ABSTRACT
It has become something of a statistical mantra that tourist activity will become the largest source of global employment by the year 2000 (see Shaw and Williams 1994). However, this prediction is plagued not only by the murkiness of its measurements but also by a theoretical doubt over just what is the social and cultural character of tourist related employment. This chapter considers how to theorise the nature of tourism employment and, more specifically, what relationship that theorisation might have to sociological and cultural understandings of employment more generally.
