ABSTRACT
In academic terms travel writing has travelled. As an object of study it has crossed disciplines. This chapter addresses some of the questions about disciplinary identity in relation to travel and asks what travel writing and its criticism leave out. The study of travel writing has reflected the developments in the attention paid to the relationship between the visitor and visited. Of particular importance has been the turn in anthropology towards a critique of ethnography and the adoption by those in lite ran studies of elements of that critique. The role of anthropology in gaining and transmitting local knowledge is stressed in its defence. Recognition of material conditions can help situate travel, its writing, and its criticism. Since travel writing in its broadest sense must, like all literature, reflect the society in which it is produced and consumed, multifarious elements of culture are contained within it.
