ABSTRACT
While the vast majority of published books on tourism concern economic or planning aspects of tourism as a business, only a tiny number of studies consider the meanings of the social relations gathered under the umbrella of ‘tourist encounters’, despite the general acknowledgement that tourism effects social change. Mass tourism is tainted with the imagery of a totalising modernity that tarnishes all it touches, destroying ‘authentic cultures’ and polluting earthly ‘paradises’, so that it has become a truism to state that tourism destroys the very object of its desire. When so many of the people once thought to be ‘hosts’ now can be recognised as tourists in their own right, we must reconcile ourselves to the awareness that we (as travellers, tourists and writers) are part of the changing perspectives that are interacting to delineate new and different identities. This chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
