ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, tourism studies has broken out of its traditional institutional affiliation with business and management programs to take its legitimate place as an interdisciplinary social science field of cutting edge scholarship. The field has emerged as central to ongoing debates in social theory concerning such diverse topics as postcolonialism, mobility, and postmodernism, to name just a few. While there has been a diverse body of empirical research on this transformation the theoretical discussions in tourism studies remain largely attached to theories of modernity and Anglo-centric assumptions about tourism. There is a need for the field to come to terms theoretically with the contemporary and future realities of tourism as a truly global phenomenon.

Real Tourism is a significant volume which sets this new theoretical agenda, engaging directly with what tourism does in practice and in place and demonstrates the need for a theoretical intervention that moves tourism scholarship beyond the province of Anglophone thinking. The volume achieves this by explicitly bridging ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ scholarship on tourism; reframing theoretical discussions around ‘real practices’ instead of abstract typologies; and radically delinking tourism theory from the grand narratives of modernity and assumptions about authenticity, identity, tradition, and development. The book brings together leading academics in the field and provides provocative multidisciplinary and multi-contextual reflection on the future of tourism.

This original, timely and compelling volume puts forward new post modernist ideas and arguments about tourism today and in the future.  It is essential reading for students, researchers and academics interested in Tourism.

chapter chapter1|11 pages

Real Tourism

chapter chapter2|26 pages

No Country for Old Men

chapter chapter3|16 pages

Time to Hostess

Reflections on borderless care

chapter chapter4|18 pages

The Rhythms of Tourism

chapter chapter5|31 pages

The Rime of the Frequent Flyer

Or What the elephant has got in his trunk

chapter chapter6|20 pages

Touring Modernities

Disordered tourism in China

chapter chapter7|20 pages

Practicing Tourist Landscapes

Photographic performances and consumption of nature in Japanese domestic tourism

chapter chapter8|19 pages

Medical Tourism, Medical Exile

Responding to the cross-border pursuit of healthcare in Malaysia

chapter chapter9|21 pages

Post-ethical Tours

Corporate social responsibility in tourism

chapter chapter10|20 pages

Tourism and the Question of Poverty

chapter chapter11|19 pages

Post-war Tours