AP/ANTH 3120 6.00 The Anthropolgy of Tourism

NOT OFFERED DURING 2023-2024 ACADEMIC YEAR

This course examines the cultural forces that shape the tourist experience and the social, political, and economic consequences of tourist practice. The first part of the curriculum explores various aspects of the tourist experience, including the search for authenticity, the cultural construction of the ‘other’, postmodern encounters with spectacle, and the embodiment of affect and desire in travel. The curriculum then shifts focus to the experience of those who are ‘toured’ and the consequences for tourist sites, considering such issues as the commodification of expressive culture in local communities, global inequalities that underlie tourism development, and the role of tourism in the construction of politically and economically salient forms of local and national identity.