Being a Tourist: Finding Meaning in Pleasure Travel

By Julia D. Harrison

What feeds the impulse to explore new horizons? What makes travel meaningful? In Being a Tourist , Julia Harrison explores the motivations of a large group of middle-class travelers to find out why people invest their financial, emotional, psychological, and physical resources in this activity. She suggests that they are fueled by several desires: to find intimacy and connection, to express a personal aesthetic, to explore the idea of "home," and to make sense of a globalized world. Engagingly and thoughtfully written for readers of travel writing, tourism studies, anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology, Being a Tourist goes beyond current debates about authenticity and consumption to analyze the nuanced moral and political complexity of privileged travel.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0774809787
• ISBN13: 9780774809788
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"