ABSTRACT
In this chapter I consider tourism as something people do in spatial encounters. The discussion continues previous w ork on tourist practices and experiences (Crouch 1999a, 2001), focusing on the subjective and embodied content of tourist practice as a form of seduction, which I te rm here flirting w ith space. First I consider the range of debates on tourism and seduction. Central to this is the power of the gaze, constituted in sightseeing, in tourism geographies and sociologies as it relates to the engagem ent of the tourist in making sense of tourism , but as observer, detached or self-aware, consuming-prioritizing-signs. I also make a b rief consideration of what I consider to be an extrem e version of what tourism is: Baudrillard’s distracting journey, and tourism prom oted as a seduction process (Rojek 1995). Arguably people are lured to go touring, enticed to particular cultures, sites and sights across the world through the tourism industry and num erous agencies who collude in this-w riters, film-makers, advertisers and governments themselves. Desire is engaged, perhaps produced, in this process. Spaces and the cultural u se /co n ten t and context are im portant in these processes and can be used to entrap desire.
