Selected essays written over a period of fifteen years.

Recruited to be a lecturer on a group tour of Indonesia, Edward M. Bruner decided to make the tourists aware of tourism itself. He photographed tourists photographing Indonesians, asking the group how they felt having their pictures taken without their permission. After a dance performance, Bruner explained to the group that the exhibition was not traditional, but instead had been set up specifically for tourists. His efforts to induce reflexivity led to conflict with the tour company, which wanted the displays to be viewed as replicas of culture and to remain unexamined. Although Bruner was eventually fired, the experience became part of a sustained exploration of tourist performances, narratives, and practices. Synthesizing more than twenty years of research in cultural tourism, Culture on Tour analyzes a remarkable variety of tourist productions, ranging from safari excursions in Kenya and dance dramas in Bali to an Abraham Lincoln heritage site in Illinois. Bruner examines each site in all its particularity, taking account of global and local factors, as well as the multiple perspectives of the various actors—the tourists, the producers, the locals, and even the anthropologist himself. The collection will be essential to those in the field as well as to readers interested in globalization and travel.

An engaging guide to over 150 art museums and more throughout New England

In the Edo period (1600–1868), status- and gender-based expectations largely defined a person’s place and identity in society. The wayfarers of the time, however, discovered that travel provided the opportunity to escape from the confines of the everyday. Cultured travelers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wrote travel memoirs to celebrate their profession as belle-lettrists. For women in particular the open road and the blank page of the diary offered a precious opportunity to create personal hierarchies defined less by gender and more by culture and refinement. After the mid-eighteenth century—which saw the popularization of culture and the rise of commercial printing—textbooks, guides, comical fiction, and woodblock prints allowed not a few commoners to acquaint themselves with the historical, lyrical, or artistic pedigree of Japan’s famous sites. By identifying themselves with famous literary and historical icons of the past, some among these erudite commoners saw an opportunity to rewrite their lives and re-create their identities in the pages of their travel diaries. The chapters in Part One, “Re-creating Spaces,” introduce the notion that the spaces of travel were malleable, accommodating reconceptualization across interpretive frames. Laura Nenzi shows that, far from being static backgrounds, these travelscapes proliferated in a myriad of loci where one person’s center was another’s periphery. In Part Two, “Re-creating Identities,” we see how, in the course of the Edo period, educated persons used travel to, or through, revered lyrical sites to assert and enhance their roles and identities. Finally, in Part Three, “Purchasing Re-creation,” Nenzi looks at the intersection between recreational travel and the rising commercial economy, which allowed visitors to appropriate landscapes through new means: monetary transactions, acquisition of tangible icons, or other forms of physical interaction.

With the endorsement and assistance of the Omani government, the only guide to Oman has been thoroughly updated for the second edition. For naturalists, the rock formations, minerals, and fossils of Oman are textbook-quality, and the variety of flora and fauna is awe-inspiring. For adventurers, there is wadi bashing, hiking, camping, and rock climbing. The landscape ranges from desert to oasis to mountain to coast, and the Omani people are among the most hospitable in the world. This guide utilizes the familiar Maverick format to communicate everything a first-time traveler needs to know. The author lives in Oman and has made many of the treks he writes about. He gives insight into the customs, history, and culture of the country, as well as how to get along with the Omanis in the best possible fashion. Advice is given on everything from asking permission to take pictures, to what type of vehicle to drive in certain areas, to which forts are open to the public, to what kinds of clothes to wear.

Make the most of your time on EarthTM with The Rough Guide to Tanzania. The Rough Guide to Tanzania is the definitive guide to one of Africa's most beautiful destinations, with clear maps and detailed coverage of all the best attractions from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to the exotic Indian Ocean beaches of Zanzibar. You'll also find an in-depth and full-colour guide to Tanzania's spectacular wildlife and national parks, and the most accurate map of the magically labyrinthine Stone Town based on satellite imagery. From Tanzania's volcanic landscapes of Ngorongoro Crater to arranging a Serengeti safari, the guide includes practical information on getting there and around, plus reviews of the best Tanzanian hotels, restaurants, bars and shopping for all budgets. You'll find introductory sections on Tanzania's cultural customs, health, food, drink and outdoor activities as well as specialist Tanzanian tour operators and an introduction to learning Kiswahili. Rely on expert background information on everything from bull-fighting in Pemba through to the mosaic of ethnic groups in Tanzania. Explore all corners of this fascinating country with the clearest maps of any guide.

The second you land in Istanbul two things hit you: how vast it is and how chaotic. The cauldron of noise builds in the morning with the first call to prayer. As the city springs to life, ferries and tankers weave their way across the Bosphorus Strait from Asia to Europe and traffic chokes the streets. Hundreds of fishermen line the Galata Bridge in search of their daily catch to sell in cafés nestled below, while seagulls swoop and squall. At the end of the bridge, locals crush into the dark passageways at Eminönü's spice market and along the warrens of the Grand Bazaar for another day of haggling.

Landscape and Identity in the Modern Basque Country, 1800 to 1936 studies the relationship between landscape and modern identities in the Basque Country. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines cultural history and geography, it analyses the process of historical construction of the Basque landscape, highlighting its multiple political, social and cultural meanings. The book is divided into two parts: the first examines the discourses, images and representations of the Basque landscape; the second examines landscape practices through tourism, hiking and mountaineering. Focusing on the Basque case but establishing numerous connections with comparable phenomena in Western Europe, the book demonstrates that the landscape became a structuring element insofar as it helped shape individual identities while participating in the creation of social links. This book examines the processes of identity construction "from below" by means of new interpretative tools, such as the experience of landscape. This work, originally published in French, brings to an English-speaking audience a crucial issue in the modern history of the Basque Country, namely the cultural construction of a collective identity within the framework of a nation-state, such as Spain, confronted with multiple territorial identities. Approaching this question from the perspective of landscape provides new keys to understanding the processes of nation-building that occurred in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Neil Harris's scholarship of the past twenty-five years has helped to open up the study of American cultural history. This long-awaited collection gathers some of his rich and varied writings. Harris takes us from John Philip Sousa to Superman, with stops along the way to explore art museums and world fairs, shopping malls and hotel lobbies, urban design and utopian novels, among other artifacts of American cultures. The essays fall into three general sections: the first treats the history of cultural institutions, highlighting the role of museums; the second section focuses on some literary, artistic, and entrepreneurial responses to the new mass culture; and the final group of essays explores the social history of art and architecture. Throughout Harris's diverse writings certain themes recur—the redefining of boundaries between high art and popular culture, the relationship between public taste and technological change, and the very notion of what constitutes a shared social experience. Harris's pioneering work has broadened the field of cultural history and encouraged whole new areas of inquiry. Cultural Excursions will be useful for those in American and culture studies, as well as for the general reader trying to make sense of the culture in which we live.