", "Staged Authenticity", "A Semiotic of Attraction", "The Ethnomethodology of Sightseers", and "Structure, Genuine and Spurious", the author covers a wide variety of fascinating subjects in a brilliant book which will definitely succeed in making you view tourism in a different way forever afterwards. The pages are crammed with insights, analysis, good examples and interesting observations. This book is the classic work of the Anthropology of Tourism. If you are starting out in the field or are just interested in thinking about tourism in modern life, this is your book. If you are a tourist along the byways of Goodreads, you might consider making a stop here. You will not find less than an authentic gem.
November 21, 2024
I found this book at the Old Capitol bookstore in Monterey California, a brave venue keeping alive a grand bookstore in a reduced but still proud form. I was glad to find and purchase this odd manuscript.
Odd because it takes a topic of crass familiarity and gives it a structuralist twist citing Marx and Hegel and featuring an introductory quote from Baudelaire. I really liked the beginning of the book and how it frames tourism as a feature of modernism and late stage capitalism looking at how tourism elevates experience into a commodity.
The book doesn’t sustain its early promise because it doesn’t develop the way experience in the form of tourism acts as a commodity. Instead the book focuses on the peculiarities of tourism as a form of experience in its various manifestations. It focuses on how tourism convinces the tourist that he or she is experiencing something real when they aren’t.
The book provides a wide-ranging exploration of various aspects of tourist experiences but had it shown just a couple and done a deep dive into their commodification, I would appreciated that more.
Odd because it takes a topic of crass familiarity and gives it a structuralist twist citing Marx and Hegel and featuring an introductory quote from Baudelaire. I really liked the beginning of the book and how it frames tourism as a feature of modernism and late stage capitalism looking at how tourism elevates experience into a commodity.
The book doesn’t sustain its early promise because it doesn’t develop the way experience in the form of tourism acts as a commodity. Instead the book focuses on the peculiarities of tourism as a form of experience in its various manifestations. It focuses on how tourism convinces the tourist that he or she is experiencing something real when they aren’t.
The book provides a wide-ranging exploration of various aspects of tourist experiences but had it shown just a couple and done a deep dive into their commodification, I would appreciated that more.
December 15, 2015
Can we call this a classic now?
This book is somewhat dated, but is a good start if you're interesting in learning about the tourism industry and travel narratives. It was one of the early works that discussed tourism as an actual theory to understand America.
There are, however, some problems that keep me from giving this five stars. Mainly, MacCannell attempts to discuss tourism without taking ethnicity, race, and class into consideration. While this is an interesting idea, we all probably realize that this is a necessary part of the analysis. Class alone helps determine who can be a tourist to begin with. So for this reason alone, I knocked it down a star.
It is dated, but it is kind of a classic. I think it is a great starting point for readers to begin with before you move into more contemporary analyses.
This book is somewhat dated, but is a good start if you're interesting in learning about the tourism industry and travel narratives. It was one of the early works that discussed tourism as an actual theory to understand America.
There are, however, some problems that keep me from giving this five stars. Mainly, MacCannell attempts to discuss tourism without taking ethnicity, race, and class into consideration. While this is an interesting idea, we all probably realize that this is a necessary part of the analysis. Class alone helps determine who can be a tourist to begin with. So for this reason alone, I knocked it down a star.
It is dated, but it is kind of a classic. I think it is a great starting point for readers to begin with before you move into more contemporary analyses.
Want to read
January 26, 2010Found this book on a list of Nine subversive travel books.
Read
November 3, 2025ngl dnf (mostly due to time constraints) but glad menzies could have it shipped in for me to borrow
April 28, 2024
Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist posits a modern world that is constructed by tourists and accommodated to meet the need of tourists. In the modern world, we are all tourists. As tourists, we share the same end goal of seeking authentic experiences wherever we travel. As a result, the rhetoric of tourism manifests a new reality made of what we expect to see: “[ironically] this is a typical native house; this is the actual pen used to sign the law; this is the original manuscript; this is an authentic Tlingit fish club; this is a real piece of the true Crown of Thorns”. Such new reality is what the author called "staged authenticity" or things that satisfy tourists' expectation. Aside from other scholars, MacCannell neither condemns nor commends tourists, but he rather admits tourists are the central component that facilitates the establishment of a modern world. This book is an esoteric read and theoretically heavy. It took me two times to read chapter five on the definition of “staged authenticity” and the front and back concept of tourist settings. I expect to use the book in my thesis on Vietnam’s tourism.
November 7, 2023
I wrongly mark it as read, even though I wasn't able to go further the very first chapter. The topic apealed to me, specially coming back from my lovely holidays in Cuba, but what I found was a dense treaty of sociology. I really tried to go through it, but it was too technical, and worst of all, the concepts used in the book aren't well defined.
So the book is a sociological analysis of tourism, but more academic than a general public book. And it was written in the 1960s, well before the low cost flights that have boosted tourism the last three decades, so the book should be twice as long today!
So the book is a sociological analysis of tourism, but more academic than a general public book. And it was written in the 1960s, well before the low cost flights that have boosted tourism the last three decades, so the book should be twice as long today!
March 15, 2023
Un saggio con un suo interesse e con parecchie nozioni utili da conoscere, che tuttavia risente del passare del tempo: scritto poco prima degli anni Settanta, in un settore in continua evoluzione come quello del turismo, risulta inevitabilmente datato sotto molti aspetti. E' inoltre un libro abbastanza complesso, pertanto per comprenderne ogni passaggio è necessario possedere un background socio-culturale di un certo tipo: lo strutturalismo, Levi-Strauss, Durkheim, Veblen, il marxismo, l'etnografia, la sociologia, la semiotica, la linguistica ecc. I rimandi ad altre discipline scientifiche sono numerosi, i collegamenti continui, perciò lo ritengo un lavoro adatto agli specialisti del settore, ai professori e agli studiosi, non al lettore comune.
Infine, l'analisi metodologica porta a una visione tendenzialmente molto negativa del turismo, interpretato come male assoluto. In ciò l'autore risulta forse estremo - sebbene si dichiari neutrale - e le sue conclusioni pratiche sono pressoché inesistenti, di certo poco utili e realizzabili. Lo studio resta in fin dei conti fine a sé stesso, peraltro non più attuale per molti aspetti.
Infine, l'analisi metodologica porta a una visione tendenzialmente molto negativa del turismo, interpretato come male assoluto. In ciò l'autore risulta forse estremo - sebbene si dichiari neutrale - e le sue conclusioni pratiche sono pressoché inesistenti, di certo poco utili e realizzabili. Lo studio resta in fin dei conti fine a sé stesso, peraltro non più attuale per molti aspetti.
December 22, 2020
Libro muy singular, en ocasiones denso y difícil de seguir. Esto último tiene que ver con que trabaja a partir de una comprensión ampliada y a la vez muy específica de la idea de turismo, detectada particularmente en los primeros pasos del turismo de masas (el libro se publicó en 1976). No resulta sencillo conectar con la mirada que propone, pero resulta muy renovadora.
En el epílogo, escrito en 1998, MacCannell se sorprende de ver el musculoso despliegue de la industria turística y la penetración de las corporaciones globales en un acto que inicialmente tenía que ver con la curiosidad y con una suerte de solidaridad social arraigada en las diferencias locales.
Aunque a día de hoy las ideas centrales del libro conservan su vigencia, es como si la reflexión estuviera fuera de marco. En ese situarnos en puntos de observación nuevos reside la gracia de la lectura, más aún cuando hablamos de un tema tan trillado y aplanado como es el turismo.
8/10
En el epílogo, escrito en 1998, MacCannell se sorprende de ver el musculoso despliegue de la industria turística y la penetración de las corporaciones globales en un acto que inicialmente tenía que ver con la curiosidad y con una suerte de solidaridad social arraigada en las diferencias locales.
Aunque a día de hoy las ideas centrales del libro conservan su vigencia, es como si la reflexión estuviera fuera de marco. En ese situarnos en puntos de observación nuevos reside la gracia de la lectura, más aún cuando hablamos de un tema tan trillado y aplanado como es el turismo.
8/10
January 31, 2024
What an amazing insight into the progressive power of sightseeing. Cities and countries have changed their laws and structures to accommodate the foreign currency brought by tourists. Some places are less than pleasurable but still desirable, and the increase in tourism drives up the price and changes the lifestyle of the local to either perform for their guests, blend with them, or hide away until the season is over.
Tourists have their own social structures. The process started out by looking at other people's work - factories and mortuaries - that provided tours offering a sense of security in an unknown place.
Tourists have their own social structures. The process started out by looking at other people's work - factories and mortuaries - that provided tours offering a sense of security in an unknown place.
August 18, 2020
Reading it after "The Fall of Public Man", before reading "Presentation of Everyday Life". I recommend you read these 3 tgt.
Especially meaningful reading it under COVID, when traditional tourism is struggling to survive. Many chose to go to the countryside, some may join virtual-local-cultural tours. That makes me reflect on the relationship of tourism, presentation of our lives under public staring.
Hope tourism can thrive again 1-2 years later :(
Especially meaningful reading it under COVID, when traditional tourism is struggling to survive. Many chose to go to the countryside, some may join virtual-local-cultural tours. That makes me reflect on the relationship of tourism, presentation of our lives under public staring.
Hope tourism can thrive again 1-2 years later :(
January 20, 2021
Some really interesting ideas and concepts are presented. I was required to read only four of the chapters, but had to read the whole thing because I didn't want to miss anything. I found this extremely interessing and relevant. Of course, this is what I study, but I think it could be interesting for those interested in the "touristic".
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March 3, 2021
Tourists make brave sorties out from their hotels, hoping, perhaps, for an authentic experience, but their paths can be traced in advance... Adventuresome tourists progress from stage to stage, always in the public eye, and greeted everywhere by their obliging hosts.
from "Chapter 5: Staged Authenticity"
February 20, 2019
Это было тяжело, но того стоило.
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June 23, 2019This is not a light fun non fiction, but quite a hard scientific read. Got through it, got several cool ideas, but all in all I am not the reader of this book.
September 2, 2019
'we are all tourists' - thought provoking perspective from which our civilisation could be observed and analysed, full of highly quotable gems
April 9, 2023
A bit dry, but otherwise enlightening
May 31, 2023
Thesis Reading.
November 13, 2023
Dean MacCannell was one of the founders of modern tourist studies. The Tourist, first published in 1976, lays out his "New Theory of the Leisure Class" (an allusion, of course, to Veblen). Dense and packed with theory, especially semiotics, it's a foundational text which has provoked both agreement and vigorous debate; but it remains the essential starting-point for anyone interested in what it means to be a tourist and how to understand touristic experiences. It is, though, not an easy read.
January 2, 2025
It was unnecessarily boring and hard to read, at the same time being not insightful enough :(
August 4, 2016
I was very excited to read this book at first. However, it just dragged on, and it was so out of date I found it hard to take it forward it a lot of ways. I understand it is a classic and one of the few great books to look to for tourism and travel studies, but it just didn't do it for me. That said I did find the author's perspective on the Marx's tradition illuminating and for that, I would recommend spending some time with the first few chapters. I thought MacCannell was able to use plain language to illustrate the complexities of the world's contradictory economic models pre-globalization.
November 20, 2012
One of the best pieces of academic writing that I've ever read. Although the appropriation and remixing of the "authentic" has turned out to be even more complex and inventive and enriching than anyone could have predicted when The Tourist was originally published, the fact is that it continues and remains one of the most powerful engines of the global economy.
April 21, 2015
Not what I expected. I was expecting more of a break-down why people visit tourist destinations. This was looking at tourism through a Marxist window. Still interesting, but not quite what I was hoping for. I would also like to read how the author interprets travel today, as it has changed quite a bit since 1976 and even 1999 (when the epilogue was written).
January 27, 2025
Turystyka jest jedną z dziedzin której zmiany można prześledzić na własne oczy. Co prawda poznajemy historię powstania czasu wolnego i w to miejsce wkraczającej turystyki, ale na naszych oczach przemija era zachłyśnięcia się turystyką, podróżami i zdeptaniem świata i wchodzi nowy model poznawania świata.
February 28, 2012
It wasn't as good as I'd expected. It's a classic in tourism studies so it's still worth reading but I was kind of annoyed with his structuralist bent throughout the book. Oh well, this was written in the 70s, before poststructuralism became really popular.
November 24, 2014
we're all tourists, no matter how refined our touristic experience is
Read
July 2, 2016on loan from cassie; see also identity tourists
September 18, 2016
I really loved this book and especially MacCannells writing. An interesting book and, what I though was, and easy fun read
July 26, 2009
Worth a read and a few useful ideas but very very dated; lots of current work goes beyond this.
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