ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to thread together a number of issues within the anthropology of tourism that remain contentious or perhaps unresolved. This will mean revisiting some ideas that have been discussed in previous chapters, especially Chapter 5. The specific aims of this chapter are:
• to create an awareness that tourism can be interpreted as a modern form of pilgrimage;
• to develop an understanding that there is a balance to be struck between seeing tourism as cultural impact and seeing it as just one part of a wider modernisation phenomenon;
• to suggest that tourism carries with it an important social function as a form of modern myth; (and)
• to create a deeper awareness of the local-global relationships forged by tourism.
