Key figure of mobility: the tourist. (February 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Graburn, Nelson
• Is Part Of: Social anthropology. Volume 25:Number 1(2017)
• Page Start: 83
• Page End: 96
• Publication Date: 2017-02
• Subjects: tourist -- conceptual overlaps -- inner journeys -- moralisation -- methodological challenges; tourisme -- chevauchements conceptuels -- voyages intérieurs -- moralisation -- défis méthodologiques; Ethnology -- Europe -- Periodicals; Europe -- Social life and customs -- Periodicals; 306
• DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12394
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0964-0282

Abstract

Abstract : The tourist has long been a common but often demeaned figure of modern popular culture. Only from the 1970s did social scientists such as Erik Cohen, Valene Smith and particularly Dean MacCannell treat the tourist seriously as a conceptual figure. The past 40 years has seen both the proliferation of numbers and types of tourists on the move and a much more fine‐grained conceptualisation of the figure of the tourist, who can be examined in terms of both embodied performances and inner, mental voyages rather than objective classifications. Many tourists are competitive about their travel destinations, their experiences, their tastes and the care with which they treat both their hosts and the destination environment, and tourism researchers have their own moralisations, using measures of social and cultural impact and environmental sustainability. Anthropologists are challenged to apply their ethnographic research methods to these temporary sojourners, on the move, often focused on their social and bodily pleasures. Such conditions and the often cosmopolitan research milieux promote a convergence of anthropological and other social science research methods and concepts, with some productive multidisciplinary results. Anthropologists' research on ethnic tourism, trekking and rites of passage tourism, volunteer tourism, medical tourism and many other specialised forms of travel including couch surfing and philanthropy demonstrate the continuing leading position of the discipline under very different and often difficult circumstances.