ABSTRACT
What originally caught our attention was the increased use of the figure of the tourist in contemporary writings on the modern/post-modern condition. The tourist seemed to appear everywhere, in every keynote paper at social scientific conferences, as a symbol of our allegedly post-modern era. But what was also surprising was that, in this context, little reference was ever made to the body of tourism studies, which are rich in depth and breadth (see the various chapters in this book).
