The Tourist Gaze Review.=
604
PUBLICATIONS
IN REVIEW
The Tourist Gaze
By John Urry. Sage Publications
(28 Banner
ISBN o-8039-8182-1,
1990, 176 pp. (photos,
(cloth).
Massey
Street, London EClY
8QE)
bibliography, index) $45.00
University,
Neil Leiper
New Zealand
Readers might infer a double meaning from this book’s title. It could refer to the gaze of tourists and also to the tourist, Gaze. This would be Henry
Gaze, a tourist who went into business and helped pioneer the modern form of tour operations, like his contemporary,
Thomas Cook (two names symbolizing features of the tourism industry: sightseeing and food?). Unlike Cook,
Gaze has been relatively neglected in the literature, although coordinated advertising by the two superficially competitive firms represents an early example of promotional activity by a tourism industry (Pudney 1953). Glancing through the The Tourist Gaze, one finds nothing about Henry. The title is about the gaze of tourists, but it also alludes to the gaze of clinicians, as discussed by Foucault (1975).
The Tourist Gaze, by John Urry from the Sociology Department in the
University of Lancaster (UK), contains lively discussions on a number of topics. It should be interesting to anyone with a scholarly involvement in tourism and is likely to become a standard educational reference, because
Urry has achieved a useful blend. In addition to some social theory, his book offers perspectives on tourism drawing on a range of social science disciplines, many examples, and brief bits of statistical data (and, a welcome feature in a book on postmodernism, the English is readable).
Urry remarks that to be a tourist is one of the characteristics of the “modern” experience, an idea discussed in more detail by MacCannell(l976).
Modernism and postmodernism, by definition, imply rapidly perishable perspectives.
Therefore,
with 15 years elapsed since the appearance of MacCannell’s now classic study, Urry’s book offers a fresh
PUBLICATIONS
IN REVIEW
The Tourist Gaze
By John Urry. Sage Publications
(28 Banner
ISBN o-8039-8182-1,
1990, 176 pp. (photos,
(cloth).
Massey
Street, London EClY
8QE)
bibliography, index) $45.00
University,
Neil Leiper
New Zealand
Readers might infer a double meaning from this book’s title. It could refer to the gaze of tourists and also to the tourist, Gaze. This would be Henry
Gaze, a tourist who went into business and helped pioneer the modern form of tour operations, like his contemporary,
Thomas Cook (two names symbolizing features of the tourism industry: sightseeing and food?). Unlike Cook,
Gaze has been relatively neglected in the literature, although coordinated advertising by the two superficially competitive firms represents an early example of promotional activity by a tourism industry (Pudney 1953). Glancing through the The Tourist Gaze, one finds nothing about Henry. The title is about the gaze of tourists, but it also alludes to the gaze of clinicians, as discussed by Foucault (1975).
The Tourist Gaze, by John Urry from the Sociology Department in the
University of Lancaster (UK), contains lively discussions on a number of topics. It should be interesting to anyone with a scholarly involvement in tourism and is likely to become a standard educational reference, because
Urry has achieved a useful blend. In addition to some social theory, his book offers perspectives on tourism drawing on a range of social science disciplines, many examples, and brief bits of statistical data (and, a welcome feature in a book on postmodernism, the English is readable).
Urry remarks that to be a tourist is one of the characteristics of the “modern” experience, an idea discussed in more detail by MacCannell(l976).
Modernism and postmodernism, by definition, imply rapidly perishable perspectives.
Therefore,
with 15 years elapsed since the appearance of MacCannell’s now classic study, Urry’s book offers a fresh