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The World in a Selfie. An Inquiry into the Tourist Age
We’ve all been tourists at some point in our lives. How is it we look so condescendingly at people taking selfies in front of the Tower of Pisa? Is there really much to distinguish the package holiday from hipster city-breaks to Berlin or Brooklyn? Why do we engage our free time in an activity we profess to despise?
The World in a Selfie dissects a global cultural phenomenon. For Marco D’Eramo, tourism is not just the most important industry of the century, generating huge waves of people and capital, calling forth a dedicated infrastructure, and upsetting and repurposing the architecture and topography of our cities. It also encapsulates the problem of modernity: the search for authenticity in a world of ersatz pleasures.
D’Eramo retraces the grand tours of the first globetrotters—from Francis Bacon and Samuel Johnson to Arthur de Gobineau and Mark Twain—before assessing the cultural meaning of the beach holiday and the ‘UNESCO-cide’ of major heritage sites. The tourist selfie will never look the same again.
The World in a Selfie dissects a global cultural phenomenon. For Marco D’Eramo, tourism is not just the most important industry of the century, generating huge waves of people and capital, calling forth a dedicated infrastructure, and upsetting and repurposing the architecture and topography of our cities. It also encapsulates the problem of modernity: the search for authenticity in a world of ersatz pleasures.
D’Eramo retraces the grand tours of the first globetrotters—from Francis Bacon and Samuel Johnson to Arthur de Gobineau and Mark Twain—before assessing the cultural meaning of the beach holiday and the ‘UNESCO-cide’ of major heritage sites. The tourist selfie will never look the same again.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published April 20, 2017
24 people are currently reading
835 people want to read
About the author
Marco D'Eramo
20 books18 followersMarco d’Eramo, nato a Roma nel 1947, laureato in Fisica, ha poi studiato Sociologia con Pierre Bourdieu all’École Pratique des Hautes Études di Parigi. Giornalista, ha collaborato con “Paese Sera” e “Mondoperaio”, e collabora con “il manifesto”.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
July 9, 2025
The first part of this book was great but it felt really disjointed from the second part, almost like they were written by 2 different people.
March 15, 2022
The World in a Selfie is a philosophical examination of tourism. It's a more challenging read than I expected, but the first 200 pages are a interesting and at times humorous, providing a brief history of tourism starting in the Enlightenment and explaining how tourism started as a pursuit of aristocrats before becoming derided when it became an activity of the middle class. This sets up thought-provoking discussions of "why we travel," the false pursuit of authenticity, why places become tourist attractions and how becoming a tourist attraction actually changes their character, exemplified by the UNESCO designation, which D'Eramo despises as a destroyer of cities.
As D'Eramo notes in the Afterword, he ended up focusing on the "tourist city" and "tourist civilization," which is narrow, and leaves out other types of tourism like cruises and outdoor/nature tourism.
Eventually, The World in a Selfie falls prey to the "300 page rule," which, for some reason, requires books written for adults to be at least 300 pages long (to show it is serious? to justify the price tag? so that the spine is wide enough for the title?). The discussion of tourism gives way to chapters on alienation, actual space aliens, and multiculturalism to fill out the remaining pages; topics which have nothing to do with the rest of the book. These chapters take the book to 250 pages, and with acknowledgements, and extensive footnotes, bibliography and index, we get right up to the required 300.
As D'Eramo notes in the Afterword, he ended up focusing on the "tourist city" and "tourist civilization," which is narrow, and leaves out other types of tourism like cruises and outdoor/nature tourism.
Eventually, The World in a Selfie falls prey to the "300 page rule," which, for some reason, requires books written for adults to be at least 300 pages long (to show it is serious? to justify the price tag? so that the spine is wide enough for the title?). The discussion of tourism gives way to chapters on alienation, actual space aliens, and multiculturalism to fill out the remaining pages; topics which have nothing to do with the rest of the book. These chapters take the book to 250 pages, and with acknowledgements, and extensive footnotes, bibliography and index, we get right up to the required 300.
May 12, 2023
¿Un ensayo que analiza exhaustivamente la industria del turismo desde su origen hasta su posible final, lleno de datos, citas y notas a pie de página? Eso, o bien tienes un interés especial y muy concreto sobre esta cuestión, o bien va a ser una lectura ardua e infumable, ¿no? Pues no, qué va. Todo lo contrario.
Porque Marco D'Eramo, sí, se dedica a analizar con precisión cirujana el fenómeno del turismo desde el punto de vista industrial, pero también bromea, ironiza e incluso ridiculiza a la figura del turista —a su propia costa y a la de todos los demás—: entra en sus contradicciones, en sus búsquedas infructuosas, en sus prisas, en su falta de reflexión, en su ingenua credulidad, etc. Es decir, el autor tiene los cuchillos bien afilados y arremete contra el turista y el turismo, sin mucha compasión. Palabras como las siguientes son clave: zonificación, disneylización, autenticidad, UNESCO (qué de hostias recibe, por cierto), teatralización, markers. Lo toca todo con agudeza y desde diferentes perspectivas.
Un par de peros sí tiene: algunos capítulos tocan de manera tangencial el turismo y se podrían suprimir sin mayor problema, y el discurso no se mantiene coherente durante todo el libro, algo que admite el propio autor en la conclusión.
Bien escrito y de gran erudición, un buen ensayo que desmitifica en gran medida la experiencia turística, aunque hacia el final regala unas buenas palabras, surgidas de esta idea fundamental: "el mundo al alcance de la mano (dependiendo del bolsillo, añadiría yo)".
Porque Marco D'Eramo, sí, se dedica a analizar con precisión cirujana el fenómeno del turismo desde el punto de vista industrial, pero también bromea, ironiza e incluso ridiculiza a la figura del turista —a su propia costa y a la de todos los demás—: entra en sus contradicciones, en sus búsquedas infructuosas, en sus prisas, en su falta de reflexión, en su ingenua credulidad, etc. Es decir, el autor tiene los cuchillos bien afilados y arremete contra el turista y el turismo, sin mucha compasión. Palabras como las siguientes son clave: zonificación, disneylización, autenticidad, UNESCO (qué de hostias recibe, por cierto), teatralización, markers. Lo toca todo con agudeza y desde diferentes perspectivas.
Un par de peros sí tiene: algunos capítulos tocan de manera tangencial el turismo y se podrían suprimir sin mayor problema, y el discurso no se mantiene coherente durante todo el libro, algo que admite el propio autor en la conclusión.
Bien escrito y de gran erudición, un buen ensayo que desmitifica en gran medida la experiencia turística, aunque hacia el final regala unas buenas palabras, surgidas de esta idea fundamental: "el mundo al alcance de la mano (dependiendo del bolsillo, añadiría yo)".
August 22, 2021
Translated from Italian, this book features philosophical, cultural and sociological essays about the tourist. D'Eramo begins with tracing the concept of the tourist in Europe, and some of the implicit judgments of class and taste (tourist vs. traveler) about how people visit places, that linger today. His strongest essays examine how the tourism industry has changed cities and how cities have changed themselves to be tourist destinations; how UNESCO heritage sites often end up destroying the very places they intend to preserve; Lijiang in China and differing cultural attitudes towards what is worth seeing.
Less compelling were some essays reflecting on Otherness and Alienness. They got a little too free-association for me. And despite the title, he never does any substantive commentary on social media and how that's changed how we travel. I would have liked to have read his commentary on it.
The book is academic in its style, so you occasionally can get bogged down in it. But overall, still an excellent book and highly recommended.
A few notable quotes:
On tourism & social class
The disdain which every tourist feels toward tourists, and her anxious concern to differentiate herself from them and conceive herself as a 'traveller’, is just one of the countless ways in which individuals perceive themselves as taking up a different position to the one they really occupy in social space.
...
Tourism thus takes the form, at the same time, of an activity practised by all classes – thus something that unites them – but which is practised in a differentiated way, and thus also as a field of confrontation for the differentiation between, and of, classes. It is, therefore, both a shared terrain and a site of conflict: the different tourisms distinguish the various tourists, in the sense that they make them more or less distinct (in Bourdieu’s sense) and thus more or less ‘common’.
...
Thus, in tourism, too, a ‘hierarchy of contempt’ is built that gradually unfolds, according to various coordinates, from the least to the most organised trip, from the most hard-to-reach destination to the easiest to find, and from greater to lesser time available. The hierarchy of tourist contempt appears in various configurations, just as happens in societies in general.
On zoning and spatial configurations in cities:
Zoning is much more than a planning technique. It is a specific and singular form of spatial rationality.
...
We take for an intrinsic property of the city something which is, in fact, the result of a policy, of a repressive spatial violence that separates bodies and subdivides lives and times.
...
Indeed, zoning works against the very objective for which cities were invented and constructed, which was precisely the opposite: that is, humans invented cities in order to have meeting points, points of articulation between heterogeneous human activities. The city was born as a multifunctional, multitasking operation, to join together the different functions, to make contiguous the office, the home, the market, the workshop, the café, the store, the cinema. The city was invented precisely in order to be ‘multi-zoned’ in a single zone. It is thanks to this characteristic that the city has survived and is surviving the repeated declarations of its death and resists all the outsourcing, the remote working, the Edge Cities and the IT revolutions.
...
And, therefore, the subdivision of space transforms into a government of human time: the articulation of space and time, proper to each architecture, here transforms into a dominion over time by means of space. It is this juncture that allows a technique of urbanism to become a zoning of the human soul.
(Note: The 4 rating is for the best essays in the book; Overall rating for the book is 3).
Less compelling were some essays reflecting on Otherness and Alienness. They got a little too free-association for me. And despite the title, he never does any substantive commentary on social media and how that's changed how we travel. I would have liked to have read his commentary on it.
The book is academic in its style, so you occasionally can get bogged down in it. But overall, still an excellent book and highly recommended.
A few notable quotes:
On tourism & social class
The disdain which every tourist feels toward tourists, and her anxious concern to differentiate herself from them and conceive herself as a 'traveller’, is just one of the countless ways in which individuals perceive themselves as taking up a different position to the one they really occupy in social space.
...
Tourism thus takes the form, at the same time, of an activity practised by all classes – thus something that unites them – but which is practised in a differentiated way, and thus also as a field of confrontation for the differentiation between, and of, classes. It is, therefore, both a shared terrain and a site of conflict: the different tourisms distinguish the various tourists, in the sense that they make them more or less distinct (in Bourdieu’s sense) and thus more or less ‘common’.
...
Thus, in tourism, too, a ‘hierarchy of contempt’ is built that gradually unfolds, according to various coordinates, from the least to the most organised trip, from the most hard-to-reach destination to the easiest to find, and from greater to lesser time available. The hierarchy of tourist contempt appears in various configurations, just as happens in societies in general.
On zoning and spatial configurations in cities:
Zoning is much more than a planning technique. It is a specific and singular form of spatial rationality.
...
We take for an intrinsic property of the city something which is, in fact, the result of a policy, of a repressive spatial violence that separates bodies and subdivides lives and times.
...
Indeed, zoning works against the very objective for which cities were invented and constructed, which was precisely the opposite: that is, humans invented cities in order to have meeting points, points of articulation between heterogeneous human activities. The city was born as a multifunctional, multitasking operation, to join together the different functions, to make contiguous the office, the home, the market, the workshop, the café, the store, the cinema. The city was invented precisely in order to be ‘multi-zoned’ in a single zone. It is thanks to this characteristic that the city has survived and is surviving the repeated declarations of its death and resists all the outsourcing, the remote working, the Edge Cities and the IT revolutions.
...
And, therefore, the subdivision of space transforms into a government of human time: the articulation of space and time, proper to each architecture, here transforms into a dominion over time by means of space. It is this juncture that allows a technique of urbanism to become a zoning of the human soul.
(Note: The 4 rating is for the best essays in the book; Overall rating for the book is 3).
Read
March 12, 2022A initial chapter on the perils of snobishness allows a further fourteen of it.
February 17, 2023
An excellent analysis of tourism in this book's first half gives way to a tedious, overly academic second.
For whatever reason, having already laid out his main points, the author turns to the examination of topics such as alienation and otherness that appear to have little to do with tourism at all. Why they weren't ultimately chopped by a good editor is beyond me, because otherwise this book is a riveting read, full of insight into the damage done to cities because of restrictive zoning laws and organizations like UNESCO.
I was perhaps expecting a little bit more of a philosophical look at how tourism has changed in this technological age, a reality that's still best examined through the Instagram account @insta_repeat and the scene from the book "White Noise" when Murray Jay Siskind and Jack Gladney visit "The Most Photographed Barn in America."
There were forty cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides—pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We need near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.
"No one sees the barn," he said finally.
A long silence followed.
"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."
He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced at once by others.
"We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."
There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.
"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."
Another silence ensued.
"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.
He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.
"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said.
"What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now."
He seemed immensely pleased by this.
A "religious experience ... like all tourism."
For a book that features the word "selfie" in the title, it seems strange that author Marco D'Eramo never really addresses the odd paradox of modern day tourism — that the tourist acts not to experience a destination, but to maintain it.
For whatever reason, having already laid out his main points, the author turns to the examination of topics such as alienation and otherness that appear to have little to do with tourism at all. Why they weren't ultimately chopped by a good editor is beyond me, because otherwise this book is a riveting read, full of insight into the damage done to cities because of restrictive zoning laws and organizations like UNESCO.
I was perhaps expecting a little bit more of a philosophical look at how tourism has changed in this technological age, a reality that's still best examined through the Instagram account @insta_repeat and the scene from the book "White Noise" when Murray Jay Siskind and Jack Gladney visit "The Most Photographed Barn in America."
There were forty cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides—pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We need near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.
"No one sees the barn," he said finally.
A long silence followed.
"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."
He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced at once by others.
"We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."
There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.
"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."
Another silence ensued.
"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.
He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.
"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said.
"What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now."
He seemed immensely pleased by this.
A "religious experience ... like all tourism."
For a book that features the word "selfie" in the title, it seems strange that author Marco D'Eramo never really addresses the odd paradox of modern day tourism — that the tourist acts not to experience a destination, but to maintain it.
June 25, 2022
Half the book is a really wonderful discussion of the thorny nature of tourism and tourists, which D'Eramo - a student of Levi-Strauss - takes as the primary figure of our time. It's very driven by the author's roots in continental theory, so expect the usual name-dropping and evidence through suggestive authority. Despite his typically old-world conflict with nostalgia, I found D'Eramo's positioning also refreshing as his reference points become more likely to be Italian or even Chinese than American. (Although there is of course a chapter on Las Vegas.)
At the end of the book, D'Eramo apologizes to the writer for the changeable nature of his book as his perspective changed throughout the writing of the book. He admits that it would have been a service to the reader if he had returned to edit and re-write sections. I agree to this idea. There is a lot of fluff (long sections on aliens, on identity, etc) that are helpless indulgences, and there is a lot of swinging back and forth on various questions related to tourism that leave you wondering what, exactly, you are supposed to get from all of this. However, this service wasn't performed. Instead, you have a lot of ironic reflections, which is interesting enough - but not the book that this could have been.
At the end of the book, D'Eramo apologizes to the writer for the changeable nature of his book as his perspective changed throughout the writing of the book. He admits that it would have been a service to the reader if he had returned to edit and re-write sections. I agree to this idea. There is a lot of fluff (long sections on aliens, on identity, etc) that are helpless indulgences, and there is a lot of swinging back and forth on various questions related to tourism that leave you wondering what, exactly, you are supposed to get from all of this. However, this service wasn't performed. Instead, you have a lot of ironic reflections, which is interesting enough - but not the book that this could have been.
November 18, 2021
Un saggio meraviglioso, imperdibile.
January 30, 2022
comical yet directionless. a measured attacked on authenticity.
October 16, 2023
Very rarely I talk so much about ideas I read in books. This one will make me think for a long time. It made me question a lot of my belief system and what/why I value travelling. I’m going to buy a copy for all my friends.
October 9, 2021
I thought this book was brilliant and deeply researched (12-page bibliography plus an index at the end) and the cherry on top is that D’erano has a voice that is funny + acerbic which I’m ALL for. He makes an argument as to why we’re living in the Age of Tourism now, how it came to be (=working class started getting vacations / side note: this is literally how camping started / and then the transportation revolution) and then goes into the (mostly bad) consequences of tourism which is utterly fascinating (keep in mind he lives in Rome so his chapter on the death of places due to Airbnb and the conversion of actual places into tourist towns hits hard).
I don’t even know how to write about this book because everything stood out / got highlighted (I ran out of highlighter) how tourism is “the process of collecting markers,” the shittiness of Airbnb, the awfulness of zoning laws and how it segregates not just people but cities / leads to the stupidity of grass lawns instead of homestead / garden farming, how “the elite must always find new locations, uncontaminated by the masses—places which will thus carry a high level of symbolic capital…modern tourism is therefore an inherently expansive economy, constantly appropriating and constructing new experiences in new places,” how bad it is for a place to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site (fun fact: those ruins / walls / etc were literally reconstructed yesterday to still look like ruins for tourists), how the pursuit of authentic creates inauthentic, tourism’s hierarchy of concept (boutique people look down on the all-inclusive people, backpackers snub their noses at bus tour fans, and so on and so forth), how because of jet fuel there is literally no such thing as green tourism...Etc etc etc. I could go on and on forever.
In short: the whole thing is an excellent, thought-provoking, must-read!
I don’t even know how to write about this book because everything stood out / got highlighted (I ran out of highlighter) how tourism is “the process of collecting markers,” the shittiness of Airbnb, the awfulness of zoning laws and how it segregates not just people but cities / leads to the stupidity of grass lawns instead of homestead / garden farming, how “the elite must always find new locations, uncontaminated by the masses—places which will thus carry a high level of symbolic capital…modern tourism is therefore an inherently expansive economy, constantly appropriating and constructing new experiences in new places,” how bad it is for a place to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site (fun fact: those ruins / walls / etc were literally reconstructed yesterday to still look like ruins for tourists), how the pursuit of authentic creates inauthentic, tourism’s hierarchy of concept (boutique people look down on the all-inclusive people, backpackers snub their noses at bus tour fans, and so on and so forth), how because of jet fuel there is literally no such thing as green tourism...Etc etc etc. I could go on and on forever.
In short: the whole thing is an excellent, thought-provoking, must-read!
April 8, 2025
This post is a follow-up (of sorts) to my review of the book The New Tourist by Paige McClanahan. While The New Tourist took a broader look at the tourism industry, its impact, and how we view ourselves as tourists, The World in a Selfie takes an even broader look to consider what tourism says about ourselves and society more broadly. It’s a bit hard to specify because having read the book, everything sort of blends together, but topics covered include:
- The Tourist City – what it is and how it impacts residents
- How tourism has changed (sewers used to be an attraction!)
- The effect of the UNESCO Heritage label
- Case studies of Lijiang (and how its “old town” continues to expand) and Las Vegas (from inauthentic to authentic)
- Food tourism and the search for authenticity
Overall, I really liked the way the book explored the relationship between authenticity and inauthenticity as it relates to tourism. One of the most eye-opening examples was how the city of Lijiang was basically reconstructed to be a heritage spot – contrasting that with the way that Las Vegas became a tourist spot because it embraced its in-authenticness was definitely thought provoking. Essentially, D’Eramo is arguing that:
That actually made a lot of sense when you consider why people have travelled. One reason why The Grand Tour was so popular was because it was a way to show you had the required economic means to acquire the social and cultural capital that signified you were a member of upper class society. Of course, there are other reasons to travel (which Alain de Botton explores in The Art of Travel – review for that coming up!) but travel as a status marker remains a compelling reason. After all, it explains why we try to cram as many stops to noteworthy places in a trip (well, that and the fact we’re used to making our time as productive as possible), and also explains why we want to search out the most authentic and “local” places that mark us as being more than mere ‘tourists’ but people who are ‘in the know.’ Or as the book puts it in better phrasing:
In other words, we travel (or at least, some of us travel) as a way of marking ourselves as people who are culturally savvy. In order to show that we have travelled, we tend to go to the same spots people have always done because these spots are now “markers” of the country. The Chinese have a great phrase for this: 打卡, or punching a card (the way we used to punch timecards). But as these places become too commonplace, we start seeking our more “authentic” places which become the next “must-go” places and the cycle continues. That perhaps is the reason for travel disappointment. D’Eramo writes that
And this quote reminds me of what De Botton wrote about the anticipation of travel. I’ll try to see if I can talk about it more in my review of The Art of Travel or if this will remain one of those little threads that I can never fully unravel to my satisfaction.
The last thing I want to talk about is D’Eramo’s discussion of the “Tourist City”. The book differentiates between three types of cities, but the definition I found most helpful is that a Tourist City is when a city has crossed a certain threshold of tourists so much that locals are now forced to use services that were originally designed for tourists. I thought that definition, as well as the passage that explores the difference between authenticity and quality (as well as what “authentic” means when confronted with the tourist’s palate) made for interesting thinking about the ways we live and interact with those who visit our home country for leisure.
The World in a Selfie was not an easy read, not because the content was difficult, but because the language felt rather intimidating at times. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been reading biographies which were more narrative driven right before this, but this was definitely a change of pace, reading-wise. That said, I finished the book much faster than I thought I would and found that it gave me a lot of food for thought. I wish I had read this alongside The New Tourist, but it’s never too late to think about the books together.
- The Tourist City – what it is and how it impacts residents
- How tourism has changed (sewers used to be an attraction!)
- The effect of the UNESCO Heritage label
- Case studies of Lijiang (and how its “old town” continues to expand) and Las Vegas (from inauthentic to authentic)
- Food tourism and the search for authenticity
Overall, I really liked the way the book explored the relationship between authenticity and inauthenticity as it relates to tourism. One of the most eye-opening examples was how the city of Lijiang was basically reconstructed to be a heritage spot – contrasting that with the way that Las Vegas became a tourist spot because it embraced its in-authenticness was definitely thought provoking. Essentially, D’Eramo is arguing that:
“the proliferation of markers turns something inauthentic into something authentic, and thus, once its ‘inauthenticities’ have been reproduced an infinite number of times in various media, Los Angeles acquires its aura.”
That actually made a lot of sense when you consider why people have travelled. One reason why The Grand Tour was so popular was because it was a way to show you had the required economic means to acquire the social and cultural capital that signified you were a member of upper class society. Of course, there are other reasons to travel (which Alain de Botton explores in The Art of Travel – review for that coming up!) but travel as a status marker remains a compelling reason. After all, it explains why we try to cram as many stops to noteworthy places in a trip (well, that and the fact we’re used to making our time as productive as possible), and also explains why we want to search out the most authentic and “local” places that mark us as being more than mere ‘tourists’ but people who are ‘in the know.’ Or as the book puts it in better phrasing:
“Yet the disdain which every tourist feels toward tourists, and her anxious concern to differentiate herself from them and conceive herself as a ‘traveller’, is just one of the countless ways in which individuals perceive themselves as taking up a different position from the one they really occupy in social space.”
In other words, we travel (or at least, some of us travel) as a way of marking ourselves as people who are culturally savvy. In order to show that we have travelled, we tend to go to the same spots people have always done because these spots are now “markers” of the country. The Chinese have a great phrase for this: 打卡, or punching a card (the way we used to punch timecards). But as these places become too commonplace, we start seeking our more “authentic” places which become the next “must-go” places and the cycle continues. That perhaps is the reason for travel disappointment. D’Eramo writes that
“Tourists are disappointed because what they go to see are not actual places but rather the guidebooks themselves, in the sense that their experience of sightseeing consists of making a constant navigation between an experience ready-made by markers and the reality of the trip.”
And this quote reminds me of what De Botton wrote about the anticipation of travel. I’ll try to see if I can talk about it more in my review of The Art of Travel or if this will remain one of those little threads that I can never fully unravel to my satisfaction.
The last thing I want to talk about is D’Eramo’s discussion of the “Tourist City”. The book differentiates between three types of cities, but the definition I found most helpful is that a Tourist City is when a city has crossed a certain threshold of tourists so much that locals are now forced to use services that were originally designed for tourists. I thought that definition, as well as the passage that explores the difference between authenticity and quality (as well as what “authentic” means when confronted with the tourist’s palate) made for interesting thinking about the ways we live and interact with those who visit our home country for leisure.
The World in a Selfie was not an easy read, not because the content was difficult, but because the language felt rather intimidating at times. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been reading biographies which were more narrative driven right before this, but this was definitely a change of pace, reading-wise. That said, I finished the book much faster than I thought I would and found that it gave me a lot of food for thought. I wish I had read this alongside The New Tourist, but it’s never too late to think about the books together.
August 31, 2022
"Se il turismo non fosse ritenuto dalla stragrande maggioranza dell'umanità una forma di self-improvement, non si spiegherebbe la diligente intransigenza con cui durante le vacanze la visita dei musei è imposta alla prole da genitori che nella loro vita quotidiana non si sognerebbero neanche di gettare uno sguardo su un quadro. C'è qualcosa di commovente nella fiducia che andare a visitare una città, un monumento, un paese possa aprirti la mente, renderti migliore: si gioca anche su questo terreno l'inseguimento di classe da parte dei dominati che rincorrono i dominanti".
"[Sull'etichetta 'Patrimonio dell'umanità'] Il tocco dell'Unesco è letale: dove appone il suo label, leteralmente la città muore, sottoposta a tassidermia. Questo vero e proprio urbanicidio non è perpetrato di proposito [...] ma preservare vuol dire imbalsamare, o surgelare, rispamiare dall'usura e dalle cicatrici del tempo: vuol dire letteralmente fermare il tempo, fissarlo come in un'istantanea fotografica, sottarlo quindi al cambiamento, al divenire".
"Mentre le riserve naturali sono fatte per moltiplicare la fauna e la flora che vi risiede, al contrario la fauna umana è costretta all'esodo dalle città Patrimonio dell'umanità perché diventa praticamente impossibile viverci, cioè compiere tutte quelle attività normalmente connesse al vivere".
"Addobbata di cartapesta, quest'assenza di vita pervade tutti i siti musealizzati. Nel Dodecaneso, la città vecchia di Rodi è un World Heritage. Ed è vero che ne hanno salvato le pietre, le mura, ma solo quelle, pervertendone ogni funzione d'uso. Per come è ridotta, per me potrebbe pure andare all'inferno. Di questo tipo de salvataggio non ce ne facciamo nulla, cura la malattia uccidendo il paziente. Salvare delle pietre non vuol dire salvare una città, una cultura urbana".
"Certo che è difficile scegliere tra vivere in un museo o in una filiale di banca! Ma in realtà non è una scelta, è sempre la stessa salsa. L'ambiente in cui la corporate élite sogna la propria vita è fatto di enclaves appartate in cui risiedere, di financial downtowns in cui fare denaro da un lato e di Disneyland culturali con cui fare ancora più denaro dall'altro".
"Ma mentre innumerevoli semiologi, antropologi, sociologi e ideologi si sono esercitati nella critica del turismo, nella sua esegesi e nel suo smantellamento concettuale, nessuno ha riservato energie comparabili al mercato d'arte. Più che silenzio, è felpata discrezione che lo circonda, la delicata nonchalance che si conviene alle grandi fortune, il riserbo dovuto al denaro vero. Forse perché -e qui torniamo alle discriminazioni di classe- i protagonisti dei due fenomeni sono socialmente lontanissimi".
"[Sull'etichetta 'Patrimonio dell'umanità'] Il tocco dell'Unesco è letale: dove appone il suo label, leteralmente la città muore, sottoposta a tassidermia. Questo vero e proprio urbanicidio non è perpetrato di proposito [...] ma preservare vuol dire imbalsamare, o surgelare, rispamiare dall'usura e dalle cicatrici del tempo: vuol dire letteralmente fermare il tempo, fissarlo come in un'istantanea fotografica, sottarlo quindi al cambiamento, al divenire".
"Mentre le riserve naturali sono fatte per moltiplicare la fauna e la flora che vi risiede, al contrario la fauna umana è costretta all'esodo dalle città Patrimonio dell'umanità perché diventa praticamente impossibile viverci, cioè compiere tutte quelle attività normalmente connesse al vivere".
"Addobbata di cartapesta, quest'assenza di vita pervade tutti i siti musealizzati. Nel Dodecaneso, la città vecchia di Rodi è un World Heritage. Ed è vero che ne hanno salvato le pietre, le mura, ma solo quelle, pervertendone ogni funzione d'uso. Per come è ridotta, per me potrebbe pure andare all'inferno. Di questo tipo de salvataggio non ce ne facciamo nulla, cura la malattia uccidendo il paziente. Salvare delle pietre non vuol dire salvare una città, una cultura urbana".
"Certo che è difficile scegliere tra vivere in un museo o in una filiale di banca! Ma in realtà non è una scelta, è sempre la stessa salsa. L'ambiente in cui la corporate élite sogna la propria vita è fatto di enclaves appartate in cui risiedere, di financial downtowns in cui fare denaro da un lato e di Disneyland culturali con cui fare ancora più denaro dall'altro".
"Ma mentre innumerevoli semiologi, antropologi, sociologi e ideologi si sono esercitati nella critica del turismo, nella sua esegesi e nel suo smantellamento concettuale, nessuno ha riservato energie comparabili al mercato d'arte. Più che silenzio, è felpata discrezione che lo circonda, la delicata nonchalance che si conviene alle grandi fortune, il riserbo dovuto al denaro vero. Forse perché -e qui torniamo alle discriminazioni di classe- i protagonisti dei due fenomeni sono socialmente lontanissimi".
October 1, 2024
This book is not without merit. It has some chapters I quite enjoyed. The first half, in particular, is quite good. As other reviewers have noted, this book falls prey to the “300 page rule” — the second part of the book feels as if the author is grasping for word count & losing sight of what made the first half enjoyable. Many chapters could have been cut while still maintaining the quality.
In particular, I like the sections which are concrete and discuss the history of tourism & how it came to be, as well as discussing the various criticisms (and counter-criticisms) of tourism. There’s also some interesting analysis of the intersections between class and tourism/travel; a thought-provoking discussion about what “authenticity” really is; and discussions about how tourism can “kill” local city life vs. more sustainable forms of tourism
The simplest critique of this work is given by the author at the very end, where he notes that “my plans changed even while I was working on this book”. This is particularly evident in the second half: it feels as if the scope grows more and more ambitious, more abstract, more confusing. I was left unsure what to make of it. It seemed that the author ultimately did not take a stance, but rather explored many possibilities while simultaneously accepting & rejecting several positions at once. The more philosophical the book became, the less I enjoyed it.
Overall, it’s worth a read for the first half alone, & I do not regret having bought it.
In particular, I like the sections which are concrete and discuss the history of tourism & how it came to be, as well as discussing the various criticisms (and counter-criticisms) of tourism. There’s also some interesting analysis of the intersections between class and tourism/travel; a thought-provoking discussion about what “authenticity” really is; and discussions about how tourism can “kill” local city life vs. more sustainable forms of tourism
The simplest critique of this work is given by the author at the very end, where he notes that “my plans changed even while I was working on this book”. This is particularly evident in the second half: it feels as if the scope grows more and more ambitious, more abstract, more confusing. I was left unsure what to make of it. It seemed that the author ultimately did not take a stance, but rather explored many possibilities while simultaneously accepting & rejecting several positions at once. The more philosophical the book became, the less I enjoyed it.
Overall, it’s worth a read for the first half alone, & I do not regret having bought it.
July 21, 2021
“Tourism is the most important industry of the century,” asserts journalist Marco D’Eramo in his new introduction to The World In A Selfie a provocative take on the meanings of contemporary travel, originally published in Italy in 2017 and now available in English, updated to reflect the impact of 2020 on the tourist trade. “Why hadn’t tourism’s importance fully registered before the Covid-19 pandemic?” he asks. “Because tourists themselves are hard to take seriously. They are often comically dressed…walking in mountain boots in the middle of the city, wearing ridiculous baseball caps alongside businesspeople in suits.” And yet, he points out, 8.8 billion dollars was spent directly on tourism in 2018—“one and a half times the GDP of Japan, the third largest economy on the planet.” In his digressive, contrarian chapters, D’Eramo provides a whirlwind grand tour of leisure travel. He takes delicious pleasure in revealing the inherent snobbery in virtually everybody’s opinion of everybody else’s vacation plans and brashly counters conventional wisdom: “UNESCO’s ‘World Heritage’ listing is the kiss of death. Once the lavel is affixed, the city’s life is snuffed out; it is ready for taxidermy.” D’Eramo is brainy, bitchy and brilliantly attuned to the absurd. Snap up his Selfie.
June 8, 2021
Italian journalist Marco D'Eramo first sought to write a book about tourist cities, but quickly found himself writing about tourism in general. “We could quite plausibly term the current era ‘the Age of Tourism’ in the same way that we used to speak of the Age of Steel or the Age of Imperialism,” D'Eramo writes.
He makes a convincing case: tourism is woven into our lives, whether we live somewhere or work in an industry that relies on it, or if we participate in it as tourists. Today we can see the world in ways unfathomable to most people throughout history; before the Age of Tourism, only the wealthy traveled for pleasure.
D'Eramo takes particular issue with UNESCO: “UNESCO’s ‘World Heritage’ listing is the kiss of death,” he writes. “Once the label is affixed, the city’s life is snuffed out; it is ready for taxidermy.” Under the pretense of preservation, UNESCO transforms real places with real history into shallow tourist destinations, hollowing out any actual culture that existed there and replacing it with mindless itinerary-driven consumption. “This kind of preservation does not give us anything, it is a curing of the disease by killing the patient. Preserving a few stones is not equivalent to saving a city, an urban culture.”
D'Eramo wades a little too deep into the bogs of philosophy for my liking, spending more time applying Hegelian theory to the concept of tourism than I cared for. But it is not for no reason, and it culminates in a difficult question: is criticism of tourists inherently classist? “For the Right, the Other whom it is legitimate to hate is the immigrant; for the Left, racism against the Other manifests itself as the derision of tourists.”
The World In A Selfie will make you think new thoughts and question old ones, which makes it an enriching, challenging book to read.
He makes a convincing case: tourism is woven into our lives, whether we live somewhere or work in an industry that relies on it, or if we participate in it as tourists. Today we can see the world in ways unfathomable to most people throughout history; before the Age of Tourism, only the wealthy traveled for pleasure.
D'Eramo takes particular issue with UNESCO: “UNESCO’s ‘World Heritage’ listing is the kiss of death,” he writes. “Once the label is affixed, the city’s life is snuffed out; it is ready for taxidermy.” Under the pretense of preservation, UNESCO transforms real places with real history into shallow tourist destinations, hollowing out any actual culture that existed there and replacing it with mindless itinerary-driven consumption. “This kind of preservation does not give us anything, it is a curing of the disease by killing the patient. Preserving a few stones is not equivalent to saving a city, an urban culture.”
D'Eramo wades a little too deep into the bogs of philosophy for my liking, spending more time applying Hegelian theory to the concept of tourism than I cared for. But it is not for no reason, and it culminates in a difficult question: is criticism of tourists inherently classist? “For the Right, the Other whom it is legitimate to hate is the immigrant; for the Left, racism against the Other manifests itself as the derision of tourists.”
The World In A Selfie will make you think new thoughts and question old ones, which makes it an enriching, challenging book to read.
March 14, 2024
ha sido muy interesante, me ha encantado aprender más sobre el turismo como industria, como fenómeno que mueve todos nuestros cimientos económicos y reestructura nuestro ocio y cultura
se me ha ido haciendo un poco pesada la segunda parte, porque sentía que las ideas principales ya se habían explicado (creación-destrucción del turismo, teoría de la persecución de clases, paradoja de la búsqueda de autenticidad). hubo algunos capítulos centrados en la otredad como concepto filosófico que no me apasionaron (vaya, que me lo salté), ni comprendí enteramente su perspectiva sobre las sociedad multiculturales. pero agradezco mucho su forma tan clara y directa de escribir, y el uso que hace de anécdotas y ejemplos para ilustrar los conceptos.
"mientras las perspectivas para el futuro parecen reducirse, el pasado crece de forma constante"
PD vaya odio le tiene a llevar chancletas por la ciudad
se me ha ido haciendo un poco pesada la segunda parte, porque sentía que las ideas principales ya se habían explicado (creación-destrucción del turismo, teoría de la persecución de clases, paradoja de la búsqueda de autenticidad). hubo algunos capítulos centrados en la otredad como concepto filosófico que no me apasionaron (vaya, que me lo salté), ni comprendí enteramente su perspectiva sobre las sociedad multiculturales. pero agradezco mucho su forma tan clara y directa de escribir, y el uso que hace de anécdotas y ejemplos para ilustrar los conceptos.
"mientras las perspectivas para el futuro parecen reducirse, el pasado crece de forma constante"
PD vaya odio le tiene a llevar chancletas por la ciudad
July 3, 2024
Si el turismo no fuera considerado por la gran mayoría de la humanidad una forma de perfeccionamiento personal, no se explicaría la diligente intransigencia con la que durante las vacaciones se les impone a los niños la visita a los museos por parte de sus padres, a quienes en su vida cotidiana no se les pasaría por la cabeza mirar un cuadro. Hay algo conmovedor en la confianza de que ir a visitar una ciudad, un monumento y un país pueda abrirle a uno la mente, hacerlo mejor: se juega también en este terreno a la persecución de la clase por parte de los dominados, que van en pos de los dominantes.
July 6, 2024
A veure, està molt bé però no m'ha acabat de convèncer la forma en què evoluciona. Suposo que entra en terrenys massa filosòfics i abstractes i se m'ha fet una mica bola. Ara bé, desmunta idees preconcebudes i aborda genial la idea de "turisme" des de molts punts de vista. Li posaria un 3.5 però no puc 🫠
April 22, 2024
3.5 Challenging read! Struggled with the language at times. Found myself rereading sentences. But really enjoyed the analysis and ideas interrogating why we travel, who is a tourist, and what travelling does to a place.
September 22, 2024
Can’t recommend this book highly enough: a profound exploration of the forces determining the appearance and shape of cities across the world. For while it is an apologia for the tourist it is also a warning / call to arms / guide for urban planners, developers and policymakers.
December 12, 2021
interesting on spatial theory. bit too off piste some of the time
October 15, 2023
Delves into the history of tourism with sub-topics such as culinary tourism and Las Vegas. The author goes off on to other topics often.
May 15, 2024
La primera mitad muy bien
January 28, 2025
Buen ensayo, algunos capítulo son demasiado teóricos. Me interesa más lo que piensa el autor que la teoría helgeliana incrustada.
January 29, 2023
Il titolo "Selfie del mondo" fa pensare che il libro sia basato su fatti del presente orientati al futuro, ma il suo contenuto è esattamente il contrario. Alcuni capitoli erano troppo filosofici e storicizzati per i miei gusti. Voto 3/5 perché ci sono stati passaggi che mi hanno fatto riflettere.
November 19, 2022
Si tratta del secondo libro di Marco D'Eramo che leggo, e non sarà l'ultimo.
D'Eramo parte da una discussione della rilevanza economica del turismo nel mondo contemporaneo, anche alla luce del COVID e di quanto ha significato per questo settore. Vengono discusse una serie di conseguenze aberranti dell'industria turistica, anche a livello istituzionale (viene discusso il meccanismo di "patrimonializzazione" legato all'Unesco), ma alla fine D'Eramo mette in guardia dalla trappola snobistica di ritenere il turista occasionale come colpevole di un fenomeno complessivo, che evidentemente non può essere ascritto alla singola persona o gruppo familiare che decida di spendere risorse economiche non irrilevanti nel proprio budget per passare qualche giorno, per dire, a Palma de Mallorca.
Una discussione interessante, non banale, non caricaturale, e scusate se è poco.
D'Eramo parte da una discussione della rilevanza economica del turismo nel mondo contemporaneo, anche alla luce del COVID e di quanto ha significato per questo settore. Vengono discusse una serie di conseguenze aberranti dell'industria turistica, anche a livello istituzionale (viene discusso il meccanismo di "patrimonializzazione" legato all'Unesco), ma alla fine D'Eramo mette in guardia dalla trappola snobistica di ritenere il turista occasionale come colpevole di un fenomeno complessivo, che evidentemente non può essere ascritto alla singola persona o gruppo familiare che decida di spendere risorse economiche non irrilevanti nel proprio budget per passare qualche giorno, per dire, a Palma de Mallorca.
Una discussione interessante, non banale, non caricaturale, e scusate se è poco.
February 22, 2019
Das ist ein sehr eigenartiges Buch. Vom sehr salopp daherkommenden Titel darf man sich nicht blenden lassen. Dahinter verbirgt sich ein durchaus philosophischer fordernder Text mit einigem Tiefgang - zwischen Tür-und Angellektüre ist das nicht. Manche der Denkfiguren waren für mich völlig neu. Als Experte (ich bin ja auch Tourist) fand ich das Buch sehr interessant.
January 1, 2022
“El sueño de todo turista: el de visitar un lugar sin turistas, es decir, en definitiva, sin él mismo”.
Ensayo imprescindible si te interesa conocer el origen del turismo y su desarrollo hasta constituirse como la gran industria del siglo XX y XXI.
Ensayo imprescindible si te interesa conocer el origen del turismo y su desarrollo hasta constituirse como la gran industria del siglo XX y XXI.
February 7, 2019
langwierig
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