anthropology of tourism notes

Subject List
Take a Tour
For Authors
Subscriber Services
Publications
African American Studies
African Studies
American Literature

Anthropology

Architecture Planning and Preservation
Art History
Atlantic History
Biblical Studies
British and Irish Literature
Childhood Studies
Chinese Studies
Cinema and Media Studies
Communication
Criminology
Environmental Science
Evolutionary Biology
International Law
International Relations
Islamic Studies
Jewish Studies
Latin American Studies
Latino Studies
Linguistics
Literary and Critical Theory
Medieval Studies
Military History
Political Science
Public Health
Renaissance and Reformation
Social Work
Urban Studies
Victorian Literature
Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Tourism

Introduction.

Other Works in the 20th Century
The 21st Century
New Theoretical Approaches
Ethnicity, Identity, and Nationalism
Material Culture, Heritage, and Historical Patrimony
The Environment
Applied Anthropology
State of the Anthropology of Tourism Worldwide
New and Emerging Approaches
Professional Organizations

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

Anthropology of Corruption
University Museums
Find more forthcoming articles...
Export Citations
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Tourism by Carla Guerrón Montero LAST REVIEWED: 29 May 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 29 May 2019 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0025

Anthropology has expanded and changed radically by including within its purview the study of tourism. In spite of the ubiquitous nature of traveling in anthropology, tourism and travel became subjects worthy of discussion in anthropology relatively recently, in Europe in the 1930s and in the United States in the 1960s (see Introductory Works ). Two main reasons explain this paucity of attention. First, anthropologists argued that their experience and motivations for being in a distant location could not be compared to that of tourists, and they believed that, in many instances, they were being unfairly associated with the tourists they encountered in these faraway places. Second, anthropologists considered tourism a subject not serious enough to discuss intellectually and ethnographically. Although in practically every ethnographic field site anthropologists encountered at least occasional tourists, they were perceived to be an undesired nuisance and given scant or no attention. In spite of this inauspicious beginning, the anthropological scholarship on tourism has contributed greatly to tourism studies. Anthropologists have made important contributions to the understanding of tourism’s impact on host communities; the impact of travel on an individual; the power relationships in tourism developments; heritage and culture commodification; types of tourism and tourists; and the relationships between tourism and ethnicity, identity, material culture, nationalism, and the environment, among others.

Introductory Works

In general terms, the field of tourism studies has tended to be fragmented and rarely interdisciplinary, as scholars approach it from within their own disciplinary boundaries ( Echtner and Jamal 1997 ). In anthropology, the study of tourism began in Europe in the 1930s. In the United States, it is agreed that the study of tourism was launched with publication of Nuñez 1963 , an article about “weekendismo” in Guadalajara, Mexico. At this time, researchers in other disciplines (such as sociology, ecology, leisure and recreation studies, and political science) became interested in analyzing tourism as well. In 1977, Valene Smith published the influential edited volume Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism , which was reedited in 1989 (see Smith 1989 ). This volume marked the beginning of a more serious interest in tourism and travel in anthropology. Geography, history, and sociology are other disciplines in the social sciences in which practitioners have studied the tourism industry. For instance, geography concerned itself with tourism long before anthropology (in the 1930s), and geographers have produced essential contributions, particularly concerning nuanced understandings of place and space. Sociologists have produced a typology of tourism, the concepts of “staged authenticity” and “site sacralization” (see MacCannell 1999 ) and the figure of “the stranger” in modern society ( Bauman 1991 ) among other important concepts, while historians have studied travel and tourism since the 1930s. In addition, the fields of business, management, and economics have long addressed the topic of tourism from an epistemological approach that differs from that of the social sciences.

Bauman, Zygmunt. 1991. Modernity and ambivalence . Cambridge, UK: Polity.

Bauman’s work has been of theoretical relevance for the anthropological study of tourism. Bauman theorizes the figure of “the stranger” as the person who is present yet familiar in modern societies. In touristic experiences, the stranger is both enticing and the subject of fear.

Echtner, Charlotte, and Tazim Jamal. 1997. The disciplinary dilemma of tourism studies. Annals of Tourism Research 24.4: 868–883.

DOI: 10.1016/S0160-7383(97)00060-1

The authors investigate the possibilities for the field of tourism studies to develop comprehensive and integrated theories that could eventually produce a distinct discipline.

MacCannell, Dean. 1999. The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class . Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

The Tourist is a classic book in the study of tourism in the social sciences. MacCannell aims to develop a theory of the modern Western tourist, his or her motivations for traveling, and the role of the tourism industry in creating touristic experiences. The author suggests the presence of different “stages of authenticity,” depending on the degree of authenticity of every touristic encounter.

Nuñez, Theron. 1963. Tourism, tradition, and acculturation: Weekendismo in a Mexican village. Ethnology 2.3: 347–352.

DOI: 10.2307/3772866

This article is considered a classic and the first anthropological work that focuses specifically on tourism. The author studies wealthy domestic tourists in Guadalajara, Mexico, who spend weekends at nearby Lake Chapala.

Smith, Valene, ed. 1989. Hosts and guests: The anthropology of tourism . Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.

This is one of the foundational works for the anthropological study of international tourism. This groundbreaking book includes a collection of sixteen essays that address tourism both theoretically and ethnographically. The original edited book (published in 1977) emerged based on the work of the first panel on the anthropology of tourism held at a meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Mexico City in 1974.

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

About Anthropology »
Meet the Editorial Board »
Africa, Anthropology of
Agriculture
Animal Cultures
Animal Ritual
Animal Sanctuaries
Anorexia Nervosa
Anthropocene, The
Anthropological Activism and Visual Ethnography
Anthropology and Education
Anthropology and Theology
Anthropology of Islam
Anthropology of Kurdistan
Anthropology of the Senses
Anthrozoology
Antiquity, Ethnography in
Archaeobotany
Archaeological Education
Archaeology
Archaeology and Museums
Archaeology and Political Evolution
Archaeology and Race
Archaeology and the Body
Archaeology, Gender and
Archaeology, Global
Archaeology, Historical
Archaeology, Indigenous
Archaeology of Childhood
Archaeology of the Senses
Art Museums
Autoethnography
Bakhtin, Mikhail
Bass, William M.
Benedict, Ruth
Binford, Lewis
Bioarchaeology
Biocultural Anthropology
Biological and Physical Anthropology
Biological Citizenship
Boas, Franz
Bone Histology
Bureaucracy
Business Anthropology
Cargo Cults
Charles Sanders Peirce and Anthropological Theory
Christianity, Anthropology of
Citizenship
Class, Archaeology and
Clinical Trials
Cobb, William Montague
Code-switching and Multilingualism
Cognitive Anthropology
Cole, Johnnetta
Colonialism
Commodities
Crapanzano, Vincent
Cultural Heritage Presentation and Interpretation
Cultural Heritage, Race and
Cultural Materialism
Cultural Relativism
Cultural Resource Management
Culture and Personality
Culture, Popular
Curatorship
Cyber-Archaeology
Dalit Studies
Dance Ethnography
de Heusch, Luc
Deaccessioning
Design, Anthropology and
Digital Anthropology
Disability and Deaf Studies and Anthropology
Douglas, Mary
Drake, St. Clair
Durkheim and the Anthropology of Religion
Economic Anthropology
Embodied/Virtual Environments
Emotion, Anthropology of
Environmental Justice and Indigeneity
Ethnoarchaeology
Ethnocentrism
Ethnographic Documentary Production
Ethnographic Films from Iran
Ethnography
Ethnography Apps and Games
Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography
Ethnomusicology
Ethnoscience
Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
Evolution, Cultural
Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology
Evolutionary Theory
Experimental Archaeology
Federal Indian Law
Feminist Anthropology
Film, Ethnographic
Forensic Anthropology
Francophonie
Frazer, Sir James George
Geertz, Clifford
Gender and Religion
GIS and Archaeology
Global Health
Globalization
Gluckman, Max
Graphic Anthropology
Haraway, Donna
Healing and Religion
Health and Social Stratification
Health Policy, Anthropology of
House Museums
Human Adaptability
Human Evolution
Human Rights
Human Rights Films
Humanistic Anthropology
Hurston, Zora Neale
Identity Politics
India, Masculinity, Identity
Indigeneity
Indigenous Boarding School Experiences
Indigenous Economic Development
Indigenous Media: Currents of Engagement
Industrial Archaeology
Institutions
Interpretive Anthropology
Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity
Laboratories
Language and Emotion
Language and Law
Language and Media
Language and Race
Language and Urban Place
Language Contact and its Sociocultural Contexts, Anthropol...
Language Ideology
Language Socialization
Leakey, Louis
Legal Anthropology
Legal Pluralism
Liberalism, Anthropology of
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic Relativity
Linguistics, Historical
Literary Anthropology
Local Biologies
Lévi-Strauss, Claude
Malinowski, Bronisław
Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology
Maritime Archaeology
Material Culture
Materiality
Mathematical Anthropology
Matriarchal Studies
Mead, Margaret
Media Anthropology
Medical Anthropology
Medical Technology and Technique
Mediterranean
Mendel, Gregor
Mental Health and Illness
Mesoamerican Archaeology
Mexican Migration to the United States
Militarism, Anthropology and
Missionization
Morgan, Lewis Henry
Multispecies Ethnography
Museum Studies
NAGPRA and Repatriation of Native American Human Remains a...
Narrative in Sociocultural Studies of Language
Needham, Rodney
Neoliberalism
NGOs, Anthropology of
Niche Construction
Northwest Coast, The
Oceania, Archaeology of
Paleolithic Art
Paleontology
Performance Studies
Performativity
Perspectivism
Philosophy of Museums
Plantations
Political Anthropology
Postprocessual Archaeology
Postsocialism
Poverty, Culture of
Primatology
Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film: A Decolonial Re...
Processual Archaeology
Psycholinguistics
Psychological Anthropology
Public Archaeology
Public Sociocultural Anthropologies
Religion and Post-Socialism
Religious Conversion
Repatriation
Reproductive and Maternal Health in Anthropology
Reproductive Technologies
Rhetoric Culture Theory
Rural Anthropology
Sahlins, Marshall
Sapir, Edward
Scandinavia
Science Studies
Secularization
Settler Colonialism
Sex Estimation
Sign Language
Skeletal Age Estimation
Social Anthropology (British Tradition)
Social Movements
Socialization
Society for Visual Anthropology, History of
Socio-Cultural Approaches to the Anthropology of Reproduct...
Sociolinguistics
Sound Ethnography
Stable Isotopes
Stan Brakhage and Ethnographic Praxis
Structuralism
Studying Up
Sub-Saharan Africa, Democracy in
Surrealism and Anthropology
Technological Organization
Trans Studies in Anthroplogy
Tree-Ring Dating
Turner, Edith L. B.
Turner, Victor
Urban Anthropology
Virtual Ethnography
Visual Anthropology
Whorfian Hypothesis
Willey, Gordon
Wolf, Eric R.
Writing Culture
Youth Culture
Zora Neale Hurston and Visual Anthropology
Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy
Legal Notice
Accessibility

[66.249.64.20|109.248.223.228]
109.248.223.228

Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism

In this Book

Edited by Valene L. Smith
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press

Tourism—one of the world's largest industries—has long been appreciated for its economic benefits, but in this volume tourism receives a unique systematic scrutiny as a medium for cultural exchange. Modern developments in technology and industry, together with masterful advertising, have created temporarily leisured people with the desire and the means to travel. They often in turn effect profound cultural change in the places they visit, and the contributors to this work all attend to the impact these "guests" have on their "hosts." In contrast to the dramatic economic transformations, the social repercussions of tourism are subtle and often recognized only by the indigenous peoples themselves and by the anthropologists who have studied them before and after the introduction of tourism. The case studies in Hosts and Guests examine the five types of tourism—historical, cultural, ethnic, environmental, and recreational—and their impact on diverse societies over a broad geographical range

Title Page, Copyright
Introduction
PART I: TOURISM AND LEISURE: A THEORETICAL OVERVIEW
1. Tourism: The Sacred Journey
2. Tourism as a Form of Imperialism
PART II: NASCENT TOURISM IN NON-WESTERN SOCIETIES
3. Eskimo Tourism: Micro-Models and Marginal Men
4. Gender Roles in Indigenous Tourism: Kuna Mola, Kuna Yala, and Cultural Survival
5. Tourism in Tonga Revisited: Continued Troubled Times?
pp. 105-117
6. Towards a Theoretical Analysis of Tourism: Economic Dualism and Cultural Involution in Bali
pp. 119-138
7. Tourism in Toraja (Sulawesi, Indonesia)
pp. 139-168
PART III: TOURISM IN EUROPEAN RESORTS
8. Culture by the Pound: An Anthropological Perspective on Tourism as Cultural Commoditization
pp. 171-185
9. Changing Perceptions of Tourism and Tourists in a Catalan Resort Town
pp. 187-199
PART IV: TOURISM IN COMPLEX SOCIETIES
10. Tourism and Development in Three North Carolina Coastal Towns
pp. 203-222
11. The Impact of Tourism on the Arts and Crafts of the Indians of the Southwestern United States
pp. 223-235
12. Creating Antiques for Fun and Profit: Encounters Between Iranian Jewish Merchants and Touring Coreligionists
pp. 237-245
13. The Polynesian Cultural Center: A Multi-Ethnic Model of Seven Pacific Cultures
pp. 247-262
PART V: TOWARDS A THEORY OF TOURISM
14. Touristic Studies in Anthropological Perspective
pp. 265-279
Reference List and Bibliography
pp. 281-330
pp. 331-341

Additional Information

Project muse mission.

Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.

2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218

+1 (410) 516-6989 [email protected]

Now and Always, The Trusted Content Your Research Requires

Built on the Johns Hopkins University Campus

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.

Open access
Published: 27 July 2022

Anthropology of tourism: practical and theoretical development in China

Jiuxia Sun 1 , 2 &
Yilin Luo 1

International Journal of Anthropology and Ethnology volume 6 , Article number: 10 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

3697 Accesses

Metrics details

This paper examines the origins, developments and new trends of anthropology of tourism in China through a comparison between China and the West. Chinese anthropologists have, since the end of the last century, begun to introduce Western academic achievements and tried to conduct domestic research. In the process of development into a big and great power in tourism, Chinese researchers have intensively absorbed new concepts and new theories from abroad, studied local cases in China’s context, and carry out China-West dialogues in various aspects. Anthropology of tourism in China has seen many breakthroughs in terms of topics, theories, disciplines and methods, contributing its own experiences and new theories to the development of anthropology of tourism worldwide.

Anthropology of tourism in China originated from the systematic introduction of Western research results, but it is by no means a fully Westernized outcome. In the past four decades, researchers have devoted themselves to building a local disciplinary system, and put forward a stream of new research topics, new theories and new methods that break new grounds. Taking the development of tourism as a clue, this paper reviews the progress of research in anthropology of tourism in China since its inception, and explains the causes of differences between Chinese and Western research at this stage through the comparison of social development situations. It aims to help more people understand the current situation and academic contributions of anthropology of tourism in China, provide local experiences and theories to the world, and promote the development of anthropology as a discipline, as well as the international academic exchanges.

The origins of anthropology of tourism in China

Anthropology of tourism in China began in the late 1980s, which is closely related to the development of domestic modern tourism. In 1985, with the reform of the economic system and the policy of opening up to the outside world, the power of tourism outreach and visa notification was further delegated to the local levels. While the number of travel agencies soared to 1573 in 1988 (Du 2003 ), inbound tourists increased rapidly, and tourism truly became an economic sector with a certain scale. In 1990, the government issued an instruction to “allow Chinese citizens to visit overseas relatives and travel abroad.” Four years later, outbound travel for private reasons reached 1.6423 million person-times. Domestic tourism exceeded 500 million person-times at the same time, suggesting that the domestic tourism market began to take shape. Footnote 1 The comprehensive rectification of the tourism order further standardized and stimulated the healthy development of tourism. In 1998, China’s foreign exchange earnings from tourism jumped to 7th in the world from 41st in 1978. China has grown into a world-renowned global tourist destination and source country with rich resources, broad market and huge potential. China’s tourism has represented an important industry in the national economy and a new force on the international tourism arena.

Against such macro background, researchers in anthropology and tourism drove the development and transition of tourism research in their respective fields as forerunners in anthropology of tourism in China. Ethnologists were the first to pay attention to the phenomena and existing problems of tourism. China’s ethnic regions are rich in natural and cultural tourism resources. Ethnic minority areas such as Yunnan, Tibet and Guangxi have attracted a large number of international tourists. Cultural inheritance and unity, economic development and common prosperity of ethnic regions as the major issues of national governance are precisely important tasks after the reconstruction of anthropology in China. Therefore, tourism can serve as a natural medium for development-oriented ethnographic studies in anthropology (Zhu 2017b ). Some scholars realized earlier that the high economic benefits of tourism have a catalytic role in meeting people’s needs and expanding social employment and hence, proposed to actively develop “ethnic tourism commodities” (Jia 1987 ). Huang Huikun called on cultural anthropologists to get involved in the development of tourism resources (Huang 1995 ). Pan Shengzhi published “Ethnology of Tourism”, which comprehensively examined the relationship between tourism and ethnicity from the perspective of anthropology. The 1999 Kunming Conference on Anthropology, Tourism and Chinese Society and its proceedings also inspired the study of tourism in the anthropological community (Yang et al. 2001 ; Xu 2000 ). Many scholars advocated “protective development of tourism” (Ma 2000 ) in consideration of the negative impact of tourism on the traditional culture of host nations (Ma 2002 , 2003 ). There were also studies that criticize tourism of probably depriving hosts of reasonable wishes for modernization (Liu 2001 ).

In the meantime, tourism scholars proactively absorbed the viewpoints, concepts and methods of anthropology. From 1996 to 1997, Baojia Shen published four serial articles in the Tourism Tribune––“International Tourism Research Progress”, which gave a comprehensive introduction to sociology, anthropology, and methods and methodology of tourism research in developing countries, spurring the transition of tourism research to social sciences. Tourism academic circles begun to recognize the complex social, cultural and ecological impacts of tourism (Guo 2001 ; Yang and Wang 2000 ). Researchers with backgrounds in economics, management and even natural sciences also, consciously or unconsciously, carried out research on tourism, culture, host-guest relation, or adopted ethnographic methods. Nevertheless, relevant research in this period was fragmented and spontaneous (Zong 2001b ).

The systematic study and promotion of anthropology of tourism as a discipline is attributed to Prof. Jigang Bao with a background in geography and Prof. Zhaorong Peng with a background in anthropology. During his study visit to Canada in 1995, Bao got acquainted with famous tourism anthropologists such as Valene Smith, and came into contact with Peter Murphy and his book Tourism: A Community Approach . After returning to China, he further recognized the importance and urgency of research on community-based tourism in the fieldwork of tourism development in Longji Terraced Fields. In 2001, based on the Research Center for Tourism Development and Planning of Sun Yat-sen University, Bao enrolled Jiuxia Sun, then a master of anthropology, as the first doctoral student in tourism management in China, and enrolled in 2003, the first postdoctoral student with an anthropological background. Under his inspections, five master’s theses, four doctoral dissertations and one post-doctoral report (Sun 2009 ) were completed using the relevant theories and methods of anthropology and sociology. Zhaorong Peng studied under the tutelage of famous tourism anthropologist Prof. Nelson Graburn from 2003 to 2004 at the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. During this period, he finished the first Chinese-authored book Tourism Anthropology that comprehensively introduced the knowledge pedigree and classic cases of Western anthropology of tourism. After returning to China, Zhaorong Peng led the establishment of the Tourism Anthropology Research Center under the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology of Xiamen University, with Nelson Graburn serving as the consultant. Yunnan University and other colleges and universities also followed to enroll postgraduate and doctoral students in anthropology of tourism. Since then, institutions for undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral training and full-time research in anthropology of tourism have been initially established.

Compared with the western studies originated in the context of colonialism and post colonialism, anthropology of tourism in China rose rapidly with the fast development of tourism. Guided by the state’s policy of promoting the development of ethnic areas, anthropologists consciously entered the “field of tourism” and sought effective ways for the development of ethnic areas and cultural protection and utilization, laying a solid foundation for deepening research and practice in tourism-driven rural revitalization by scholars in recent years. In addition, tourism scholars played a very active role and gradually became one of the leading forces in the construction of anthropology of tourism. This means that domestic research in anthropology of tourism is inseparable from the dual attention to tourism as a social phenomenon and an economic industry.

Systematic introduction of Western results and local examination by Chinese studies

In its infancy around the twenty-first century, anthropology of tourism in China made headway to varying degrees in research content, theoretical progress and domestic application. In terms of research content, Chinese anthropologists systematically translated and introduced the factual cases, theoretical perspectives and research methods of Western anthropology of tourism, so the expression of academic concepts and research norms were increasingly internationalized at this stage. In terms of theoretical progress, Chinese scholars paid more attention to emerging international concepts and theoretical explanations. In particular, research on cultural impact of tourism increased significantly. Academic theories and achievements that explored the nature of tourism, such as tourism performance, cultural commercialization, and authenticity, were successively introduced to China (Adler 1990 ; Shiner 1999 ). In terms of domestic application, anthropologists and tourism researchers began to extensively discuss various social and cultural issues associated with domestic tourism development. In a word, the outstanding achievements of this period made better use of mature Western theories and anthropological methods.

Extensive translation of foreign research results

In this period, the earliest translations of anthropology of tourism were formed, owing to the efforts of anthropologists and ethnologists. There were also thematic reviews of the progress of Western research, or comprehensive overviews of the development of the discipline. For example, as early as 2001, Zong analyzed and commented on the schools and research progress of Western anthropology of tourism (Zong 2001a , b ) and during her postdoctoral research, she translated the book Anthropology of Tourism authored by Dennison Nash, the pioneer of American anthropology of tourism. In 2007–2008, A Collection of Translations in Anthropology of Tourism co-edited by Zhaorong Peng and Nelson Graburn was published. At the same time, Xiaoping Zhang published the Chinese translation of Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class , and completed the Chinese translation of Valene Smith’s Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism .

The translation and introduction of these foreign classic works in anthropology of tourism provide a theoretical reference for the initial development of the discipline in China, and offer a knowledge reserve for Chinese tourism scholars to quickly get engaged in anthropological research. Such results of translation and re-creation pave the foundation for the localizing anthropology of tourism in the early stage. Of course, China’s related research and disciplinary understanding still lagged behind over a period of time, compared with a large number of academic achievements in the West.

Introduction of new concepts and theories to expand the field of tourism research

Researchers begun to follow closely and introduce from aboard the mature viewpoints, concepts and theories in anthropology of tourism. First, Chinese cultural anthropologists got actively involved in discussion on the disciplinary characteristics, core issues and research perspectives of anthropology of tourism. Drawing on the disciplinary definition of anthropology by scholars such as Valene Smith, they pointed out that the biggest difference between anthropology and other disciplines in the field of tourism is that it adopts “a holistic, cross-cultural and comparative perspective” (Richter and Smith 2012 ). The social and cultural impact of tourism on the local area (Huang 2005 ) received the earliest attention, such as the influence of tourism on changes in traditional culture such as local language (Dai and Bao 1996 ) and ethnic festivals (Sun 2003 ). The diversification and complexity of such impact was gradually revealed (Liu 1998 ; Li 2005 ) by critically looking into the economic development of tourist destinations from the perspective of cultural protection of hosts. Recognizing Dennison Nash’s point of view that tourism involves an encounter between different cultures and leads to social transformation (Nash 1981 ), Chinese scholars emphasized the cultural attributes of tourism activities, and regarded tourism activities as an aggregate of cultural phenomena in which the subjects, objects and media of tourism interact with each other (Xu 2005 ).

There was a growing debate on whether the impact of tourism on culture is “positive or negative”. With the development of tourism and discipline, realistic expressions were increasingly filled with critical viewpoints such as “ethnic culture is endowed with economic value, becomes a tradable commodity and a key object in tourism development”. The theory of commodification of culture was applied into relevant empirical research (Zhang 2006 ). However, influenced by China’s policies of developing western China and the realistic demands of the development of ethnic areas, especially after the concept of existential authenticity put forward by Professor Wang was widely recognized (Wang 1999 ), the researchers found that tourism development is not only a necessary way for the economic development of the destination, but also the appeal of the host. Furthermore, they fully drew on concepts or viewpoints such as staged reality (Yang 2006 ) and authenticity (Li and Zhang 2005 ; Chen 2005 )––tourists prefer “staged attractions” (MacCannell 1973 ), and proposed cultural performance in the front stage, which is conducive to protecting the real life of hosts backstage from destruction (Van den Berghe and Keyes 1984 ). They tried to look into the staged performance and the commodification of culture of tourist destinations from a more comprehensive perspective. For example, “traditional and historical culture” may not be good or authentic. In addition, Zhang and Zhao also systematically explained the theory of tourism as ritual (Zhang and Huang 2000 ; Zhang 2003a ), but most of the early papers cited or commented on the theory, with slightly inadequate development and innovation of the theory (Zhao 2007 ).

The related Western academic achievements, especially major theoretical concepts, introduced around the twenty-first century to China, have greatly expanded the research fields of tourism anthropology and become the core topics of domestic tourism anthropology thereafter. The selective introduction of topics according to national and local conditions not only reflects the initiative of domestic scholars to “domesticate” texts during translation and citation, but also embodies the orientation of developmentalism, implying the basic judgment that culture is subordinate to economic development.

Localization of research practice and the attempt of dialogue between China and the West

Chinese anthropologists of tourism hold a dialectical view, apply critically and selectively Western viewpoints and theories, and conduct dialogues with Western theories on the basis of localization exploration. This is reflected in the discussion about the influence of tourism on the changes of ethnic culture. In the early twenty-first century, China’s tourism industry entered a stage of comprehensive development. Chinese Scholars came to realize that the dual nature of the impact of tourism on social and cultural changes in ethnic areas and tourist destinations is the essential attribute of tourism. It is necessary to go beyond the binary thinking (positive/negative) of some Western scholars (Tian 2003 ) and explore development-oriented solutions to the contradiction between ethnic cultural protection and tourism development based on China’s basic national conditions. On the one hand, the protection of ethnic culture requires a lot of funds, so the commodification of culture is not necessarily bad (Zhao 2003 ) as it offers an optional path for the sustainable development of traditional culture and tourism (Huang 2004 ; Lin and Huang 2003 ). On the other hand, the commodification of culture may be the active behavior of hosts to market themselves and convert cultural and social relations into capital, noting that the strong initiative of community residents is a realistic feature of China (Zhang et al. 2009 ). In the debate on staged performance and its binary opposition of authenticity and false, many local cases have proved that “it is impossible for any tourist destination to present all its original culture” (Zhang 2003b ). Staged performance is beneficial to the zoning protection of spatial and spiritual qualities of traditional villages and towns (Lu and Lu 2007 ), while the conventional power of ethnic minorities dominates the real life backstage (Zheng 2008 ).

The rise of rural community-based tourism also means that we should “regard the community as an industry that sells products”. Government departments, researchers and planners are required to consider the construction of tourism destinations from a community perspective, and improve the efficiency of tourism flows by optimizing community structure with the engagement of community residents, so as to harmonize and optimize economic, environmental and social benefits (Tang 1998 ). Chinese rural communities have different characteristics from foreign counterparts in terms of government administration, land system, social network, farmers’ demands and traditional concepts. In view of this, research on domestic community-based tourism needs to go deep into tourism communities from the very beginning to explore the theoretical frameworks and effective models for community participation with Chinese characteristics. As a representative work, “ Community-based Tourism and Community Participation in Anthropology of Tourism ” (Sun 2009 ) sets a precedent for localized research on community participation in tourism. This book summarizes the basic characteristics of Chinese community participation in tourism development, analyzes farmers’ enthusiasm, conflicts and their causes, and ways to improve community participation. Finally it compares Chinese and Western community participation.

Evidently, at this stage, domestic scholars introduced and studied Western classic works, theoretical viewpoints and academic achievements in anthropology of tourism, and conducted a series of in-depth studies on tourism phenomena and social problems from the perspective of cultural relativism, which fully combined the fieldwork methods of anthropology with China’s national conditions and social developments, in an attempt to construct a localized theoretic system. However, most of the studies were not academically normative enough and were dominated by one-sided subjective judgments and overview-style overall introductions. There were few really solid field research and case studies as the research content focused on the cultural changes of ethnic minorities and the cultural influences of tourism (Zhou 2014 ; Sun and Ma 2009 ). Issues such as early commodification of culture and authenticity (Jin and Graburn 2014 ) were rarely covered. In addition, anthropologists and sociologists were early to introduce Western writings and theories. With the development of tourism and the transition of anthropology and sociology of tourism, tourism scholars joined in anthropological research in connection with the realistic contexts and development demands of tourism development, community participation and cultural change on the basis of existing achievements. This strengthened research forces and promoted dialogues between tourism and anthropology, between theory and reality and between China and the West. In general, the anthropology of tourism in China made considerable progress, but there were still many problems, mainly manifested as poor indigestion of imported research results and insufficient local original academic theories (Sun 2007 ). It is still necessary to pursue theoretical improvement based on the reality of China.

New trends in anthropology of tourism in China over the past 10 years

Over the last decade or so, China has undergone historic changes in economic development, institutional reform, livelihood improvement, technological progress and international dialogue, creating a complex and diverse pattern of real life. While tourism is changing rapidly amid the transformation of consumption, research topics in anthropology of tourism become more diversified and specialized. Researchers recognize that tourism and culture are not isolated activities, but are deeply embedded in the political background and economic structure at home and abroad. The single-influence and dualistic-thinking framework is no longer applicable, and a diverse, dynamic and comprehensive research system is urgently needed. Anthropology of tourism as a discipline must go beyond the conventional research perspectives and existing research conclusions. It is necessary to gravitate to the entire cultural ecosystem from cultural elements. It is also appropriate to shift from the overall macro description to the special attention and continuous characterization of some hosts, so as to break through the limitations of conventional mindset through more detailed analysis, more diverse perspectives and interdisciplinary theories. As a result, many new perspectives, new achievements and new methods have emerged in anthropology of tourism during this period.

Extension and development of conventional core topics in anthropology of tourism

In order to adapt to the rapidly changing real situation in China, tourism anthropologists use new theories and viewpoints to interpret conventional topics from an open research perspective, taking into account specific development models and cultural evolution paths.

Destruction or protection: a dialectical reflection on the influence of tourism on culture

Cultural protection departments, academia and industrial circles used to attribute the disappearance or deterioration of traditional culture to the commercialization of tourism. In recent years, Chinese scholars have realized that, even without tourism, traditional culture is faced with various threats in the realistic context of hollow villages, discontinued cultural inheritance, and invasion of globalization and modernization. Traditional Chinese villages are declining at an alarming rate and even dying out (Feng 2013 ). Research into ethnic tourism destinations such as Xishuangbanna, Qiandongnan and Lijiang found that it is the commercialization and capitalization of culture brought by tourism that provides space for the development of traditional culture, as well as the driving force to sustain traditional culture (Zhang 2014 ). To a certain extent, such commercialization and capitalization safeguards the traditional characteristics and cultural reproduction of such communities (Guang and Zhang 2010 ) while promoting their economic development. External attention can boost villagers’ sense of pride and willingness to carry forward traditional culture (Sun and Wu 2015 ). At the same time, Chinese hosts in tourist destinations are not passive or complacent cultural vulnerable groups. In Yubeng Village, a typical ethnic tourism village, local knowledge such as folk beliefs can alleviate the contradiction between tourism development and protection of natural environment (Liu et al. 2021 ). Villagers can conform to the trends of the times and justify themselves to reconstruct local habits and local knowledge by giving full play to their subjective initiative (Jiang 2010 ; Ran and Tian 2015 ). They can adapt themselves to changes brought by tourism and even profit from proactively reconstructing, diverting and generalizing the “physical” connotations of tourism commodities (Li 2018 ). The latest research also focused on “people” and “social relations”. Tourism development may change the way villagers establish social relations with the outside world, but it does not necessarily change the social relations among members of these communities (Su and Sun 2017 ). The networks of relationships by industry, geography and blood are intertwined in the tourism field and play an important role in shaping the industrial structure (Sun and Li 2018 ). These social networks continue to be adjusted in the power game between the government, the capital, community elites and residents (Xu et al. 2018 ). In addition, with the development of urban tourism and the urbanization of ethnic areas, the theme of tourism and cultural change can also be extended from primitive tribes and ethnic villages to urban studies. In short, with the strong nexus between reality and theory, domestic scholars have gradually turned to reality based on typical case studies, different research perspectives and applied theories: They used to be stuck in the one-sided view on the “economic benefits” and “cultural destruction” of tourism, or only theoretically built an analytical framework that tourism is conducive to cultural inheritance, but now, they work to find feasible pathways and models for promoting cultural protection through tourism development. It is possible that tourism development changes the connotations of local culture, divides community identity and triggers conflicts. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that in most cases, presentation in the “front stage” such as performances and cultural product sales promotes the inheritance of ethnic culture in many ways. When research gravitates from the West to the East and adopts the perspective of “internal cultural holders”, it will find that living culture and thought have strong vitality in healing the “sense of separation between tradition and modernity”.

From single to complex: new viewpoints of gender and host-guest interaction research

The influence of tourism on gender relations and family power structure and the interaction between hosts and tourists have been two traditional research fields in anthropology of tourism. Early gender studies in China mainly used cases from ethnic minorities or remote and impoverished areas, and emphasized the positive benefits of tourism on women, such as awakening of gender awareness, rising family status and increasing income. In recent years, scholars have found that tourism can promote gender equality in the family (Long 2018 ; Liao 2018 ), but involve women in a wider range of unequal gender relations (Liao and Sun 2015 ). Li Xiaoyun et al., pointed out that economic empowerment cannot truly improve the status of women, and may cause problems of “spillover of poverty reduction” and “alienation of empowerment” (Li et al. 2019 ). If not the only source of income, tourism will not arouse the strong enthusiasm of women under multiple pressure of labor (Wu et al. 2022 ). Research on host-guest interaction also yields increasingly rich results. Early studies still discussed the relationship or conflict between tourists and hosts under the framework of host-guest binary opposition. The latest viewpoints attempt to break through such framework out of two considerations: There are boundaries between groups within hosts as communities are not homogeneous (Sun and Zhang 2015 ); Hosts and guests are not decisively opposed, and under some circumstances, the roles are blurred or even reversed. In reality, there is also mutual cultural adaptation between hosts and guests, most evidently in transnational marriages spurred by tourism (Zhang and Sun 2016 ). With the incorporation of tourism into the central topics of anthropology, researchers are required to further analyze the originally relatively closed, microscopic and fixed “fields” into the rapidly developing mobile society. Single influence, dualistic thinking and absolute expressions all have great limitation, due to the multiple possibilities and chaotic complexity brought by strong correlations between tourism development and political environment, economic level and technological progress.

From mechanical application to theoretical dialogue: new findings on ritual and liminal experience

Liminal experience is an important topic in tourism experience research. In early twenty-first century, on the basis of Van Gennep’s theory of rites of passage, Nelson Graburn considered “tourism as a special ritual” and proposed the syllogism of tourism––“secular-sacred-secular” journey, which connects tourism and ritual theory to the greatest extent in terms of the structure, nature, experience and mode of tourism (Graburn 2004 ). Yet, the analytical framework and theoretical system need to be further improved due to the late emergence of the theory of tourism as ritual and liminal experience in tourism. Domestic scholars get actively involved in construction of this theory, trying to carry out theoretical dialogue and theoretical development by interpreting the liminal experience of tourists as a rite of passage based on festivals. In the context of tourism, collective festival rituals have changed from closed to semi-open or fully open ritual space. Studies examined the specific performance of liminal experience of tourists, revealing the role of tourism as a lubricant in the routine operation of the world (Ma 2010 ) in these dimensions: collective carnival rituals, releasing and venting troubles and pressures in daily life, transcending and inverting behavioral norms, self-renewing roles, and entering into equal, real and harmonious relationship with tourists during the event. However, these studies focused on the experience of tourists only, and paid little attention to the quasi-liminal experience of local residents and tourism practitioners. Subsequently, domestic scholars have expanded their research from tourists to local residents and tourism practitioners. Studies probed into the relationship between the daily life and the quasi-liminal experience of actors in the water-splashing festival in the Xishuangbanna Dai Nationality Garden, and the characteristics and motivations of the quasi-liminal experience (Sun and Li 2016 ), and used the theory of body symbolism to interpret the development and change of ritual space for songzhaizi , paying attention to the “body presence” of actors in local rituals (Sun and Li 2016 ). These studies have sparked extensive discussions through in-depth dialogue with the liminality theory in anthropology. A new topic in frontier theoretical critical research is whether tourism can be regarded as a rite of passage (Tian and Sa 2015 ). The discussion on liminal experience and tourism ritual fully embodies the critical reflection of researchers on academic norms, theoretical innovations and analytical methods in the last decade, as well as the transition from mechanical application to critical application, and further to theoretical breakthrough towards new theories.

From the whole to the individual: shift of research perspectives to community participation and community governance

Community participation is one of the hotspots of anthropological research on tourism in China. Earlier studies generally took ethnic groups as a whole, and discussed topics such as comprehensive community governance, obstacles to community participation in tourism development, and impact of community participation on local economic, social, and cultural protection. Through the concept and practice of encouraging local people to participate in tourism development, these studies aim to promote the development of tourism communities and the upgrading of community governance, which reflects the people-oriented research principle. Over the past five years, researchers have focused on special subjects from an individual perspective. For example, from the perspective of elite individuals, community elites will leverage their own influence to organize and guide residents to actively participate in community-based tourism under the premise of government supervision and enterprise engagement (Wang 2009 ). Among them, female tourism elites, influenced by traditional gender concepts, often play roles with female characteristics such as cultural guardians and caregivers, so they are unlikely to become governance elites (Chu et al. 2016 ). From the perspective of personal transformation, there are studies summarizing the growth paths and community roles of different “new village elites” in the field of ethnic tourism (Sun and A 2020 ). There are two reasons behind the shift to an individual perspective for research on community participation and community governance: i) Community residents are divided in ideological, economic and cultural terms with the rise and development of tourism amid overall community changes, so taking the community as a whole is not conducive to improving the level of community participation and community governance in practice; ii) Scholars have realized the difficulty and complexity of empowerment in practice after years of research and planning practice. Noting the potential problem of delegating power (Weng and Peng 2011 ; Wang 2018 ), coupled with the diversification of inflow business operators and the changes in policies, they have to pay attention to the social structure and power relations of communities. Community elites, who often assume multiple roles such as entrepreneurial demonstration, community integration, cultural dissemination and external liaison, can serve as intermediaries for researchers to better understand community developments, current issues and governance breakthroughs. Of course, it will be possible to explore community governance and rural revitalization from a holistic perspective based on increasing abundance of individual research, and then to promote the sustainable development of tourism communities with a cycle of holistic-individual-holistic research (Chen 2021 ).

Breakthroughs and interdisciplinary integration of new topics in anthropology of tourism

Tourism development and rural revitalization.

In recent years, China has successively proposed a raft of development strategies such as the building of a new countryside , new urbanization , rural revitalization and poverty alleviation. Rural tourism, which thrusts development, has become a realistic demand and major scientific topic of China’s new-type urbanization and rural economic and social development (Huang et al. 2015 ). The anthropology of tourism should also give more attention to the countryside, in response to the major issues of national governance and the needs of rural tourism development. On the one hand, by virtue of small pollution, low energy consumption and high environmental requirements, tourism offers a pathway of sustainable development that harmonizes rural industrial transformation and ecological protection (Chen 2019 ). On the other hand, rural tourism is regarded as an important force in promoting rural governance transformation, talent introduction and cultural inheritance (Guo et al. 2021 ; Li 2021 ; Wang N 2019 , Wang X 2019 ). The anthropology of tourism has played a role in providing theoretical guidance and inspiring thinking on solutions to practical problems, mainly reflected in such research topics as rural poverty alleviation and governance (Li et al. 2018 ; Wang 2020 ), population mobility (Wang and Sun 2021 ), cultural protection (Liang et al. 2015 ; Liu 2014 ), and restoration and reconstruction of nostalgic memory (Chen 2020 ). The inherent logic and practical pathway of rural revitalization driven by tourism has gradually become clear in extensive research and discussion (Sun et al. 2020a ; Zhang and Shu 2018 ).

Since this topic of “tourism development and rural revitalization” is relatively new, in the future, we should give full play to the disciplinary role of the anthropology of tourism when studying the existing topics of rural tourism development, social structure of villages, cultural inheritance and changes and social governance. Anthropological research methods, because of their thorough understanding and solid field data, can give deeper insights into the real problems and local farmers’ demands. This is the reason why the methods are also drawn on by many researchers in geography, management and economics for rural tourism research, which means that rural tourism will be a key field of multidisciplinary focus and integration.

Tourism society and mobility

In the context of globalization, tourism is a “form of mobility” (Sheller and Urry 2004 ) that is loose, moving, and short-term, and relationship formed by interaction of people in tourism is also temporary or performative (Peng 2012 ). The introduction of the mobility paradigm into anthropology has a revolutionary effect on the interpretation of its basic concepts. For example, topics such as identification, place and identity need to be rethought from the perspective of mobility (Sun et al. 2016 ), creating new opportunities for close integration of tourism and anthropology. Anthropologists of tourism mainly study tourism mobility in four aspects: people, relationship, culture and place. Studies suggested that “places” are often realized in mobility (Li 2017 ). In road travel, node space as a settlement system also produces a mobile person-place relationship with the help of special host-guest interaction scenes (Wang N 2019 , Wang X 2019 ). In addition to the moving and settlement of tourists, tourism migrants with different motivations and behavioral representations have also become a typical research object. For example, Wang ( 2015 ) examined the migration process of local identity of consumption through the cross-border flow of food culture (Wang 2015 ). Sun and other scholars discussed the social integration and social adaptation of tourism migrant workers and consumption-oriented tourism migrants and the influencing factors (Sun and Huang 2016 ; Sun et al. 2020b ). In general, mobility challenges static objective reality, as well as traditional ethnographic research paradigms and cultural perceptions (Gan and Lu 2013 ). From the tourism point of view, mobility is the link between sociology and geography that continues to break these binary oppositions: travel/work, sacred/secular, presence/absence, host/guest and place/person (Zhu et al. 2017a ).

Fields of multidisciplinary research

In social science research, tourism is one of the most extensive fields involving various disciplines, theoretical horizons and research pathways (Zhang and Kebaer 2012 ). This mixed and intertwined pattern has prompted the continuous interdisciplinary collaboration, integration and mutual learning between anthropology of tourism and philosophy, sociology, management, folklore, geography and heritage studies, giving rise to fields of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. This is mainly reflected in efforts in two directions: i) In the context of booming tourism industry, other disciplines need to learn from anthropology. For example, rural research is a conventional topic of concern for anthropologists and an important field of knowledge production. Yet, as mentioned earlier, researchers in economics, management and geography have also used ethnographic methods in research; ii) Anthropologists of tourism continue to expand their research fields beyond disciplinary boundaries by adopting multidisciplinary theoretical perspectives and practical events. The most notable example is the critical thinking and research on heritage in this discipline. Thanks to anthropological research on power, discourse, memory and identity, anthropologists of tourism have gradually realized that the concept, classification and protection system of heritage have experienced a “theoretical travel” since the beginning of the spread of Western learning to the East. Many policies typically copy Western conceptual frameworks without reflection (Li 2012 ). The heritage movement is essentially a means of political expression by the state to turn heritage into public resources (Peng 2008 ). Therefore, scholars have made breakthroughs on the topic of heritage and authenticity. The wedding performance at Naxi Wedding Culture Yard in Lijiang reflects the dynamic process that the initiative to “authenticate” individual interacts with the reality through physical practice (Zhu 2015 ). This further strengthens the concept and connotation of “performed authenticity”. In short, research topics and hotspots in anthropology of tourism are increasingly enriched, exhibiting a trend of loose, diverse, ambiguous and mixed development. As to reason, the interaction of tourism and anthropology, both as interdisciplinary, multi-themed research fields, is likely to form a more complex and diverse set. The complexity and diversity of disciplinary backgrounds of tourism scholars also determines the involvement of multidisciplinary perspectives. This can also be seen from the discipline setting of colleges and departments. Chinese tourism is currently a secondary discipline of business administration. In various academies and universities, tourism colleges/departments are highly interdisciplinary and often subordinated to business schools, schools of economics and management, schools of history and culture and schools of geography. Therefore, in consideration of disciplinary boundaries and scholar identity, it is even more necessary to “focus on research questions rather than be confined to disciplines”.

Cross-application of multidisciplinary approaches

With the continued advance of science and technology such as the Internet and artificial intelligence, methods in anthropology of tourism become more diverse through interdisciplinary integration and exchanges. On the one hand, ethnographical research methods are constantly innovating. Methods such as auto-ethnography, multi-sited ethnography, network ethnography, subjective ethnography and sensory ethnography create possibilities for developing new tourism research themes. For example, auto-ethnography and mobile ethnography have been used to explore the relationship between mobility and placemaking in tourism (Wang et al. 2020 ). On the other hand, the research methods of other disciplines also overcome disciplinary barriers and boundaries and extend to the anthropology of tourism. Hybrid methods that combine grounded theory, qualitative field data and quantitative analysis have been gradually accepted for constructing theoretical concepts and analysis indicators (Wang and Sun 2018 ; Ding et al. 2019 ). Social network analysis in management and sociology has also been applied to tourism research (Shi and Sun 2016 ). In the future, methods such as econometric analysis (economics), psychological experiment and big data research may be introduced to anthropological research of tourism.

Platform construction and financial support for anthropology of tourism

Over the past decade, academic conferences of anthropology, ethnology and tourism have paid more attention to anthropologic topics in tourism. Organizations dedicated to promoting the development of ethnic tourism and rural tourism have been successively established, and many international and domestic academic conferences on tourism anthropology and related topics have been held on large scales. In 2009, the Leisure Agriculture and Rural Tourism Branch of the China Tourism Association was established. In 2010, the Committee of Ethnic Tourism was set up under the China Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Science and held the First China Ethnic Tourism Research Forum. It has since then promoted theoretical research, publicity, education and academic exchanges of ethnic tourism in an organized manner. The committee is responsible for organizing and holding ethnic tourism research forums and compiling the proceedings titled China Ethnic Tourism Studies. To date, 11 consecutive forums have been held (with the 11th China Ethnic Tourism Forum successfully held in October 2021, Guilin). In 2017 and 2018, the Second and Third International Rural Tourism Conference took place in Huzhou and in 2020, the National Leisure Agriculture and Rural Tourism Conference opened in Beijing. These conferences demonstrate China’s strength in anthropology of tourism and greatly boost the consciousness and self-confidence of researchers. Universities and research centers have also spontaneously organized many academic conferences, lectures, forums and salons on related topics. For example, in 2011, Sun Yat-Sen University hosted an academic symposium and published a collection of essays on “Tourism from the Perspective of Anthropology and Sociology”. In 2017, it presented a series of “Interdisciplinary Lectures on Tourism”, where scholars such as Guoqing Ma, Zhiwei Liu, Nelson Graburn, Jafar Jafary were invited to give lectures on anthropology and tourism-related topics. In 2018, the International Symposium on Rural Tourism and the 5th Tourism Summit was held in Guangzhou during the Advanced Seminar on Anthropology. A number of scholars including Nelson Graburn, Sabine Marschall from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), Megumi Doshita from the School of Global Studies at Tama University (Japan), Zhaorong Peng, Jigang Bao, Ning Wang, Yanjun Xie, and Shangyi Zhou delivered keynote speeches. In 2020, an academic salon on the theme of poverty alleviation through tourism and rural revitalization was held. The smooth development of academic conferences and forums and the establishment of relevant organizations have effectively spurred research development and knowledge dissemination of anthropology of tourism in China, and facilitated exchanges between anthropologists of tourism at home and abroad and exchanges across disciplines.

Under the support of national policies, funding for various development projects and research topics has been further increased. Since 2010, a number of government departments in China have successively launched programs to establish national demonstration counties for leisure agriculture and rural tourism, traditional Chinese villages, Chinese characteristic minorities villages, and national-level tourism and leisure blocks, and provide financial and policy support to selected villages, towns and blocks. Financial support under such programs is of great benefit to the development of community-based tourism in China. In terms of funding for scientific research, the National Social Science Foundation of China has significantly scaled up grants for anthropologic and sociologic research of tourism under sociology and research on ethnic issues (formerly ethnology). It has endorsed 37 tourism-related projects in sociology since 2002, of which 25 were established from 2016 to 2020, accounting for around 68%. Meanwhile, it has supported 99 tourism-related projects in research on ethnic issues, of which 77% were established from 2009 to the present, and 28% from 2015 to the present. Among them, the “Study on Rural Tourism and Farmers’ Income Increase in Southwest Ethnic Minority Areas” (11AMZ008) is a key project in the category of “Research on Ethnic Issues” in 2011 l the “Study on Protection and Utilization of Traditional Minority Villages in Southwest China” (15ZDB118) is a major project of both 2015 and 2017 (rolling funding); and the “Cultural and tourism development and urban-rural integration in rural revitalization research” (21AH016) is a key project in arts of the National Social Science Foundation of China in 2021. Compared with sociological and ethnic studies, there are fewer funded projects on topics related to anthropology of tourism in the category “management”. In addition, the National Natural Science Foundation of China has gradually increased funding for related fields in recent years. Researchers mainly apply for projects under the division of geography and management sciences. The doctoral and postdoctoral fellows under the supervision of the author have received grants for 15 projects from the National Natural Science Foundation of China since 2015.

In response to the call of the policies of rural revitalization and poverty alleviation, some scholars have placed academic achievements and advanced planning in social reality for testing, and applied the scientific experiences and rules summarized to the specific practice of poverty alleviation and rural revitalization in China. With the support of national scientific research project funds, planning project funds and corporate or social funds, they carry out the social experiments of tourism-driven poverty alleviation and rural revitalization in the countryside. Among them, the Azheke Plan led by Jigang Bao offers a Chinese solution to global poverty alleviation through tourism by exploring scientific pathways. Jiuxia Sun carried out the action plan for rural revitalization and the rural experiment in Tibetan areas. Besides, Qingzhong Sun from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of China Agricultural University conducted a rural education experiment in Chuanzhong, Henan Province, calling for the establishment of a community college in Chuanzhong. Huilin Lu from the Department of Sociology of Peking University implemented an action plan for rural revitalization in Wanjian Village, a traditional Chinese village in Qianshan, Anhui Province. From the disciplinary perspectives of anthropology and sociology, the latter two scholars did not consider tourism in the action plan at the very beginning, but they have gradually recognized the role of tourism in rural revitalization and sustainable development based on practical experience and interdisciplinary exchanges. Huilin Lu also gave an interdisciplinary speech on “Sociology and the Southern Anhui Pilot of Protection of Traditional Chinese Villages” in the 2021 Annual General Meeting Forum of “Tourism Tribune”. It can be seen that with strong state funding support, anthropology of tourism in China has undergone cyclic, periodic test in theory and practice, and will embrace closer interdisciplinary collaboration in future research.

Comparative analysis of recent anthropologic studies of tourism in China and the West

Current differences in anthropologic studies of tourism between china and the west.

“Gaps” is the key word if we discuss the differences between Chinese and Western anthropology of tourism at the initial stage of the discipline in China. However, over the past decade, on the basis of extensive study of relevant Western theories and achievements, Chinese anthropologists of tourism have continuously explored breakthroughs in the localization of this discipline in combination with Chinese context and practice, proposed new topics and new viewpoints with Chinese characteristics, and even took the lead in using new methods. At the current stage, there are several differences between domestic and foreign research in anthropology of tourism:

First, in terms of discipline development speed, research on “tourists” in Western anthropology of tourism sees slightly slow progress (Roberts and Andrews 2013 ), especially research on intermediaries between hosts and tourists, that is, tourism practitioners. Second, in the selection of research topics and cases, the topics discussed in Western anthropology of so far still focus on commodification and cultural adaptation. Through “investigation into changes brought by Western tourism to certain societies or sub-societies on the periphery” (Nash et al. 2004 ), studies examined socio-economic inequalities and disparities caused by international tourism, mainly from the perspective of host-guest binary opposition. Third, in terms of research methods, scholars generally advocate the return of traditional anthropological methods. They emphasize that anthropology has a unique methodological contribution to tourism research. Meanwhile, it is believed that methods such as case studies, in-depth interviews and participatory observations have been widely used in other disciplines (Xiao and Smith 2006 ). As a result, many tourism studies have unconsciously applied anthropological methods, but in a less normative manner, and proposed no profound academic concepts (Merinero-Rodriguez and Pulido-Fernandez 2016 ). Fourth, in terms of disciplinary orientation, Western scholars uphold that the anthropology of tourism is currently not a consistent sub-discipline, but only tourism research with the intervention or penetration of anthropology (Leite 2009 ). Some scholars argued that this view is too one-sided and pessimistic, ignoring the spillover effect of anthropology on tourism research on topics such as power relations, cultural ecology, social interaction, identity and collective memory, social consciousness, and identity construction under the gaze (Nogues-Pedregal 2019 ). It is the research perspectives and theoretical framework of anthropology that enable tourism academia to realize the obvious existence of the relationship between knowledge production and power in tourism (Tribe et al. 2016 ). However, it is undeniable that Western anthropology of tourism finds more difficulty in explaining “emerging phenomena” such as mobility, and in gaining more support in the discipline of tourism dominated by economics and management. Kaaristo once called on tourism scholars to pay attention to new phenomena in tourism and adjust research strategies appropriately (Kaaristo 2018 ).

Noting the progress and predicament of Western research, the common problems of Chinese and Western research can be identified. Due to utilitarian indicators such as “published papers”, tourism research is deficient in the normative use of anthropological methods, theoretical innovation and contribution, discipline system building, and research on tourism contribution to anthropology (Sun 2019 ). Nevertheless, in terms of development speed, research fields, research hotspots and research methods, domestic research shows a tendency to catch up with Western research during the same period.

Reasons for current differences in anthropologic studies of tourism between China and the West

As concluded by Western scholars, “the specific sociological changes in tourism research are closely related to broad social and political trends” (Cohen and Cohen 2012 ). Therefore, the fundamental reasons for differences in anthropology of tourism between China and the West during this period are analyzed in two dimensions: trend and policy guidance in China’s social reality.

Discipline development driven by strong market demand and technological advance

Since the twenty-first century, the rapid development of Chinese society has exerted a great impact on the entire social science research. First of all, China has already become the world’s largest country of outbound tourism, the largest country of domestic tourism and the third largest country of inbound tourism. Such huge tourism market has attracted the attention of various disciplines. At the same time, the operating mileage of China’s high-speed railways reached 37,900 km as of the end of 2020, nearly doubled over the past 5 years, which enhances the “mobility autonomy” of citizens. This is exactly the real-world context that the young anthropology of tourism in China can quickly respond and introduce the mobility paradigm. Second, the evolving underlying technology continues chemical reactions with China’s tourism industry. New media and new technologies have broken new grounds in the new era. Social media and mobile payment technologies such as Online Travel Agents, Douyin, Kuaishou and WeChat are rapidly developing and stay in the forefront of the world. According to statistics, the total users and total monthly active users of WeChat and Weibo in China numbered 1.2 billion and 520 million in 2020 respectively, while the users of Douyin and Xiaohongshu reached 400 million and 300 million respectively. The total monthly user hours of short videos in the whole network exceeded 40 billion hours in January 2021. Online technology has profoundly changed the host-guest relation and interaction mode. Digital marketing technology, artificial intelligence and 5G technology have also forced anthropologists of tourism to keep up with technological trends and use new methods and means in data collection, so as not to fall behind “research objects”. Traditional anthropologists may be able to avoid the “chase” of modern technology in relatively closed “primitive communities”, but tourism research must progress together with iterative tourism products and tourism industrial system that are constantly updated and upgraded. Of course, we must always be alert to utilitarianism-oriented development of disciplines.

Different research contexts due to historical backgrounds and national realities

Western anthropology emerged against the historical background of peaking colonial rule and world war. In today’s post-colonial context, Western countries still occupy a dominant position in tourism development of the southern hemisphere and tourism activities of the eastern hemisphere. Therefore, regardless of practical activities or academic studies, Western anthropology is often limited to the logical starting point and ending point of orientalism, and has made considerable progress in topics such as host-guest opposition, power and discourse, cultural identity and identity construction, as well as critical research.

It must be emphasized that the ethnic distinction and identity within the Chinese nation gradually presents a development pattern of diversity-in-unity in the long historical development. The course of modernization in China is also different from other countries (Fei 1989 ). Therefore, tourism development and tourism activities in China’s ethnic areas do not have a strong “rule-slavery” hue, nor are they the “internal orientalism” as Western researchers think. On the contrary, the economic, social and cultural levels of ethnic minority areas have been improved under the guidance of basic systems and policies such as regional ethnic autonomy, development of western China, common prosperity and rural revitalization. Tourism community development and tourism anthropology conform to the principles of protection, harmony and common development. In addition, the property rights of Chinese residents in land and housing, especially those in rural areas, are strictly protected by the land system and property law with Chinese characteristics. Coupled with strong bonds in traditional rural “relationship-based society”, the residents of tourism communities have the ability, capital and confidence to actively participate in/withdraw from tourism development and always have a certain right to speak. As mentioned earlier, the “back stage” of community-based tourism in China has strong autonomy, and conducts the reflection and adjustment of self-identity under the gaze of tourists, which fully demonstrates the national consciousness and cultural self-confidence. In order to change their development opportunities or seek commercial interests, hosts actively cater to the market and the capital in the “front stage”, and carry out “self-oriental” construction in tourism marketing and tourism performance (Cai et al. 2018 ) that typically presents “performed authenticity (Wei et al. 2015 ).

Conclusions

The anthropology of tourism in China is jointly driven by anthropologists and tourism scholars against the backdrop of the emergence and rise of modern tourism. The introduction of relatively mature Western theoretical framework, research methods and academic achievements has played an important role in the formation and rapid development of this discipline in China. Therefore, focus in the infancy of the discipline was systematic introduction of Western works and core concepts. At the same time, researchers began to discuss various social and cultural issues in the domestic development of tourism, and tried to localize research with the help of anthropological viewpoints and fieldwork methods in combination with the Chinese context. Over the past decade, anthropology of tourism in China has integrated modernity, mobility, subjectivity and locality in interdisciplinary research, with attention cast to the fate of the human community in the context of globalization. Upholding cultural diversity, it has pushed forward the development of conventional core issues, and taken the lead in applying new methods and studying new topics beyond disciplinary bottlenecks and boundaries under the new social context. This is attributed to China’s social and political environment such as huge tourism market, world-leading technological advance, national policy guidance and financial support.

China is making sustainable development true in the economic and technological fields, in which strong institutional leadership and policy guidance play an obviously prominent role. On the road of development from a big power to a great power in tourism, anthropologists of tourism should, with stronger discipline self-confidence and self-consciousness, continue to innovate and grow locally while absorbing knowledge of the international academic community and multidisciplinary source, so that Chinese experiences and Chinese theories can make greater contributions to the discipline construction and academic research for anthropology of tourism worldwide.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

The data is collected from the China Tourism Statistical Yearbook released over the years.

Adler, Judith. 1990. 旅游是一种表演性艺术 (Tourism as a performed art). Digest of Foreign Social Sciences 5: 19–22 trans: Tan, Guzheng.

Google Scholar

Cai, Xiaomei, Lu Cun, and Hong Zhu. 2018. 自我东方主义?丽江旅游形象的想象与建构(Self-orientalism? Imagination and construction of Lijiang’s tourism image). Tourism Tribune 9: 26–37.

Chen, Biao. 2020. 乡土情结与振兴乡村:中国乡村人类学研究进路与展望 (Rural complex and rural revitalization: Approaches and prospects of Chinese rural anthropology). Guangxi Ethnic Studies 6: 94–102.

Chen, Gang. 2021. 发展人类学视角下乡村振兴与民族地区传统村落旅游开发研究 (Study on rural vitalization and tourism development in traditional villages in ethnic regions: Perspective of development anthropology). Guizhou Ethnic Studies 3: 160–164.

Chen, Huiping. 2019. 生态人类学视角下民族地区生态旅游扶贫研究——以贵州省中洞苗寨为例 (Study on the eco-tourism poverty alleviation in minority areas from the perspective of ecological anthropology: Taking Zhongdong Miao village in Guizhou province as an example). Guizhou Ethnic Studies 12: 139–145.

Chen, Yong. 2005. 遗产旅游与遗产原真性——概念分析与理论引介 (Heritage tourism and heritage authenticity: Basic concepts and main theories). Journal of Guilin Institute of Tourism 4: 21–24.

Chu, Yujie, Zhenbin Zhao, and Li Zhang. 2016. 民族社区妇女旅游精英角色:基于性别特质的演绎 (The roles of women elites within communities engaged in ethnic tourism based on gender traits). Tourism Tribune 1: 37–48.

Cohen, Erik, and Scott A. Cohen. 2012. Current sociological theories and issues in tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 4: 2177–2202.

Article Google Scholar

Dai, Fan, and Jigang Bao. 1996. 旅游社会影响研究——以大理古城居民学英语态度为例 (A case study in Dali, Yunnan province, China). Human Geography 2: 41–46.

Ding, Sai, Guohong Wang, Jingling Wang, et al. 2019. 民族地区县域文旅产业发展指标体系的构建和分析(The establishment and analysis of the index system of county-level culture and tourism industry in ethnic minority areas). Ethno-National Studies 2: 38–51.

Du, Jiang. 2003. 中国旅行社业发展的回顾与前瞻 (Retrospect and prospect of the development of China’s travel service industry). Tourism Tribune 6: 31–39.

Fei, Xiaotong. 1989. 中华民族多元一体格局 (The pluralistic integration of the Chinese nation) , 11. Beijing: China Minzu University Press.

Feng, Jicai. 2013. 传统村落的困境与出路——兼谈传统村落是另一类文化遗产 (The dilemma of traditional villages and the way out—Traditional villages as another kind of cultural heritage). Folk Culture Forum 1: 7–12.

Gan, Lu, and Tianling Lu. 2013. 对旅游民族志中真实性表达差异的评述 (A review on different expressions on authenticity in tourist ethnography). Guangxi Ethnic Studies 4: 187–195.

Graburn, Nelson. 2004. Secular ritual: A general theory of tourism. In Tourists and tourism: A reader , ed. S.B. Gmelch, 23–34. Long Grove: Waveland.

Guang, Yingjiong, and Xiaoping Zhang. 2010. 基于旅游人类学视角的民族节日传承与发展——以西双版纳傣族“泼水节”为例 (The inheritance and development of ethnic festivals from the perspective of tourism anthropology––An example from the water splashing festival of the Dai ethnic group in Xishuangbanna). Journal of South-Central Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) 1: 45–49.

Guo, Ying. 2001. 试论少数民族地区文化旅游资源的保护与开发——以泸沽湖地区为例(On the exploitation and protection of the national cultual resources in the ethnic areas——Taking Lugu Lake area as an example). Tourism Tribune 3: 68–71.

Guo, Zhanfeng, Yixing Li, Sen Zhang, et al. 2021. 村庄市场共同体的形成与农村社区治理转型——基于陕西袁家村的考察 (The formation of village market community and the governance transformation of rural community: An analysis based on the investigation of Yuanjia Village, Shaanxi province). China Rural Survey 1: 68–84.

Huang, Fudong. 2005. 旅游、人类学与中国现实的有关理论浅述 (Some humble opinions on theory of tourism, anthropology and Chinese reality). Guangxi Ethnics Studies 1: 48–57.

Huang, Huikun. 1995. 调整视角──让文化人类学积极介入云南旅游资源的开发(Adjusting the perspective––Applying cultural anthropology to the development of tourism resources in Yunnan). Journal of Yunnan Minzu University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) 3: 49–50.

Huang, Song. 2004. 民族文化商品化与旅游工艺品 (Commercialization of ethnic culture and tourist crafts). Journal of Southwest Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) 3: 79–81.

Huang, Zhenfang, Lin Lu, Qin Su, et al. 2015. 新型城镇化背景下的乡村旅游发展——理论反思与困境突破 (Research and development of rural tourism under the background of new urbanization: Theoretical reflection and breakthrough of predicament). Geographical Research 8: 1409–1421.

Jia, Guangjie. 1987. 积极开发民族旅游商品 (Actively develop ethnic tourism commodities). China’s Ethnic Groups 12: 31.

Jiang, Keyin. 2010. 旅游开发背景下的“汤瓶”功能变迁——以宁夏永宁县纳家户回族村为例 (Function change of “Tang Ping” under the background of tourism development: A case study of Najiahu Village in Yongning County, Ningxia). Ethno-National Studies 6: 40–49+111.

Jin, Lu, and Nelson Graburn. 2014. 人类学视野下的少数民族旅游与遗产:中国和西方的比较研究——文化遗产研究与实践系列访谈之Nelson Graburn专访 (Ethnic minority tourism and heritage from the perspective of anthropology: A comparative study of China and the West—An exclusive interview with Nelson Graburn in a series of interviews on cultural heritage research and practice). Journal of Baise University 6: 56–62.

Kaaristo, Maarja. 2018. Engaging with the hosts and guests: Some methodological reflections on the anthropology of tourism. In Anthropology of tourism in central and Eastern Europe: Bridging worlds , ed. S. Owsianowska and M. Banaszkiewicz, 71–88. Idaho Falls: Lexington Books.

Leite, Naomi. 2009. Anthropological interventions in tourism studies , 35–64. London: Sage Publications.

Li, Fei. 2012. 理论旅行:本土语境下的非遗阐释与操作 (Theoretical travel: Interpretation and operation of intangible cultural heritage in the local context). Guizhou Social Sciences 12: 14–19.

Li, Fei. 2017. 从梭坡如何去往东女国:藏彝走廊的道路、行走与地方实践 (Reaching “the eastern aueendom” from suopo village: A micro-ethnography on road, walking and local practice in Tibet-Yi corridor). Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities (Philosophy and Social Science Edition) 6: 45–53.

Li, Fei. 2018. 以“藏银”之名:民族旅游语境下的物质、消费与认同 (In the name of “zangyin”: Materiality, consumption and identity in ethnic tourism of contemporary China). Tourism Tribune 1: 74–85.

Li, Lijuan. 2021. 乡村旅游中“乡土性”的传承与保护 (The inheritance and protection of “natives” in rural tourism). Social Scientist 5: 57–62.

Li, Wei. 2005. 民族旅游地文化变迁与发展研究 (Research on cultural change and development of ethnic tourist destinations) , 22–36. Beijing: The Ethnic Publishing House.

Li, Xiaoyun, Banglian Chen, Haiyan Son, et al. 2019. “妇女贫困”路径的减贫溢出与赋权异化——一个少数民族妇女扶贫实践的发展学观察 (Alienation of empowerment and spill over of poverty reduction based on the “women’s poverty” approach: The observation on a women’s poverty reduction project in a minority village in Southeastern China). Journal of Chinese Women’s Studies 2: 5–16.

Li, Xudong, and Jinling Zhang. 2005. 西方旅游研究中的“真实性”理论 (The theory of authenticity in Western tourism research). Journal of Beijing International Studies University 1: 1–6.

Li, Yingming, Yongli Ning, and Chao Huang. 2018. 民族村寨旅游扶贫冲突与治理——以勾蓝瑶寨为例 (Conflict governance in fighting against poverty through tourist development in minority villages: Taking the Goulan Yao Village as an example). Guangxi Ethnic Studies 6: 148–153.

Liang, Jingyu, Ruyue Li, Xing Zhong, et al. 2015. 民族文化的适度开发策略与乡村旅游发展——基于一个撒拉族村落“农家乐”实践经验的讨论 (Moderate exploitation of ethnic traditional culture and the sustainable development of rural tourism: A case study of a Salar Village). Qinghai Journal of Ethnology 1: 9–13.

Liao, Jinglin. 2018. 平等或从属:旅游参与与女性家庭权力——以西江千户苗寨为例(Equality or subordination: Participation in tourism development and power of women in family: An example from Xijiang Qianhu Miao Village). Journal of Southwest Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) 1: 42–48.

Liao, Jinglin, and Jiuxia Sun. 2015. 旅游发展与少数民族家庭变迁:从单一性到复杂性(Tourism development and ethnic minority family changes: From singleness to complexity). Guizhou Social Sciences 5: 114–119.

Lin, Meizhen, and Yuanshui Huang. 2003. 文化旅游之下的文化真实性与文化商品化(Cultural authenticity and cultural commercialization in cultural tourism). Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities (Philosophy and Social Science Edition) S2: 47–49.

Liu, Hui. 2001. “摩梭人文化保护区”质疑——论少数民族文化旅游资源的保护与开发(Questions about the establishment of the Lugu Lake Moso cultural preservation zone). Tourism Tribune 5: 27–30.

Liu, Xiangjun, Shiqin Zhang, and Jiuxia Sun. 2021. 地方性知识对民族旅游村寨自然环境的治理实践 (Governance of natural environment through local knowledge in ethnic tourism villages). Tourism Tribune 7: 27–42.

Liu, Yun. 2014. 旅游背景下少数民族村落的传统民居保护研究——以嘉绒藏族民居为例 (Protection of traditional dwellings in ethnic minority villages in the context of tourism: A case study of Jiarong Tibetan blockhouses). Journal of Southwest Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) 2: 155–158.

Liu, Zhaoping. 1998. 再论旅游对接待地的社会文化影响——野三坡旅游发展跟踪调查 (Revisiting the social and cultural impact of tourism on tourist destinations: A follow-up survey of tourism development in Yesanpo). Tourism Tribune 1: 49–53.

Long, Liangfu. 2018. 丽江客栈经营中的夫妻劳动分工研究 (Research on division of labor between husband and wife in inn management in Lijiang). Journal of South-Central Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) 1: 104–108.

Lu, Xingfu, and Lin Lu. 2007. 少数民族社区旅游的舞台化特征研究——以云南若干村镇为例 (A study on the stagewise characteristics of travel in minority communities———Taking several villages and towns in Yunnan as an example). Tourism Tribune 2: 38–42.

Ma, Ling. 2010. 节庆旅游中的阈限体验:日常世界与旅游世界——以西双版纳傣族泼水节为例 (Liminal experience in festival tourism: The daily world and the tourism world: A case study of the Dai water-splashing festival in Xishuangbanna). Academic Research 11: 94–99+126.

Ma, Xiaojing. 2000. 西部地区民族旅游开发与民族文化保护 (On developing national tourism in the Western regions and the preservation of national culture). Tourism Tribune 5: 50–54.

Ma, Xiaojing. 2002. 民族旅游开发与民族传统文化保护的再认识 (Revisiting the development of ethnic tourism and protection of traditional ethnic culture). Guangxi Ethnics Studies 4: 77–83.

Ma, Xiaojing. 2003. 民族生态旅游:保护性开发民族旅游的有效模式 (Ethnic ecotourism: An effective model for protective development of ethnic tourism). Human Geography 3: 56–59.

MacCannell, Dean. 1973. Staged authenticity: Arrangements of social space in tourist settings. American Journal of Sociology 3: 589–603.

Merinero-Rodriguez, Rafael, and J.I. Pulido-Fernandez. 2016. Analysing relationships in tourism: A review. Tourism Management 54: 122–135.

Nash, Dennish, Lisa Goodson, and Jenny Phillimore. 2004. New wine in old bottles—An adjustment of priorities in the anthropological study of tourism. In Qualitative research in tourism ontologies epistemologies and methodologies (1st ed.), Chapter 10 . London: Routledge.

Nash, Dennison. 1981. Tourism as an anthropological subject. Current Anthropology 5: 461–481.

Nogues-Pedregal, Antonio Miguel. 2019. Anthropological contributions to tourism studies. Annals of Tourism Research 75: 227–237.

Peng, Zhaorong. 2008. 遗产政治学:现代语境中的表述与被表述关系 (The politics of heritage: The relation between expression and the expressed in the modern context). Journal of Yunnan Minzu University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) 2: 5–14.

Peng, Zhaorong. 2012. 旅游人类学:“临时共同体”的民族志关照 (Anthropology of tourism: Ethnographic care for the “temporary community”). Tourism Tribune 10: 5–6.

Ran, Hongfang, and Min Tian. 2015. “西兰卡普”:从传统走向现代——土家织锦文化遗产发展中的理性思考 (Xilankapu: From tradition to modernity––Rational thinking on the development of tujia brocade cultural heritage). Journal of South-Central Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) 5: 54–58.

Richter, Linda, and Valene Smith. 2012. Hosts and guests: The anthropology of tourism. Pacific Affairs 4: 711.

Roberts, Les, and Hazel Andrews. 2013. (Un)doing tourism anthropology: Outline of a field of practice. Journal of Tourism Challenges & Trends 6: 25.

Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2004. Tourism mobilities: Places to play, places in play , 1–10. London: Routledge.

Book Google Scholar

Shi, Shaohua, and Yehong Sun. 2016. 社会网络分析视角下世界文化遗产地旅游发展中的利益协调研究——以云南元阳哈尼梯田为例 (Research on interests coordination in the tourism development of the world cultural heritage site from the perspective of social network analysis: Taking Hani rice terraces in Yunnan as an example). Tourism Tribune 7: 52–64.

Shiner, Larry. 1999. “原始赝品”, “旅游艺术”和真实性的观念 (trans: Zhang Jiangang) (Primitive fakes, tourist art and the ideology of authenticity). World Philosophy S1: 70–76.

Su, Jing, and Jiuxia Sun. 2017. 旅游影响民族社区社会关系变迁的微观研究——以岜沙苗寨为例 (Microcosmic research on the impact of tourism on social relations changes in ethnic communities: Taking Basha Miao Village as an example). Tourism Tribune 4: 87–95.

Sun, Jiuxia. 2003. 节日符号在民族旅游开发中的运用及问题 (Applying festival symbols to the exploitation of ethnic tourism). Journal of South-Central Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition) 6: 134–137.

Sun, Jiuxia. 2007. 旅游人类学在中国 (Anthropology of tourism in China). Journal of Guangxi Minzu University: Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition 6: 2–11.

Sun, Jiuxia. 2009. 旅游人类学的社区旅游与社区参与 (Community-based tourism and community participation in anthropology of tourism) , 50–51. Beijing: The Commercial Press.

Sun, Jiuxia. 2019. 人类学对旅游研究的知识溢出 (Knowledge spillover from anthropology to tourism research). Tourism and Hospitality Prospects 5: 1–14.

Sun, Jiuxia, and Kaijie Huang. 2016. 融合与区隔:穆斯林旅游移民在三亚回族村的社会适应 (Integration and segregation: Social adaptation of Muslim tourism immigrants in Hui village of Sanya). Ethno-National Studies 6: 61–69+125.

Sun, Jiuxia, Kaijie Huang, and Xueji Wang. 2020a. 基于地方实践的旅游发展与乡村振兴:逻辑与案例 (Tourism development and rural revitalization based on local experiences: Logic and cases). Tourism Tribune 3: 39–49.

Sun, Jiuxia, and Yifei Li. 2018. 民族村落旅游专业市场体系的结构与特征:以白族新华村为例 (The construction and characteristics of the specialized market system of ethnic villages under the guidance of tourism). Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities (Philosophy and Social Science Edition) 3: 57–63.

Sun, Jiuxia, and Yu Li. 2016. 西双版纳傣族园泼水演员的类阈限体验研究 (A study on water-splashing actors’ liminoid experience the Dai Nationality Garden in Xishuangbanna). Tourism Tribune 5: 72–80.

Sun, Jiuxia, Ling Ling, and Zhuowei Huang. 2020b. Tourism migrant workers: The internal integration from urban to rural destinations. Annals of Tourism Research 84: 1–16.

Sun, Jiuxia, and Tao Ma. 2009. 旅游对目的地社会文化影响研究新进展与框架 (New progress and framework of research on the socio-cultural impact of tourism on destinations). Seeker 6: 72–74.

Sun, Jiuxia, and A. Rongna. 2020. 民族旅游场域中新乡贤的成长路径与社区角色研究(Growth path and community role of new county sages in the field of ethnic tourism). Journal of North Minzu University (Philosophy and Social Science) 1: 54–62.

Sun, Jiuxia, and Tao Wu. 2015. 民族旅游地文化商品化对文化传承的影响——以小黄侗族大歌为例 (The influence of culture commercialization on culture inheritance in ethnic tourism areas——A case study of Xiaohuang Kam Grand Chorus). Journal of South China Normal University (Social Science Edition) 2: 73–82+190.

Sun, Jiuxia, and Aiheng Zhang. 2015. 族群边界理论视角下旅游目的地东道主内部群体研究——以阳朔为例 (Host of destination from the perspective of ethnic boundary theory: The case of Yangshuo). Tourism Tribune 6: 102–110.

Sun, Jiuxia, Shangyi Zhou, Ning Wang, et al. 2016. 跨学科聚焦的新领域:流动的时间、空间与社会 (Mobility in geographical research: Time, space and society). Geographical Research 10: 1801–1818.

Tang, Shuntie. 1998. 旅游目的地的社区化及社区旅游研究 (Communitification of tourist destination and community tourism). Geographical Research 2: 145–149.

Tian, Min. 2003. 民族社区社会文化变迁的旅游效应再认识 (Reunderstanding of the tourist effects of the social and cultural changes in ethnic communities). Journal of South-Central Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences) 5: 40–44.

Tian, Min, and Lusha Sa. 2015. 旅游仪式论质疑 (Questioning the theory of tourism as ritual). Thinking 1: 14–19.

Tribe, John, Janne Liburd, et al. 2016. The tourism knowledge system. Annals of Tourism Research 86: 44–61.

Van den Berghe, Pierre L., and Charles F. Keyes. 1984. Introduction tourism and re-created ethnicity. Annals of Tourism Research 3: 343–352.

Wang, Dan. 2020. 非物质文化遗产服务民族地区精准扶贫的实践模式 (Practice and countermeasures of targeted poverty alleviation with intangible cultural heritage in ethnic minority areas). Journal of South-Central Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences) 5: 64–69.

Wang, Lin. 2009. 乡村旅游社区文化遗产的精英治理——以广西龙脊梯田平安寨村委会选举为例 (On the elite governance of cultural heritage in rural tourism communities—Discussion about the election in Ping’an Stockade Village, Guangxi province). Tourism Tribune 5: 67–71.

Wang, Ning. 1999. Rethinking authenticity in tourism experience. Annals of Tourism Research 2: 349–370.

Wang, Ning. 2015. 流动的消费本土性:劳动力迁移中的文化随迁——以本土性饮食文化的跨境流动为例 (Mobility of local characteristics of consumption: Cultural migration in labor migration: A case study of the cross-border flow of local food culture). Shandong Social Sciences 10: 27–34.

Wang, Ning. 2019. 乡村旅游与乡村文化复兴:一个消费者赞助的视角 (Rural tourism and rural cultural revival: A consumer sponsored perspective). Tourism Tribune 6: 6–7.

Wang, Weiyan. 2018. 社区参与旅游发展制度增权二元分野比较研究 (Comparative study of dual division in the institutional empowerment for the involvement of residential communities in the development of tourism). Tourism Tribune 8: 58–67.

Wang, Xinrui, and Jiuxia Sun. 2018. 旅游开发征地与农户集体行为:门槛模型的应用及拓展 (Land acquisition and rural residents’ collective behavior during tourism development: A case study based on a threshold model). Tourism Tribune 8: 48–57.

Wang, Xinrui, and Jiuxia Sun. 2021. 旅游发展背景下农村劳动力回流迁移研究——影响因素与代际差异 (Tourism development and rural labor return migration: Discussions on the determinants and generational differences). Tourism Tribune 4: 58–69.

Wang, Xueji. 2019. 道路旅行中的主客互动与人地关系生产 (Host-guest interactions and human-place relationship production in road travel). Journal of North Minzu University: Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition 6: 71–76.

Wang, Xueji, Jia Xie, and Jiuxia Sun. 2020. Travellers’ meaning-making of the Sichuan-Tibet highway: From space of flows to place. Tourism Geographies 6: 1–21.

Wei, Lei, Junxi Qian, and Hong Zhu. 2015. 谁的真实性?——泸沽湖的旅游凝视与本土认同 (Whose authenticity? Tourist gaze and local identities in Lugu Lake). Tourism Tribune 8: 66–76.

Weng, Shixiu, and Hua Peng. 2011. 旅游发展初级阶段弱权利意识型古村落社区增权研究——以浙江省楠溪江芙蓉村为例 (On the study of empowerment in weak- right awareness-type ancient village community under the initial stage of tourism development—A case of Furong Village at Nanxi River Basin, Zhejiang province). Tourism Tribune 7: 53–59.

Wu, Wenjie, Yehong Sun, and Ying Wang. 2022. 农业文化遗产地女性居民旅游参与的情感响应研究——以浙江青田稻鱼共生系统为例 (Research on the emotional response of female residents’ tourism participation in agricultural heritage sites—A case study of Rice-Fish Culture). Tourism Tribune 4: 128–139.

Xiao, Honggen, and Stephen L.J. Smith. 2006. Case studies in tourism research: A state-of-the-art analysis. Tourism Management 5: 738–749.

Xu, Jufeng. 2005. 旅游文化与文化旅游:理论与实践的若干问题 (Tourist culture and cultural tourism: Some issues in theory and practice). Tourism Tribune 4: 67–72.

Xu, Li, Yang Ma, and Yan Sun. 2018. 旅游扶贫背景下民族社区治理的多元权力结构探究 (Discussion on the multi-player power structure of ethnic community governance against the background of poverty alleviation through tourism). Journal of Southwest Minzu University: Humanities and Social Sciences Edition 10: 198–202.

Xu, Xinjian. 2000. 人类学眼光:旅游与中国社会──以一次旅游与人类学国际研讨会为个案的评述和分析 (Anthropological perspective: Tourism and Chinese society). Tourism Tribune 2: 62–69.

Yang, Guihua, and Yuehua Wang. 2000. 生态旅游保护性开发新思路 (New thinking for the protective exploitation of ecotourism). Economic Geography 1: 88–92.

Yang, Hui, Zhiming Chen, and Zhanhong Zhang. 2001. 旅游、人类学与中国社会 (Tourism, anthropology and China) , 1–3. Kunming: Yunnan University Press.

Yang, Zhenzhi. 2006. 台、帷幕、后台——民族文化保护与旅游开发的新模式探索 (The front stage, curtain and back stage). Ethno-National Studies 2: 39–46.

Zhang, Aiheng, and Jiuxia Sun. 2016. 阳朔跨国婚姻外籍配偶与东道主社区双向文化适应研究 (A study on bidirectional acculturation between foreign spouses and host communities in Yangshuo transnational marriage). Social Scientist 8: 94–98.

Zhang, Dunfu, and A. Kebaer. 2012. 旅游研究:以问题为中心,而非以学科为分界 (Tourism research: Problem-oriented, not discipline-based). Tourism Tribune 10: 6–7.

Zhang, Hongchang, and Boyang Shu. 2018. 乡村振兴中的旅游开发模式演进机制研究——以郎德苗寨为例 (On the evolution mechanism of tourism development mode in rural revitalizationcase—Case study of Langde Miao Village). Journal of Northwest Minzu University: Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition 6: 69–75.

Zhang, Xiaoping. 2003a. “旅游是一种现代朝圣”刍议 (On “tourism is a modern pilgrimage”). Journal of Yunnan Minzu University: Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition 4: 91–93.

Zhang, Xiaoping. 2003b. 西方旅游人类学中的“舞台真实”理论 (“Staged authenticity”—A pespective of Western tourism anthropology). Thinking 4: 66–69.

Zhang, Xiaoping. 2006. 旅游开发中的文化价值——从经济人类学的角度看文化商品化 (Cultural value in tourism development—Commercialization of culture from the perspective of economic anthropology). Ethnic Art Studies 5: 34–39.

Zhang, Xiaoping, and Jiyuan Huang. 2000. 纳尔逊·格雷本的’旅游人类学 (Nelson Graburn’s anthropology of tourism). Thinking 2: 47–50.

Zhang, Xiaoping, Fang Li, Yao Wang, et al. 2009. 从经济资本到文化资本和社会资本——对民族旅游文化商品化的再认识 (From economic capital to cultural capital and social capital—Rethinking national tourist culture commoditization). Tourism Research 1: 13–19.

Zhang, Yulong. 2014. 民族文化资本化的个人实践——西双版纳哈尼族民间艺人张树皮的生活史研究 (Personal practice in capitalization of ethnic culture: A study on the life history of zhang Shupi, a Hani folk artist in Xishuangbanna). Thinking 2: 64–69.

Zhao, Hongmei. 2003. 旅游业的文化商品化与文化真实性 (On cultural commercialization and cultural authenticity in tourist industry). Journal of Yunnan Normal University: Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition 3: 132–136.

Zhao, Hongmei. 2007. 论仪式理论在旅游研究中的应用——兼评纳尔什·格雷本教授的“旅游仪式论” (A study on the application of ritual theory in tourism research—Comments on “Tourism as ritual: A general theory of tourism” by Nelson). Tourism Tribune 9: 70–74.

Zheng, Ping. 2008. 旅游空间中的传统与现代性——傣族曼龙村寨的旅游人类学分析 (Tradition and modernity in the tourism space of man-long villages). Hebei Academic Journal 2: 142–146.

Zhou, Daming. 2014. 人类学与民族旅游:中国的实践 (Anthropology and ethnic tourism: Practices in China). Tourism Tribune 2: 103–109.

Zhu, Xuan, Jia Xie, and Hongyuan Jiang. 2017a. 移动性抑或流动性?——翻译、沿革和解析 (Mobility or liquidity? Translation, evolution and interpretation). Tourism Tribune 10: 104–114.

Zhu, Yujie. 2015. Performing heritage: Rethinking authenticity in tourism. Chinese version: 表演遗产:旅游中真实性的再思考. trans:Yuanyuan Shao. Journal of Southwest Minzu University: Humanities and Social Sciences Edition 6: 1–9.

Zhu, Yujie, Jin Lu, and Nelson Graburn. 2017b. Domesticating tourism anthropology in China. American Anthropologist 119: 730–735.

Zong, Xiaolian. 2001a. 西方旅游人类学两大研究流派浅析 (An analysis of the two tourist anthropology research schools in the West). Thinking 6: 47–49.

Zong, Xiaolian. 2001b. 西方旅游人类学研究述评 (A review of researches on anthropology of tourism in the West). Ethno-National Studies 3: 85–94.

Download references

Acknowledgements

This paper is a phased research result of a key project in the National Social Science Foundation of China “Cultural and tourism development and urban-rural integration in rural revitalization research” (Grant No. 21AH016) by Prof. Sun Jiuxia of Sun Yat-sen University.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-sen University, No. 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou, 510275, China

Jiuxia Sun & Yilin Luo

Center for Tourism, Leisure, Social Development, Sun Yat-sen University, No. 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou, 510275, China

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Jiuxia Sun puts forward the outline of the paper and writes the first to the final sections. Yilin Luo writes the first to the final sections. The authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yilin Luo .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate, consent for publication, competing interests.

The authors have no potential conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Sun, J., Luo, Y. Anthropology of tourism: practical and theoretical development in China. Int. j. anthropol. ethnol. 6 , 10 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41257-022-00070-z

Download citation

Received : 05 July 2022

Accepted : 07 July 2022

Published : 27 July 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s41257-022-00070-z

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Anthropology of tourism
Localization
Comparison between China and the West

Encyclopedia of Tourism pp 1–5 Cite as

Anthropology, tourism

Naomi Leite 3 &
Margaret Byrne Swain 4
Living reference work entry
First Online: 01 January 2015

488 Accesses

4 Citations

Anthropology is the study of human commonality and diversity, past and present, anywhere in the world. It addresses human origins, cultural practices, societal structures, communication, and meaning and applies anthropological knowledge to solving human problems. Rooted in the era of European exploration and colonial expansion, initial studies devised unilinear evolutionary rankings of the world’s peoples and cultures. Emphasis soon shifted to documenting the sites and lifeways of indigenous groups threatened by Western expansion before they disappeared.

Anthropology emerged as an academic discipline at the turn of the twentieth century. Field research and excavations often occurred in colonies or annexed territories, including the Native Americas. Like explorers who preceded and tourists who followed them, early anthropologists were concerned with the untouched and exotic. Any presence of tourism was ignored in their publications, reflecting ambivalence that stemmed from embarrassing...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Adams, K. 2006 Art as Politics: Re-Crafting Identities, Tourism, and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Google Scholar

Bruner, E. 2005 Culture on Tour. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Graburn, N. 1977 Tourism: The Sacred Journey. In Hosts and Guests, V. Smith, ed., pp.17-32. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Harrison, J. 2003 Being a Tourist: Finding Meaning in Pleasure Travel. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Leite, N., and N. Graburn 2009 Anthropological Interventions in Tourism Studies. In The Sage Handbook of Tourism Studies, T. Jamal and M. Robinson, eds., pp.35-64. London: Sage.

Roberts, L., and H. Andrews 2013 (Un)doing Tourism Anthropology. Journal of Tourism Challenges and Trends 6(2):13-38.

Salazar, N., and N. Graburn, eds. 2014 Tourism Imaginaries: Anthropological Approaches. London: Berghahn.

Scott, J., and T. Selwyn, eds. 2010 Thinking Through Tourism. London: Berg.

Smith, V., ed. 1977 Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Swain, M. 2004 (Dis)embodied Experience and Power Dynamics in Tourism Research. In Qualitative Research in Tourism, J. Phillimore and L. Goodson, eds., pp.102-118. London: Routledge.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

SOAS, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London, WC1H 0XG, UK

Naomi Leite

Department of Women and Gender Studies, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, 95616, USA

Margaret Byrne Swain

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Naomi Leite .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

School of Hospitality Leadership, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, Wisconsin, USA

Jafar Jafari

School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

Honggen Xiao

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Leite, N., Swain, M.B. (2014). Anthropology, tourism. In: Jafari, J., Xiao, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_8-1

Internet Archive Audio

This Just In
Grateful Dead
Old Time Radio
78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
Audio Books & Poetry
Computers, Technology and Science
Music, Arts & Culture
News & Public Affairs
Spirituality & Religion
Radio News Archive

Flickr Commons
Occupy Wall Street Flickr
NASA Images
Solar System Collection
Ames Research Center

All Software
Old School Emulation
MS-DOS Games
Historical Software
Classic PC Games
Software Library
Kodi Archive and Support File
Vintage Software
CD-ROM Software
CD-ROM Software Library
Software Sites
Tucows Software Library
Shareware CD-ROMs
Software Capsules Compilation
CD-ROM Images
ZX Spectrum
DOOM Level CD

Smithsonian Libraries
FEDLINK (US)
Lincoln Collection
American Libraries
Canadian Libraries
Universal Library
Project Gutenberg
Children's Library
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Books by Language
Additional Collections

Prelinger Archives
Democracy Now!
Occupy Wall Street
TV NSA Clip Library
Animation & Cartoons
Arts & Music
Computers & Technology
Cultural & Academic Films
Ephemeral Films
Sports Videos
Videogame Videos
Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

Wayback Machine (iOS)
Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

Explore the Collections
Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Anthropology of tourism

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

Graphic Violence
Explicit Sexual Content
Hate Speech
Misinformation/Disinformation
Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

Inherent tight margin Some text are cut off very close and almost at the gutter

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

32 Previews

Better World Books

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

PDF access not available for this item.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by station46.cebu on May 26, 2023

Syllabus for Roster(s):

22F ANTH 3590-001 (CGAS)

Syllabus ANTH3590

Topics on the anthropology of tourism (anth3590), course details.

Course Number: ANTH3590

Course Location: New Cabell Hall 489

Course Meeting Time(s): Tue, Thu 3:30pm-4:45pm

Credit Hours: 3

Instructor Information

Instructor: Dr. Ernesto Benitez

Office: 303 Brooks Hall

Office Hours: Tue, Thu 2pm-3pm and by appointment.

Email: [email protected]

Course Description

Until the 1970s, tourism was not really considered a legitimate subject of enquiry in Anthropology and few scholars paid much attention to the close relationship between tourism and larger patterns of circulation of power, ideas, capital, and bodies. Today, the Anthropology of Tourism possesses a well-established body of literature that looks critically at the tourism industry and the relationships, imaginaries, and inequalities it produces and perpetuates. This course will examine anthropological perspectives on tourism practices and imaginaries, with special attention to Global South destinations. We will analyze how tourism imaginaries have come to shape our perceptions of different landscapes and peoples, and how these imaginaries also shape our understadings of seemingly unrelated concepts such as race, gender, and sexuality. Furthermore, we will discuss how service-based work in tourism shapes how local and Indigenous communities reimagine their identities to accommodate outside expectations and how they may deploy those identities to contest class and racial dynamics at the local level.

Course Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, you will...

Be familiar with the main concepts and theoretical approaches to the study of tourism in anthropology.
Gain awareness about how global inequalities get reproduced during the tourism encounter.
Critically reflect on the impact of tourism development for local communities in the Global South.
Critically reflect on the ways in which certain stereotypes about Indigenous peoples are perpetuated in Western discourse and how they shape tourism imaginaries in Indigenous communities.
Critically reflect on the proposition that ecotourism or small-scale tourism projects in Indigenous and local communities can be effective alternatives to extractivist industries and promote sustainable development.

Assessments

Final Presentation

You will do 5-minute in-class presentations of your final research paper during finals week. The objective of this assignment is for you to share your work with and receive feedback from your peers.

Final Research Paper

You will write a final research paper on any topic or issue related to Tourism Studies from an ethnographic perspective. The paper should be between 10 and 12 double-spaced pages in length, and it must be informed by a thorough literature review. This will allow you to explore your own interests and questions concerning anthropological approaches to the study of tourism. You must submit a one-paragraph topic proposal by a date to be set by me.

Mid-term paper

The mid-term paper will offer an opportunity to produce an annotated bibliography and a detailed outline for the final research paper. I will provide individualized, in-depth feedback on this assignment, which will be helpful as you develop your ideas and arguments into a research paper.

Participation

One of the two weekly class sessions will be devoted to group-based discussion and analysis of the material covered that week. The overall participation grade will be based on these group-based assignments, and you will be evaluated not on the "correctness" of your answers, but on your effort to critically and creatively engage with course material and the quality of your analysis. You will be evaluated on your contribution to your group in various, equally valuable ways, such as note-taking, in-group discussion, oral presentation, etc.

There will be weekly, open-book quizzes which will assess your comprehension of course material. Each quiz will consist of 10 questions, evenly split between multiple choice and short essay questions. This will assess your ability to identify core concepts and themes from the readings, but also your ability to think about the broader implications of those concepts and themes in relation to the overall goals and objectives of the course. Quizzes will be available on our Collab site.

Course Calendar

Grading scheme.

Weekly quizzes: 20%

Participation (30%)

Mid-term paper (20%)

Final Research Paper (25%)

Final Presentation (5%)

Grading Scale:

Required materials

Nearly all course materials will be available on our Collab site. Additionally, we will be using the following textbook:

Chambers, Erve. 2020. Native tours: The anthropology of travel and tourism (3 rd ed.). Waveland Press, Inc.

Attendance Policy

Attendance is directly related to your participation grade, since the course has a strong team-based learning component. However, we will continue to abide by UVA policies regarding COVID-19, which can be found at https://coronavirus.virginia.edu/ .

Late Work Policy

I will accept one request for a deadline extension during the semester which will not impact your grade. This does NOT include the deadline for your final research paper. Any additional requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Honor/Academic Integrity Policy

In general, plagiarism is defined as taking credit for someone else’s work. I have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to plagiarism. You will receive an automatic F for a plagiarized assignment, and you will be referred to the Honor Committee for disciplinary action. Do NOT plagiarize; if you have problems completing an assignment, or if you cannot meet the deadline, come talk to me. Please visit https://honor.virginia.edu/plagiarism-supplement to learn more about the Honor Code at UVA.

Accessibility

Please visit https://studenthealth.virginia.edu/sdac to learn about UVA policies and resources for students with disabilities, and to request accommodations.

A to Z entry list
Browse entries
Submit an entry

Support the encyclopedia

Tourism pdf

Commodities

Tourism is a new phenomenon in world history, but today more people travel long distances for this purpose than for any other. This entry traces some main contributions anthropologists have made to understanding tourism interactions since starting to study them in the 1970s. One common theme of much of this work has been that tourism often involves the extension of tourists’ home-society ideas and systems into times and spaces of the trip, even though the activity is conceived of as an escape from regular life. The pleasure and value that tourists find in their trips can be explained by an anthropological model of ritual as the embodied, microcosmic enactment of a larger macrocosmic concept. Staging, commodification, and spectatorship are some of the more specific processes that anthropologists have studied, by which tourists’ home systems are projected outward into other spaces. In the 2000s, however, some anthropological work has focused on how tourism encounters generate new structures of experience and social involvement not determined by the orientations of any one set of participants. This work emphasises how actions and experiences of different participants are interdependent, in ways not well-grasped by a stark dichotomy of ‘tourists’ versus ‘hosts’ as whole blocs. This work also emphasises the psychological complexity of all persons' experiences in the encounters.

Introduction: contexts and contradictions

If tourism is defined as leisure travel carried out by broad sectors of a society, it has only existed since the mid-nineteenth century. Yet total international leisure trips have surpassed a billion per year since around 2010, and international and domestic tourism together account for a great portion of global economic activity. [1] Tourism’s rapid rise from nonexistent to the largest travel practice on earth is closely tied to other new social conditions that arose in Europe across the nineteenth century and now define modern life worldwide. Outlining tourism’s links to these processes is one way to grasp basic features of what tourism even is. These links also give a useful entrée into anthropologists’ specific contribution to the academic study of tourism.

The idea of ‘leisure’ itself came into existence as a shadow or inverted mirror of wage labor, business enterprise, and the structuring of society around market- or state-organised industrial production. In the British Industrial Revolution and its successors elsewhere, societies went from being organised around agriculture to being organised around factories, workers’ sale of their labor, and the purchase of mass-produced commodities. Meanwhile, the French Revolution and other political ruptures demoted the interests of hereditary aristocrats in favor of the interests of businessmen, partly through the spread of ideas about individual freedom innovated by Enlightenment philosophers. These modern revolutions offered people a dream of freedom that was contradicted by their lives’ actual organization around clock-regimented wage labor and the management of enterprises. One early expression of this contradiction was the rise in the late-eighteenth century of the artistic and literary movement of Romanticism, which emphasised the artist’s self-isolating turn away from society, toward his own interior ideas and feelings or toward a sublime and wild nature. Romanticism’s highest good is the exercise of the individual creative will in a personal quest outside of the bonds of established order, as in William Blake’s assertion that ‘I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s’. Ideas initially pioneered by Romantic intellectual and artistic elites later became the mass practice of tourists: the purpose of leisure travel is to get out of regular routines.

In tourism, people thus rather paradoxically seek to flee realities that they have created and that have created them. Many types of tourism are explicitly motivated by desire to escape from work, or even from market-mediated forms of social experience more broadly. Yet tourism is itself an intrinsically industrialised activity, dependent on market-organised infrastructures of transport and hospitality. That tourism has these kind of tensions at its heart is readily visible in basic features of its commercial structure, and in the divided consciousness of tourists themselves. A perception that tourists take their society with them in the act of seeking to escape it is summed up, for example, in popular ideas of the ‘tourist bubble’ or wishing to travel ‘off the beaten track’. So too, tourism professionals and tourists themselves constantly innovate new tourism destinations, trips, or whole tourism subgenres, the value of which is defined by their distinction of being less ‘touristic’ than other alternatives. The category of ‘tourist’ is intrinsically stigmatic, in tourists’ own consciousness. The figure of the tourist circulates widely in many societies, as an image of a bad actor who engages superficially and insensitively with objects of his or her travel (even though special experience of those objects is the travel’s purpose). Tourism is slightly at war with itself. The same motivating logic that makes the activity worth pursuing, and gives people ideas about pursuing it better, also gives people shame and regret.

A trickle of pioneering anthropological works on tourism began to appear in the 1970s (e.g. Smith 1977). This grew to a flood in the 2000s, and the more recent phase of work has been distinctive in including many full-length books by fieldworkers who had focused on tourism as the main subject of their long-term research (Causey 2003, Tucker 2003). Anthropologists’ slow start in studying tourists may have reflected our special investment in distancing ourselves from this popularly stigmatised other with whom we uncomfortably share a defining focus on travel and sociocultural displacement. The more recent routinization of tourism as a research topic has been supported by anthropology’s wider complete shift, toward the end of the twentieth century, from defining its core subject matter as human life outside of institutions of sociocultural modernity, to putting those institutions at the center of its concerns.

Anthropological work on tourism is now so diverse as to defy summary. One frame for seeing unity across this work, though, is the already-noted pattern that while tourism’s goal is the experience of something outside tourists’ own system, in practice it tends to unfold as the imposition of tourists’ systems into places they engage with. In the next two sections of this entry, I sketch some ways that anthropologists have found this pattern to occur across even more levels than is openly acknowledged by tourists themselves. Across the entire entry, I draw many of my illustrations from studies of cultural tourism, in which the way of life of residents of a certain place is itself the focus of the tourists’ attention and desire in making their trips. A more complete survey of the anthropology of tourism would consider a much broader range of tourism varieties (see, for example, Leite & Graburn 2009; Leite & Swain 2015).

Tourism as ritual: directly experiencing a macrocosm

One way anthropology was pre-adapted to the study of tourism is that anthropologists have long specialised in studying social deviations and inversions that relate systematically to structures of normal life. Ritual is a classic topic in this area, and anthropological thought about ritual offers special promise for elucidating tourists’ paradoxical double-movement of both loosening and intensifying their relation to their society’s dominant structures.

Nelson Graburn (1977) described tourism as a ‘secular ritual’ specifically on the grounds that travelers’ activities invert or suspend norms of the rest of life. Trips to a destination like Las Vegas, for example, involve a dramatic scrambling of regular norms of dress, eroticism, architecture, sleeping, and the interdependence of consumption and labor. This pattern of a break with visitors’ normal practices and experiences at home is partly emphasised, for example, in the highly successful tourism marketing slogan, ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’. To visit this city as a tourist is to enter a time and space of money’s hyper-circulation and hyper-expenditure, in activities of looking, eating, drinking, shopping, touching, and gambling, all separated from the paid jobs through which most visitors earn money for consumption-based living in their normal places.

There is something more specific to tourism and ritual, though, than the bare element of an inversion or break. Rituals are further set apart from the rest of life by how immediately and vividly they make ideas of a general macrocosm seem present in the microcosm of embodied sensory experience (Stasch 2011). Any given leisure trip, like any given ritual, raises an interpretive question of what broader concept is emphasised through the specific break with normal life that participants undergo in it. For example, the concept of a trip to Las Vegas is one of heightened involvement with core structures of the whole capitalist social world of the mediation of sensation by money. In this heightening, some features of life in such a system are specially revealed or intensified, such as the chanciness of financial success or ruin, the routine purchase of bodily pleasures using money, and the idea of turning money into more money. Other features of life in capitalism are specially hidden or distorted, such as the dependence of consumption and wealth on processes of someone actually making the food and other articles people buy.

Another example of the importance of an overarching macrocosmic story to the spatiotemporal structure of tours is described in a classic article by Edward Bruner and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1994), about the Kenyan destination of Mayers Ranch, a homestead and garden complex owned by a British-descended family who, in the colonial era, had run cattle on a larger bloc of surrounding land. When the ranch operated as a tour destination in the 1980s, package travellers would arrive by bus each afternoon from Nairobi, mingle on a lawn near the Mayers’ house, then descend to a performance space in a nearby village occupied seasonally by Maasai and Samburu on paid retainer from the owners. The tourists would watch and photograph these Maasai and Samburu perform dances, buy their handicrafts, then ascend again to the Mayers’ lawn for tea and biscuits, walk around the surrounding English garden complex, and chat with the owners. Finally, the visitors boarded buses to continue on their wider Kenya itinerary.

The macrocosmic story experienced by visitors was thus one of division of the world into two imagined whole ways of human being: savage or pastoral tribal people on the one hand, and cultivated British colonial landowners on the other. The pleasure of a visit flowed from the site’s close juxtaposition of spaces of Maasai dance and English gardening, respectively embodying qualities of wildness and orderly control. Each space threw the other into relief. Relations of colonial difference and domination across world history—and all the ways humans have ever been different from each other and mutually involved—are complex, ambiguous, and difficult to know. Mayers Ranch, though, gave visitors a clear experience of two contrasting types. Visitors experienced this simplified drama not mainly through explicit statements of its terms but through concrete sensations of sight, touch, hearing, and taste, and through their own bodily movements between different physical areas of the ritual site. This pattern of travelers experiencing large cosmological stories in a dense array of coordinated bodily, personal sensations is a main insight that emerges from comparing tourism with ritual.

Big concepts realised concretely in a leisure trip generally come from the society of the tourists. A macrocosmic story experienced on the personal scale of a tourist’s own bodily perceptions might feel like it flows toward the visitor from the visited destination, but usually travelers have acquired their desires and expectations about that destination from literature, mass media representations, and traditions of photographic imagery circulating densely in their home social networks (e.g. the case of Tahiti, discussed by Kahn 2010). Anthropologists have used diverse analytic terms for discussing these patterns of how destinations are linked to stereotyped qualities and concepts, and have looked at diverse practical processes by which the concept of a specific destination is built up and reproduced. One influential category, for example, is that of ‘place-images’ (introduced by geographer Rob Shields, 1991), while a more recent prominent terminology is that of ‘imaginaries’ (e.g. Salazar & Graburn 2014). Whatever the chosen vocabulary, much anthropological work centrally involves putting tourists’ ideas about a destination under scrutiny, as features of the tourists’ own consciousness and own ideological world.

Staging, commodification, and spectatorship

Many factors contribute to a trip’s effect of giving tourists pleasurable, emotionally or morally moving experiences of a macrocosmic story in embodied form. So far, I have emphasised the ideas that tourists carry with them and project onto what they see. But there are also effects fostered by spatial and social displacement itself. When people pass into new places for short periods of time, they are often in a state of simultaneous hyper-ignorance and hyper-knowing. They understand little about what is around them, by comparison to people who live in the place, or by comparison to the tourists’ knowledge of their own normal living environments. But for the same reasons, tourists perceive what is around them with feelings of sensory freshness and heightened potential meaningfulness. Under such conditions, the models, concepts, or macrocosmic stories held by tourists themselves may enjoy a kind of persuasiveness that is less available to a person more deeply familiar with a place.

Additionally, destinations are actively shaped by host communities and professional mediators to match visitors’ expectations and desires. A tourism destination that I have studied is the home place of Korowai people of Indonesian Papua, who are widely celebrated for their ‘treehouse’ architecture and for the other ways that they are thought to embody an archaic condition of tribal, ‘Stone Age’ humanity, characterised by close integration with the surrounding rainforest environment and isolation from global consumer culture. From prior exposure to vast bodies of amateur and professional photographic imagery, tourists have been trained into knowing the concept of tribal humanity by a certain visual look, centered especially on absence of manufactured clothing. In their trips to the Korowai area, this is what tourists most scan for, and are most affected by. Predictably, tour guides and Korowai themselves have conventionalised a practice of staging nudity and traditional dress just for tourists’ benefit, and of clearing out imported articles from houses when tourists are known to be coming. Sometimes tourists know about or explicitly request this staging of appearances, or come to infer that it might be taking place. More often, the visitors are unaware of the special arrangements in place around them, or they ‘do not want to know’ (as one guide described to me the psychology of some clients).

The idea that hosts and destinations are remade in the image of what tourists want is probably the most frequent turn of interpretation developed by anthropologists specifically studying cultural tourism. An early theoretical account of processes of ‘staging’ was given by Dean MacCannell (1976). He posited that the core macrocosmic concept cutting across all tourism was the extreme differentiation of consciousness and activity characteristic of modern society. This differentiation is reflected in people’s pervasive sense that they do not actually know the conditions of their own lives. They expect that any given experience they are having is a ‘frontstage’ appearance, underpinned by ‘backstage’ realities that are hidden from them. MacCannell identifies sightseeing as ‘a ritual performed to the differentiations of society…a kind of collective striving for a transcendence of the modern totality, a way of attempting to overcome the discontinuity of modernity, of incorporating its fragments into unified experience’ (1976: 13). The practical social pattern that results is routine organization of tourism destinations to give visitors an experience of ‘staged authenticity’, by which MacCannell means a systematically produced feeling of passing from a frontstage appearance to a more authentic condition of knowing backstage realities. Tours of commodity production sites like airplane factories, movie studios, or wineries are one kind of match to MacCannell’s template. But an idea of ‘authenticity’ does seem to be a defining preoccupation of human consciousness in modern societies generally (Trilling 1972). This idea was elaborated with special intensity by the Romantic movement, and is often a good descriptive match to tourists’ motives in visiting a variety of destination types. For example, tourists’ visits to Korowai under the sign of experiencing a timeless, anachronistically unchanged ‘Stone Age’ society could be described, in MacCannell’s terms, as following a dream of access to the ‘backstage’ of all of humanity.

Since ‘authenticity’ is tourists’ own problem, practical patterns of staging of authenticity are another example of tourists’ cultural condition extending outward to shape most aspects of actual tourism interactions. The main point of MacCannell’s account is not a game of the academic analyst smugly puncturing the tourists’ illusions, but just a realistic description of the social, communicative organization of the tourism process, in which the most active and knowing roles are often held by participants other than the tourists themselves. Patterns of tourists experiencing a general macrocosmic concept in their immediate sensory experiences of a destination depend on a great deal of socially distributed work. Visited people and mediating specialists co-construct this experience with and for the visitors. ‘One person’s leisure becomes another person’s labor’, as Jenny Chio says about ethnic minority villagers in China, for whom hosting urban Han visitors is now central to their livelihoods and to the physical appearances of their settlements (2014: 9).

Two related themes that anthropologists often document when studying tourism are commodification and visual spectatorship. Destinations and the people or attractions there are often valued because they seem to stand outside systems of commoditised social relating and material provisioning central to the tourists’ home worlds. The tourists are interested in people who produce their material livelihoods directly from their surrounding environment; they are interested in the sublime aesthetics of the natural environment, or the sublime bodily feelings of athletic acts in that environment; they are interested in visited people’s spirituality, their family relations, or their direct embodiment of an ethnic heritage. At the same time, visited people and specialist mediators in tourism encounters are often strongly focused on tourists’ wealth, and the payments or other economic benefits that flow from tourist visits. Greenwood (1989), Bunten (2008), Comaroff and Comaroff (2009), and many others have analyzed tourism as leading to the invention or standardization of local tradition in forms that did not exist independently of tourism itself, and as leading to the commodification of formerly noncommoditised areas of cultural life (as in the new market value of Korowai nudity). These authors have also described how visited people navigate difficult fractures of consciousness and practical tradeoffs between alternative definitions of what is good in life, under the structural conditions of the tourism system.

On the subject of visual spectatorship, consider the documentary film Cannibal Tours (O'Rourke 1988), which is anthropologists’ most widely shared reference point about tourism, due to its frequent use in teaching. The film depicts German, Italian, and American shipboard tourists visiting Sepik River villages in Papua New Guinea. Part of what makes the film painful to watch is how committed the tourists are to interacting with their hosts mainly in a frame of spectatorship and photography. They look at the visited people as objects, from a position of voyeuristic separation. This commitment to a certain frame of visual interaction blocks tourists from perceiving the hosts’ actual ideas, feelings, and ambivalences around tourism, which the film also depicts and which are quite different from what the tourists project onto those hosts.

The prominence of photography and spectatorship in Cannibal Tours is typical of many other tourism interactions. Almost all tourism involves an expanded emphasis on activities of looking, with tourists tending to be positioned as lookers and visited persons or sites as looked upon. The expression ‘the tourist gaze’ was coined by sociologist John Urry (1990) in part to refer to this pattern. Many anthropological studies of specific tourism destinations have dwelt in detail on the importance of certain patterns of sight in the encounters. There are many reasons that spectatorship and photography expand in this way. As has been already noted, ideas of destinations are acquired in advance through the circulation of visual images. So too, in the time of their visits, tourists often think of how their experiences can later be communicated and used socially in their home locations, and photography is suited to those goals. Tourism arose historically in close relation to the nineteenth-century rise of world fairs, public museums, department stores, and other institutions of ‘the exhibitionary complex’ influentially described by Bennett (1988). These institutions turned on a separation of seeing subject from seen object, and on an idea of this ‘spectatorial’ seeing as immediate knowing. The ongoing strength of the link between tourism and looking seems to flow from a basic compatibility between tourism’s grounding in a Romantic model of breaking out of normal experience in order to be affected by a sacred other order, and a widespread modern cultural understanding of sight as a channel of knowing by which the knower has a frictionless or ‘free’ experience of the seen object. There is a match between the feelings of perfection and purity surrounding a photograph’s realistic representation of what it depicts, and the ideal of visited places or people as themselves perfect, pure, and uplifting.

One common anthropological contribution has been to make practices of sight at the center of tourist activity stand out as culturally and socially peculiar, by documenting visited people’s responses to tourists’ visual orientations. Maasai and Samburu people who worked at Mayers Ranch referred to the end of each year’s tourism season as ‘clos[ing] the picture’ (Bruner & Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1994: 461). This is an indication of how aware they were that their own bodily presence and actions on the site were already a picture, organised for the visitors’ anticipated spectatorship, before any specific photograph was taken of them. People of Sumba in Indonesia, in a symbolic echo of their experience of tourists’ photography, repeat fearful rumors of ‘long-haired foreigners’ who hang local children upside down in order to drain their blood into ‘metal boxes’, then take the blood home to their electronics factories to wash the radios, televisions, and other devices made there, giving them their superior quality (Hoskins 2002). Miao and Zhuang villagers studied by Chio (2013; 2014) methodically if cautiously follow the Chinese state’s exhortation to make a spectacle of themselves, such as by covering concrete buildings with rustic wood. They are reflexive about the primacy of vision as their meeting ground with tourists, and about the gaps or articulations between visual appearances and other levels of their overall embodied lives, such as economic goals.

The themes of staging, commodification, and spectatorship connect closely with each other and can be seen as alternate faces of a single complex. Even from my brief outline of these themes, we can appreciate the following broad characteristics of that complex. Tourism itself is a kind of system or culture. It is a system that sets up a frame of difference and separation, as well as relating and engagement, between tourists and the people, places, or objects on which their travel is focused. The position of tourists themselves tends to exert more power than other positions, in setting the terms of relation. Complexly, though, visited people and tourism professionals sometimes have more active and knowing roles than tourists, in the processes of staging, commodification, and spectatorship by which tourists experience a personal ritual enactment of a macrocosmic story.

Host-guest interdependence and the creation of new social systems

I noted earlier that tourists tend to be aware of tourism’s paradox of imposing into the world the very structures they seek to escape through their travel. So too with respect to the more specific analytic themes just discussed: not just academics, but publics at large are sensitive to the likelihood of tourism interactions being voyeuristic, tourism performances being artificially staged to match tourists’ desires, and tourism deepening the commodification of social life in visited destinations. The fact that tourists themselves are often aware of these possible patterns suggests not only that the patterns are true, but that other things could be true as well. If part of the culture of tourists is critical disgust toward the figure of the ‘ugly tourist’—who projects his or her assumptions and habits into visited settings, through the processes of staging, commodification, and spectatorship—then there is more to the culture of tourists than the unreflexive projection of their assumptions and habits into visited settings.

While staging, commodification, spectatorship, and ritual realization of tourists’ own macrocosmic stories are major patterns of how tourism is organised, the overall anthropological status of these patterns is that they are questions. Researchers have asked whether and how much these patterns actually occur, and what else occurs as well. My initial statement, that tourists take their social system with them when they travel, should likewise be turned into a question, or a series of linked questions. Can a person leave his or her social system, and in what ways? How much and in what ways is a framework of categories something that people live their lives within? How do categorising frameworks deal with, suppress, or otherwise relate to forms of life that are foreign to them? To what extent does physical location in a given place mean being ‘inside’ a certain social system, framework of categories, or macrocosmic story? Or, conversely, to what extent does being inside a framework of categories mean being in a physical location? In what ways is movement between places something a person does from a stable ongoing position ‘inside’ social systems, categorising frameworks, and stories? In what ways is such movement something that breaks apart existing forms of life and assembles fundamentally different ones? These are questions that tourists themselves investigate practically in their travel, as do hosts and mediators who work with the visitors. They are also questions addressed analytically in anthropological studies.

One illustration of these issues is the shift in interactional relations between tourists and hosts that was regularly fostered by a specific Aboriginal tour guide’s telling of an autobiographical story while working at an indigenous-owned tourism enterprise in northern Australia, during Anke Tonnaer’s fieldwork there from 2004 to 2006. Referring to this guide as ‘Jimmy’, Tonnaer describes how he led groups of non-Aboriginal day visitors on a two-hour ‘bush walk’ (2016). This walk was focused on traditional foods and medicines that could be gathered from the land. In this way, the walk gave tourists a vivid embodied experience of the main macrocosmic model orienting their trips, namely an idea of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people as separated by a temporal chasm of the archaic versus the modern, symbolised by the intimate links between Aboriginal people and wild nature (this is similar to the model we have already seen to be broadly experienced by tourists visiting Mayers Ranch). However, at a certain point on the walk, Jimmy would often point out to guests the remnants of a stone oven, and explain that it dated to a period when the area was part of a ranch. This in turn would trigger his narration of the personal memory of how his own sister had been the offspring of a white ranch worker and Aboriginal mother, and at a young age was removed from her Aboriginal mother into church custody, never to return. This removal was carried out under the wider Australian policy that the tourists would have associated with the history of the ‘Stolen Generations’ (though Jimmy did not reference these categories in relating his personal memory). When Jimmy would tell this story of loss, each tour group would fall into a pronounced silence. Tonnaer perceives the story to have been very moving to them, provoking not only feelings of compassion for Jimmy’s experience (which they would sometimes put into words), but also a more general transformation of ‘the temporal rift between the tourist self and cultural other on which the cultural touristic experience was largely based’ into a relation of ‘coevalness’, or joint involvement in a common and difficult past (180). Tonnaer also considers that the visiting tourists ‘often wanted to listen’ to Jimmy’s story (182, emphasis in original). Being told this story did not make their visit less valuable, but rather was a fulfillment of their tourism’s goals, albeit not goals that had been known or scripted in advance in a specific form. The pattern of interactions between Jimmy and participants in the walk ‘points to a more complex makeup and diverse set of perhaps inchoate motivations of tourists in their desire to meet an Aboriginal person that cannot be captured entirely by the longing for an experience of cultural ancientness’ (Tonnaer 2016: 182).

One tendency of anthropological work on tourism in the 2000s has been skepticism about the dichotomy of ‘tourist’ versus ‘visited people’ as whole blocs, of a kind that informed my discussion in earlier sections. Instead, researchers have focused on differences among tourists, and among visited people, that are also centrally important to tourism interactions; on the complexity of tourists’ own consciousness and actions if these are studied ‘in the round’ rather than as if the tourists were ‘part persons’ (Graburn & Barthel-Bouchier 2001); on the elaborate systems of mediating roles and institutions on which encounters between hosts and guests or destination objects actually depend (Salazar 2010; Satsuka 2015); and on the forms of cosmopolitanism and self-awareness regularly found in the lives of visited ‘local’ people, contrary to stereotypes of tourists as mobile and hosts as immobile and whole (e.g. Causey 2007; Notar 2008; Chio 2014; Swain 2014). Stark divides between visitors and visited are often prominent in the discourse of tourism participants themselves, and the contrasts in economic or political freedom of movement between them should not be downplayed. But it is also important to understand how the identity categories on either ‘side’ of an encounter—and the further identity categories differentiated within those sides or at their edges—are produced through tourism interactions, and do not only preexist them (Meiu 2017).

Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett at one point state that ‘we might say that a new Maasai-and-Samburu-dancing-for-tourists-at-Mayers culture has evolved from the interaction of the Maasai with the Mayers and the tourists, tour agents, film crews, travel writers, and anthropologists’ (1994: 447). This type of insight has been explored with increased subtlety in recent scholarship. Consider an unanticipated outcome of international Jewish tourism to Portugal as described by Naomi Leite (2017). The tourists’ goal was to visit and learn about the famed isolated communities of ongoing underground Jewish practice that had been discovered by folklorists in outlying rural locations in the early 1900s, many centuries after the forced conversion of all Iberian Jews to Catholicism. For certain international tourists, though, what turned out to be the most moving aspect of their visits to Portugal were their encounters with new self-formed communities of urban Jewish-identified persons. The people in these urban networks had not been raised as practicing Jews, nor in many cases even told by anyone they were Jewish. But as adults, they independently came to the conviction that they are Jews by descent, and formed an intense desire for religious knowledge and belonging in this inferred identity. For the tourists, meanwhile, Portuguese historical patterns of Jewish rupture or perseverance were resonantly metaphoric of their own complex relations to Jewishness. The tourists were in a position to help the young urban Portuguese self-identifying Jews, and of wanting to help them. They could offer knowledge, institutional standing, and connections to actual Jewish religious practice. The tourists made repeat visits, set up organizational support networks, and facilitated the urban Jewish-identified individuals’ international passages to Jewish legal recognition as co-religionists.

While this case is an extreme example of forging new ties (and it involves historical processes much larger than tourism), it is increasingly common for anthropological work to focus on tourism participants’ complex mutual involvement, and on the new systems of ideas and social relations they create together, alongside documenting patterns of the kind I discussed earlier of tourists dominantly projecting their home systems of buying and knowing into new settings.

Yet while in many cases a space of tourism encounter is best described as a new and systematic reality of its own, still the participants in this novel system often have different understandings of their relations. Returning to issues of voyeurism and photography, for example, a striking case of disparity of understandings is described by Alex Gillespie (2006). In this study of interactions between foreign tourists and Ladakhis in northern India, Gillespie shows that while tourists routinely say Ladakhis dislike being photographed because it objectifies them, Ladakhis themselves actually approve of tourist photography, as an appropriate celebration of the value of Ladakhi life. The tourists are actually oriented to the views of other tourists about photography, even though they attribute those views to Ladakhis. In a similar structure of mutual misunderstanding, Korowai of Indonesian Papua often say that tourists’ motive in coming to visit them is that they know Korowai are ‘people without articles’, and because of this feel love or longing for Korowai and a desire to come give to them the articles they lack. It is actually true of tourists that they love Korowai because of their separateness from global consumer culture. But the idea that this leads the tourists to want to give Korowai articles is not accurate. Instead it is something Korowai infer from tourists’ payment behavior, against the background of Korowai people’s own norms of regularly sharing with relatives who lack something. It is a widespread irony of structures of working misunderstanding between tourism participants that the tourists desire to be more like the people they visit – in having a close relation to something like ‘nature’ or ‘tradition’ – while visited people desire to be more like the tourists, in having a close relation to wealth and other aspects of urban modernity.

Conclusion: the psychological complexity of images of others

Anthropologists’ commitment to long-term fieldwork is particularly well-suited to the documentation of the marked disparities of understanding held by different tourism participants. The experience of visited people was hardly taken into account in scholarship on tourism in any empirically-grounded manner until the recent wave of new ethnographic studies. The documentation of hosts’ experience has been the deepest contribution of anthropological work on tourism to date.

Because of the transience of encounters between tourism participants, and the force that is thus exerted by stereotypes, images, and speculative reasoning in shaping participants’ experience of each other and their actions, anthropology’s rich theoretical tradition of the study of symbolic representations has been an underlying foundation of anthropology’s contributions. I would suggest in closing, though, that there is a psychological complexity to all people’s relations to the images guiding their knowledge and action that has been difficult for scholars to give its due. This psychological complexity is illustrated by tourists to Ladakh who project onto Ladakhis their fellow tourists’ feelings of the shamefulness of photo-taking; tourists who see Portugal’s urban ‘Marranos’ as a collective embodiment of the macrocosmic story of Jewish destruction and survival (and so do not probe too deeply into any one individual’s upbringing); and tourists to northern Australia, who mainly think of Aboriginal persons as archaic people of nature, but also bear a half-formed desire to understand histories of colonial connection and domination. This layering of what people think or know—the ways in which they could be said to know more than they think they know, or less than they think they know—seem important to the smooth unfolding of tourism meetings, and the unfolding of similar transient encounters across major social gaps in general. Perhaps more nuanced understandings of this issue will be something else that grows out of anthropological work on tourism in the future.

Bennett, T. 1988. The exhibitionary complex. New Formations 4 , 73-102.

Bruner, E. & B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1994. Maasai on the lawn: tourist realism in East Africa. Cultural Anthropology 9 , 435-70 (available on-line: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656384 ).

Bunten, A. 2008. Sharing culture or selling out? Developing the commodified persona in the heritage industry. American Ethnologist 35 , 380-95.

Causey, A. 2003. Hard bargaining in Sumatra: western travelers and Toba Bataks in the marketplace of souvenirs . Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Causey, A. 2007. ‘Go back to the Batak, it’s safe there’: tourism in North Sumatra during perilous times. Indonesia and the Malay World 35 , 257-71.

Chio, J. 农家乐 Peasant Family Happiness (prod. J. Chio). Berkeley: Berkeley Media, 2013.

Chio, J. 2014. A landscape of travel: the work of tourism in rural ethnic China . Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Comaroff, J. & J. Comaroff 2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: University Press.

Gillespie, A. 2006. Tourist photography and the reverse gaze. Ethos 34 , 343-66.

Graburn, N. 1977. Tourism: the sacred journey. In Hosts and guests: the anthropology of tourism (ed.) V.L. Smith, 33-47. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Graburn, N.H. & D. Barthel-Bouchier 2001. Relocating the tourist. International Sociology 16 , 147-58.

Greenwood, D. 1989. Culture by the pound: an anthropological perspective on tourism as cultural commoditization. In Hosts and guests: the anthropology of tourism (ed.) V. Smith, 171-86. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Hoskins, J. 2002. Predatory voyeurs: tourists and ‘tribal violence’ in remote Indonesia. American Ethnologist 29 , 797-828.

Kahn, M. 2010. Tahiti beyond the postcard: power, place, and everyday life . Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Leite, N. 2017. Unorthodox kin: Portuguese marranos and the global search for belonging . Oakland: University of California Press.

Leite, N. & N. Graburn 2009. Anthropological interventions in tourism studies. In The SAGE handbook of tourism studies (eds) T. Jamal & M. Robinson, 35-64 . London: Sage.

Leite, N. & M. Swain 2015. Anthropology of tourism. In Encyclopedia of tourism (eds) J. Jafari & H. Xiao, 2nd ed. London: SpringerReference.

Lew, A. 2008. Tourism is NOT the world’s largest industry - so stop saying it is! Tourism geography journal’s tourism place (available on-line: http://tourismplace.blogspot.com/2008/04/tourism-is-not-worlds-largest-industry.html ). Accessed 3 Sep 2012.

MacCannell, D. 1976. The tourist: a new theory of the leisure class . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Meiu, G.P. 2017. Ethno-erotic economies: sexuality, money, and belonging in Kenya . Chicago: University Press.

Notar, B.E. 2008. Producing cosmopolitanism at the borderlands: lonely planeteers and ‘local’ cosmopolitans in southwest China. Anthropological Quarterly 81 , 615-50.

O’Rourke, D. Cannibal tours (prod. D. O'Rourke & L.J. Henderson). Los Angeles: O’Rourke & Associates, Direct Cinema Ltd, 1988.

Salazar, N. 2010. Envisioning Eden: mobilizing imaginaries in tourism and beyond . Oxford: Berghahn.

Salazar, N.B. & N.H. Graburn (eds) 2014. Tourism imaginaries: anthropological approaches. Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Satsuka, S. 2015. Nature in translation: Japanese tourism encounters the Canadian Rockies . Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Shields, R. 1991. Places on the margin: alternative geographies of modernity . London: Routledge.

Smith, V. (ed.) 1977. Hosts and guests: the anthropology of tourism . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Stasch, R. 2011. Ritual and oratory revisited: the semiotics of effective action. Annual Review of Anthropology 40 , 159-74.

Swain, M. 2014. Myth management in tourism’s imaginariums: tales from southwest China, and beyond. In Tourism imaginaries: anthropological approaches (eds) N. Salazar & N. Graburn, 103-24 . London: Berghahn.

Tonnaer, A. 2016. Intersecting journeys of past and present in the ‘bush’: unsettling coevalness in the tourist space of indigenous Australia. International Journal of Tourism Anthropology 5 , 172-86.

Trilling, L. 1972. Sincerity and authenticity . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Tucker, H. 2003. Living with tourism: negotiating identities in a Turkish village. London: Routledge.

Urry, J. 1990. The tourist gaze: leisure and travel in contemporary societies . London: Sage.

Williams, S. & A.A. Lew 2015. Tourism geography: critical understandings of place, space and experience. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.

Note on contributor

Rupert Stasch teaches in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and is the author of Society of others: kinship and mourning in a West Papuan place (2009).

Dr Rupert Stasch, Department of Social Anthropology, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RF, United Kingdom. [email protected]

[1] Promotional organizations like the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) regularly issue online reports describing tourism as accounting for between 3% and 10% of global GDP, as being the world’s largest service sector industry (compare Lew 2008, Williams & Lew 2015: 3), and as almost exceeding in size the world’s largest goods-focused industries other than fossil fuels.

If you liked what you just read

The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology is an open access resource. Please help us keep it that way by making a one-time or a regular donation.

Support the encyclopeadia

IMAGES

Anthropology of Tourism
Anthropology of Tourism
Anthropology of Tourism
(PDF) Anthropology and Tourism: Past Contributions and Future
Anthropology AND Tourism
HISTORY OF TOURISM ANTHROPOLOGY

VIDEO

Sindh#Archeology#Anthropology#tourism#Heritage#asia #desi
tourism notes in 12 class
Contact us for anthropology optional classes for HAS/upsc or notes of anthropology optional #sivana
Tourism Notes CXC Social Studies
Anthropology: An Introduction
Tourism Anthropology

COMMENTS

PDF UNIT 1 INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY AND TOURISM
ANTHROPOLOGY AND TOURISM Contents 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Anthropologyand Tourism: Concepts and Definitions 1.2 History ofTourismAnthropology 1.3 AnthropologicalPerspectives onTourism 1.4 Impact ofTourism 1.5 Summary 1.6 References 1.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Learning Objectives The learners after reading this Unit should be able to comprehend:
PDF Anthropology of Tourism
Anthropology and sociology of tourism are two sides of the same coin. Both study the qualitative aspects of the experience of tourism, the former at the indi-vidual level of perceptions and aspirations, and the latter at the level of social community analysis. Both anthropology and sociology study identity, differentiation and sense of place.
PDF Anthropology of Tourism for Ging New Ground Forecotourism
ANTHROPOLOGY OFTOURISM:Forging New Ground for Ecotourism and Other Alternatives. Amanda Stronza. Anthropological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305; e-mail: [email protected]. Key Wordsorigins of tourism, impacts of tourism, alternative tourism, conservation, development. AbstractTourism is relevant to many ...
Tourism
In anthropology, the study of tourism began in Europe in the 1930s. In the United States, it is agreed that the study of tourism was launched with publication of Nuñez 1963, an article about "weekendismo" in Guadalajara, Mexico. At this time, researchers in other disciplines (such as sociology, ecology, leisure and recreation studies, and ...
Anthropology of Tourism: Forging New Ground for Ecotourism and Other
Abstract Tourism is relevant to many theoretical and real-world issues in anthropology. The major themes anthropologists have covered in the study of tourism may be divided conceptually into two halves: One half seeks to understand the origins of tourism, and the other reveals tourism's impacts. Even when taken together, these two approaches seem to produce only a partial analysis of tourism.
Project MUSE
Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism. Book. Edited by Valene L. Smith. 2012. Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press. View. summary. Tourism—one of the world's largest industries—has long been appreciated for its economic benefits, but in this volume tourism receives a unique systematic scrutiny as a medium for cultural ...
Anthropological contributions to tourism studies
From an anthropological perspective, studying tourism -i.e. object of study—implies analysing the set of socio-technical practices and devices that, bringing together the desirable and the feasible, enable individuals pertaining to certain social groups to spend their leisure time away from their usual routine.
Anthropology of tourism: practical and theoretical development in China
This paper examines the origins, developments and new trends of anthropology of tourism in China through a comparison between China and the West. Chinese anthropologists have, since the end of the last century, begun to introduce Western academic achievements and tried to conduct domestic research. In the process of development into a big and great power in tourism, Chinese researchers have ...
Anthropology, tourism
Anthropology is the study of human commonality and diversity, past and present, anywhere in the world. It addresses human origins, cultural practices, societal structures, communication, and meaning and applies anthropological knowledge to solving human problems. Rooted in the era of European exploration and colonial expansion, initial studies ...
Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism on JSTOR
This study examines the impact of tourism upon the arts and crafts of the Indians of the American Southwest. Diffusion has been one of the major mechanisms of cultural change, but in assessing the role of diffusion the anthropologist has most often looked at the impact of trade, migration, war, and missionary contact.
The Anthropology of Tourism: Heritage, Mobility, and Society
The Anthropology of Tourism: Heritage, Mobility, and Society series provides anthropologists and others in the social sciences and humanities with cutting-edge and engaging research on the culture(s) of tourism. This series embraces anthropology's holistic and comprehensive approach to scholarship, and is sensitive to the complex diversity of human expression.
An Introduction to Tourism and Anthropology
An Introduction to Tourism and Anthropology explains how anthropology is the window through which tourism dynamics may be properly analysed and evaluated. Starting with an overview of the development of anthropology as a social science, the author moves on to examine: the definition and characteristics of tourism definitions and typologies of tourists tourism and culture key themes and writers ...
Anthropology of Tourism
Books. Anthropology of Tourism. Dennison Nash. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 1996 - Business & Economics - 205 pages. Hardbound. This book is designed to give an overview and critical assessment of the developing field of tourism study in anthropology. It aims to engage the reader with questions that anthropologists have raised about ...
The anthropology of tourism
TOURISM, TOURISTS, AND ANTHROPOLOGISTS AT WORK. T. Wallace. Sociology. 2008. The anthropology of tourism is a relatively recent topic area within both academic and applied anthropology, having gotten its start in the 1960s and 1970s. Valene Smith's edited work Hosts and…. Expand.
ANTHROPOLOGY OF TOURISM: Forging New
Amanda Stronza. Anthropological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305; e-mail: [email protected]. Key Words origins of tourism, impacts of tourism, alternative tourism, conservation, development. ** Abstract Tourism is relevant to many theoretical and real-world issues in anthro- pology.
Anthropology of tourism : Nash, Dennison : Free Download, Borrow, and
Anthropology of tourism. Tourism as acculturation or development -- Tourism as a personal transition -- Tourism as a kind of superstructure -- The anthropological approach to tourism a preliminary assessment -- The world of policy -- Toward more sustainable tourism development? -- Basic and applied research: hand in hand?
(PDF) Anthropology and Tourism: Past Contributions and Future
Abstract and Figures. As tourism continues to expand across the world, in terms not only of tourist numbers but also of the types and forms the phenomenon assumes, so, too, do its global ...
(PDF) The Anthropology of Tourism.
The anthropology of tourism is a recently developed field for the. study of the phenomena of tourism in all guises. The emphasis has. been on two topics: 11 the study of the tourists and the ...
The anthropology of tourism
This paper considers some of the issues in the anthropology of modern tourism, emphasizing comparative and dynamic perspectives. Building on the works of MacCannell, V. Turner, and E. Cohen, the relations of tourism to ritual, play, and pilgrimage are considered. Two kinds of tourism are identified: periodic or annual vacations, paralleling ...
Topics on the Anthropology of Tourism (ANTH3590)
Unit 1: Introduction to the anthropology of tourism. Chapter 1 of Native Tours. Aug 30, 2022. Tourism and Development. Chapter 2 of Native Tours (p 31-50) Hawkins, Donald E., and Shaun Mann. 2007. "The World Bank's role in tourism development.". Readings available on Week 2 tab. Sept 1, 2022.
PDF UNIT 3 TOURISM
3.3.2 Physical Anthropology and Tourism Studies. This branch of anthropology apart from studying man as a product of evolutionary process also involves an analysis of human population. Both approaches revolve around a common theme of human variation and adaptation. This is important because men do not live in a vacuum.
Tourism
Tourism is a new phenomenon in world history, but today more people travel long distances for this purpose than for any other. This entry traces some main contributions anthropologists have made to understanding tourism interactions since starting to study them in the 1970s. One common theme of much of this work has been that tourism often involves the extension of tourists'
Honoring Valene Smith, our prescient foremother: Tourism Geographies
Written by the Convenor of the Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group (ATIG) at the American Anthropological Association on behalf of the Board and membership, this memorial article celebrates the life and multifaceted work of Dr. Valene Smith, the pioneering founder of the subdiscipline of the anthropology of tourism. ... Notes on contributors.
International Journal of Tourism Anthropology
Objectives. IJTA is designed for the prompt publication of original and significant articles of tourism anthropology. The journal aims to help professionals in this field to make contributions, disseminate information, and learn from each other's work; to expand frontiers of knowledge in tourism anthropology; and thus to interpret and understand the evolution and impact of tourism variation in ...

Anthropology

How to Subscribe

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Tourism

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

Other Subject Areas

Tourism by Carla Guerrón Montero LAST REVIEWED: 29 May 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 29 May 2019 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0025

Introductory Works

In this Book

Table of Contents

Additional Information

Anthropology of tourism: practical and theoretical development in China

The origins of anthropology of tourism in China

Systematic introduction of Western results and local examination by Chinese studies

Extensive translation of foreign research results

Introduction of new concepts and theories to expand the field of tourism research

Localization of research practice and the attempt of dialogue between China and the West

New trends in anthropology of tourism in China over the past 10 years

Extension and development of conventional core topics in anthropology of tourism

Destruction or protection: a dialectical reflection on the influence of tourism on culture

From single to complex: new viewpoints of gender and host-guest interaction research

From mechanical application to theoretical dialogue: new findings on ritual and liminal experience

From the whole to the individual: shift of research perspectives to community participation and community governance

Breakthroughs and interdisciplinary integration of new topics in anthropology of tourism

Tourism society and mobility

Fields of multidisciplinary research

Cross-application of multidisciplinary approaches

Platform construction and financial support for anthropology of tourism

Comparative analysis of recent anthropologic studies of tourism in China and the West

Reasons for current differences in anthropologic studies of tourism between China and the West

Discipline development driven by strong market demand and technological advance

Different research contexts due to historical backgrounds and national realities

Conclusions

Availability of data and materials

Acknowledgements

Author information

Contributions

Corresponding author

Ethics declarations

Additional information

Rights and permissions

About this article

Share this article

Anthropology, tourism

Author information

Corresponding author

Editor information

Rights and permissions

Copyright information

About this entry

Internet Archive Audio

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Save Page Now

Anthropology of tourism

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

IN COLLECTIONS

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Syllabus for Roster(s):

Syllabus ANTH3590

Instructor Information

Course Description

Course Learning Objectives

Assessments

Course Calendar

Attendance Policy

Late Work Policy

Honor/Academic Integrity Policy

Accessibility

Tourism pdf

Introduction: contexts and contradictions

Tourism as ritual: directly experiencing a macrocosm

Staging, commodification, and spectatorship

Host-guest interdependence and the creation of new social systems

Conclusion: the psychological complexity of images of others

Note on contributor

If you liked what you just read

IMAGES

VIDEO

COMMENTS