Anthropology of Tourism

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

This Module introduces students to the field of anthropological tourism research. It gives an overview of tourism as a global phenomenon with historical dimensions, as well as illuminating the specific relationships, experiences, and identities that are fostered in tourism contexts. The students are familiarised with critical and constructive perspectives on tourism, discussing it with regards to social inequality, cultural change, and ecological sustainability. A key concern of the course is to closely look at the encounters and identities that tourism contexts afford, as well as at the affects, imaginations, and narratives that individuals co-create and circulate through their participation in transnational tourism mobility, tourism cultures, tourism politics and economies of tourism. The course further links up tourism anthropology to other areas of anthropological interest – the ritual, kinship, home, magic, memory, place-making, post-socialism and post-colonialism. We will also consider the tourist as a key figure in post-modern thought. As part of the module we also discuss the similarities between the tourist and the ethnographer and look at methodologies of researching tourism anthropologically.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Appropriate English language skills and an interest in tourism.Assessment criteriaRegular presence in the classes, preparatory reading of the provided literature and active participation is a prerequisite. In order to pass this course, students must not have more than two unauthorised absences. Apart from that, the assessment for this course takes two forms.1) Students will be asked to introduce and discuss a tourism ethnography from the reading list to the class2) Students will be expected to write a 2000-word essay at the end of the semester. Essay questions will be provided at the end of the semester.

Syllabus

One Tourism or many tourisms? What is Tourism and why is there an Anthropology of Tourism(s)? Valene D. Smith (ed.), 1978 Hosts and Guests: Toward and Anthropology of Tourism, Oxford. A benchmark publication and its afterlive. Tourism identities in Anthropological terms: from host and guests to blurring boundariesNeighbors to Anthropology: The Tourist and Nomad as social metaphors, tourism critique as critique of (post-)industrial society, Cultural and Social Theory and Post-ModernismZygmunt Bauman, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Dean MacCannell, John UrryChasing the ethnographic Alter Ego? Methodological considerations on researching tourism movements between time, space, and imagination. Early Tourism Critique in the language of Anthropology: Tourism as Cannibalism, Imperialism, Neo-colonialism, Commodification of CultureTourism Ethnographies:“Cannibal Tourism”, Daniel o’Rourke Tourism as a Sacred Journey, Pilgrimage, and Affective Citizenship: Religious and Secular Rituals of Transformation Tourism Ethnographies:Israel/ Poland: Jackie Feldman 1998The Ritual Journey and National PilgrimageNegotiating the Tourism Encounter: Between Hospitality, Friendship, and ExploitationTourism Ethnographies: Turkey: Hazel Tucker, Cuba: Valerio Simoni, India: Natalia BlochTourism Imaginaries and Places of Longing: Making, Sharing and Contesting Paradise through TourismTourism Ethnographies: La Reunion: David Picard Tourism as Skilled Labour---------------------------------Tourism Ethnographies: Bulgaria: Kirstin GhodseeWorking in the tourism industryMoral Tourism: Poverty, sustainability, and bio-politics---------------------------------------Tourism Ethnographies: Amy Speier: Fertility TourismReproductive TourismConclusion

Reading list

General Introductions to Tourism Anthropology:- Abram, Simon, Jacqueline Waldren, Donald Macleod, 1997, Tourists and Tourism: Identifying with People and Places, Oxford.- Coleman, Mike and Mike Crang, 2002, Tourism: between Place and Performance, New York.- Graburn, Nelson and Naomi Leite, 2009, Anthropological Interventions in Tourism Studies In Sage Handbook of Tourism Studies, ed. Robinson, Mike and Tazim Jamal, p. 35-64.- Leite, Naomi and Kathleen Adams (ed.), 2019, The Ethnography of Tourism: Edward Bruner and Beyond (The Anthropology of Tourism: Heritage, Mobility, and Society), Oxford. - Scott, Julie and Tom Selwyn, 2010, Thinking through Tourism, Oxford, New York.- Smith, Valene D., 1978, Hosts and guests. The Anthropology of Tourism, Oxford.Weekly Literature (selection subject to change by the lecturer):- Badone, Ellen and Sharon D. Roseman (ed.), 2004 Intersecting Journeys. The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism, Chicago.- Boissevain, Jeremy, 1996 Coping with Tourists: European Reactions to Mass Tourism, Bristol. Banaszkiewicz, Magdalena, Sabina Owsianowska and Nelson Graburn (ed.), 2016 Tourism in Post-socialist Europe, “Journal for Tourism and Cultural Change”, 15(2), Special Issue.- Bruner, Edward, 2005, Culture on Tour. Ethnographies of Travel, Chicago. - Hall, Michael and Tucker, Hazel (ed.), 2004 Tourism and Postcolonialism, London.- Picard, David, and Mike Robinson, 2016 The Framed World: Tourism, Tourists, and Photography, London.- Koenker, Diane P., 2013 Club Red. Vacation, Travel and the Soviet Dream, Ithaca, London.- Löfgren, Orvar, 1999 On Holiday. A History of Vacationing, Berkeley. - Picard, David and Michael Di Giovine, 2014 Tourism and the Power of Otherness: Seductions of Difference, Bristol.- Picard, David, and Mike Robinson, 2012, 2016, Emotion in Motion. Tourism, Affect and Transformation, Routledge.- Picard, David, and Mike Robinson, 2006 Festivals, Tourism, and Social Change Remaking the World, Bristol.- Salazar, Noel and Nelson Graburn, 2014 Tourism Imaginaries: Anthropological Approaches, New York.- Buchberger, Sonja, und Picard, David, 2014 Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanisms: Can Tourism Make a better World? Bielefeld.- Skinner, Jonathan and Dimitrious Theodossopoulos, 2011 Great Expectations: Imagination and Anticipation in Tourism, New York. - Frenzel, Fabian, 2016 Slumming it. The Tourist Valorization of Urban Poverty, London.Ethnographies (selection following student choice) - Babb, Florence E. 2011 The Tourism Encounter. Fashioning Latin American Nations & Histories, Stanford. - Bloch, Natalia, 2018, Bliscy nieznajomi. Turystyka i przezwyciężanie podporządkowania w postkolonialnych Indiach, Poznan. [Close Strangers. Tourism and the overcoming of subordination in postcolonial India]- Edensor, Tim, 2008 Tourists at the Taj. Performance and Meaning at a Symbolic Site, London. - Feldman, Jackie, Above the Death Pits, Beneath the Flag. Youth Voyages to Poland and the Performance of Israeli National Identity, New York, Oxford.- Lehrer, Erica T., 2013 Jewish Poland Revisited. Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places, Bloomington.- Ghodsee, Kristen, 2005 The Red Riviera. Gender, Tourism and Postsocialism on the Black Sea. Durham, London. - Picard, David, 2011 Tourism, Magic, and Modernity. Cultivating the Human Garden, Bristol. - Picard, Michael, 1996 Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture, Bali.- Simoni, Valerio, 2016, Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba, London.Speier, Amy, 2016 Fertility Holidays, IVF Tourism and the Reproduction of - Whiteness, New York. - Tucker, Hazel, 2003 Living With Tourism: Negotiating Identities in a Turkish Village, London.