Tourism in global society : place, culture, consumption / Kevin Meethan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meethan, Kevin.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tourism.

Tourism--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

x, 214 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke, Hampshire [UK] ; New York : Palgrave, 2001.

Summary:

There is a wealth of scholarship on tourism from a variety of different disciplines, but few attempts to synthesize its broad themes into a coherent analytical framework. This book addresses this problem by analyzing tourism in light of contemporary social theory. By focusing on tourism in terms of consumption, commodification, and the political and cultural economy, the relationships between tourism, globalization, people, and place are explored in an empirically grounded but theoretically informed analysis.

Contents:

1 Theorising Tourism 1

Introduction: why theory? 1

Conceptualising modernity 6

Tourist spaces of modernity 9

Theorising tourism and modernity 11

Plan of the book 13

2 Creating Tourist Spaces: from Modernity to Globalisation 16

Restructuring space 17

Revitalising urban space 20

Postmodernism, place and aesthetics 25

Globalisation 33

A symbolic economy of space 36

3 Tourism Development and the Political Economy 41

Tourism: modernisation or underdevelopment? 42

Globalisation and economic deregulation 49

Tourism multinationals 50

Mediating globalisation: power and policies 53

Localising development 56

4 Tourism: Modernity and Consumption 66

Production

Consumption 68

Marketing and niches 72

Control or choice? 74

The consuming gaze? 81

Narratives of place and consumption 84

5 Authenticity and Heritage 90

Authenticity, alienation and the 'exotic other' 91

Tradition and heritage 95

Imagined pasts, imagined places 98

The politics of heritage 99

Global heritage 102

More than entertaining nostalgia? 104

Consuming heritage: places and objects 107

6 Whose Culture? 114

Culture 115

Global culture? 117

Tourism and culture: homogeneity or heterogeneity? 121

What is cultural tourism? 127

Other people, other cultures 129

The politics of cultural tourism 130

Conclusion: culture and commodification 135

7 Whose Place? Tourism, People and Change 138

Place and identity 139

Tourism impacts 143

Gender and work 147

Creating and maintaining boundaries 151

Mediating the boundaries 153

Acting it out: ritual, place and tourism 156

8 Place, Culture and Consumption 163

Modernity, utopia and dystopia 163

Accounting for globalisation 166

A symbolic economy of space 168

Towards a future research agenda 169.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 177-207) and index.

ISBN:

0333760573

OCLC:

45558778