ABSTRACT
None of the theories outlined are in themselves adequate to grasp the 'essence' of tourism, which is multi-faceted and particularly bound up with many other social and cultural elements in contemporary societies. It is inappropriate to think that it is possible to devise 'the theory of tourist behaviour'. Instead what is required is a range of concepts and arguments which capture both what is specific to tourism and what is common to tourist and certain non-tourist social practices. The concept of the tourist gaze attempts to do this. I categorised objects of the gaze in terms of romantic/collective, historical/modern, and authentic/inauthentic. Central to such objects is some notion of departure, particularly that there are distinct contrasts between what people routinely see and experience and what is extraordinary, the extraordinary sometimes taking the form of a liminal zone. The following are relevant to understanding the changing sociology of the tourist gaze: the social tone of different places; the globalisation and the universalisation of the tourist gaze; the processes of consuming tourist services; tourist meanings and signs; modernism and postmodernism; history, heritage and the vernacular; and post-tourism and play. Different gazes and hence different tourist practices are authorised in terms of a variety of discourses. These include education, as in the Grand Tour; enlightenment, as in much individual 'travel' and cultural tourism; health, as in tourism designed to 'restore' the individual to healthy functioning; group solidarity, as in many Japanese tourist practices; and play, as in the case of the post-tourist.
