ABSTRACT
This book is about how places to play are also places in play: made and remade by the mobilities and performances of tourists and workers, images and heritage, the latest fashions and the newest diseases. The playfulness of place is in part about the urge to travel elsewhere, the pleasure of immersing oneself in another environment, and the fascination with little differences in the materiality of the world. What is it that provokes a fascination for other places? What makes a place desirable to visit? And even if we desire that other place, why do we actually go through the trouble of physically visiting it? Why be in another place? What are the pleasures it can give that are only available through our physical presence?
