To imagine a nation, nationalists must construct a national story about their history and culture that defines them as a people, and counters the negative story circulated by their enemies. This book examines the role of tourism in the construction of national identity.

This volume addresses the transformative power of tourism social media and offers novel theoretical and methodological approaches to its academic investigation. Acknowledging the collective value creation mechanisms of new media, the authors explore how technology nurtures, augments and modifies social or commercial interactions in tourism.

Travel, Tourism and Identity addresses the psychological and social adjustments that occur when people make contact with others outside their social, cultural, or linguistic groups. Whether such contact is the result of tourism, seeking exile, or relocating abroad, the volume's contributors demonstrate how one's identity, cultural assumptions, and worldview can be brought into question. In some cases, the traveller finds that bridging the social and cultural gap between himself and the new society is fairly easy. In other cases, the traveller discovers that reorienting himself requires absorbing a new cultural history and traditions. The contributors argue that making these adjustments will surely enhance the traveller's or tourist's experience; otherwise the traveller or tourist will be at risk of becoming a marginalized figure, one disconnected from the society that surrounds him. This latest volume in the Culture & Civilization series features a collection of essays on travel and tourism. The essays cover a range of topics from historical travels to modern social identities. They discuss ancient travels, contemporary travels in Europe, Africa and sustainable eco-tourism, and the politics of tourism. Essays also address experiences of Grenada's "Spice Island" identity, and the effects of globalization and migrations on personal identity.

By understanding tourist destinations through the lens of national identity, the tourist may develop a deeper appreciation of the destination. Further, tourism marketers and planners may be better equipped to promote and manage the destination, particularly with regard to expectations of the potential visitor. Tourism and National Identities is the first volume to fully explore the relationship between tourism and national identities and the multiple ways in which cultural tourism, events and celebrations contribute to national identity. It examines core topics critical to understanding this relationship including: tourism branding, stereotyping and national identity; tourism-related representation and experience of national identity; tourism visitation/site/event management and the relationship to cultural tourism. The book looks at a range of international tourist sites and events, combines multidisciplinary perspectives and international cases to provide a thorough academic analysis. The interconnecting area of cultural tourism and national identity has been largely overlooked in the academic literature to date. This book gives considerable analysis to the complex relationship between the two domains and indeed, the multifaceted strategies used to define that relationship. Written by an international team of leading academics, Tourism and National Identities will be of interest to students, researchers and academics in tourism and related disciplines such as events, cultural studies and geography.

Art as Politics explores the intersection of art, identity politics, and tourism in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Based on long-term ethnographic research from the 1980s to the present, the book offers a nuanced portrayal of the Sa’dan Toraja, a predominantly Christian minority group in the world’s most populous Muslim country. Celebrated in anthropological and tourism literatures for their spectacular traditional houses, sculpted effigies of the dead, and pageantry-filled funeral rituals, the Toraja have entered an era of accelerated engagement with the global economy marked by on-going struggles over identity, religion, and social relations. In her engaging account, Kathleen Adams chronicles how various Toraja individuals and groups have drawn upon artistically-embellished "traditional" objects—as well as monumental displays, museums, UNESCO ideas about "word heritage," and the World Wide Web—to shore up or realign aspects of a cultural heritage perceived to be under threat. She also considers how outsiders—be they tourists, art collectors, members of rival ethnic groups, or government officials—have appropriated and reframed Toraja art objects for their own purposes. Her account illustrates how art can serve as a catalyst in identity politics, especially in the context of tourism and social upheaval. Ultimately, this insightful work prompts readers to rethink persistent and pernicious popular assumptions—that tourism invariably brings a loss of agency to local communities or that tourist art is a compromised form of expression. Art as Politics promises to be a favorite with students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, ethnic relations, art, and Asian studies.

The making and consuming of tourism takes place within a complex social milieu, with competing actors drawing into the ‘product’ peoples’ history, culture and lifestyles. Culture and people thus become part of the tourism product. The implications are not fully understood, though the literature ranges the arguments along a continuum with culture being described on one hand as vulnerable and fixed, waiting to be ‘impacted’ by tourism and on the other being seen as vibrant and perfectly well capable of dealing with globalization and modernity trends. Some of the answers are likely to focus around ideas of social identities. The intention of this book is to make a contribution to the theoretical framework of tourism through a series of international case studies. The overall purpose of the edited book is to assemble a series of essays enabling the dissemination of ideas on the critical discourse of tourism and tourists as they relate to social and cultural identities.

Studies of cultural tourism and indigenous identity are fraught with questions concerning exploitation, entitlement, ownership and authenticity. Unease with the idea of leveraging a group identity for commercial gain is ever-present. This anthology articulates some of these debates from a multitude of standpoints. It assimilates the perspectives of members of indigenous communities, non-governmental organizations, tourism practitioners and academic researchers who participated in an action research project that aims to link research to development outcomes.

The fact that tourism is a major global industry forecast to continue its dramatic growth well into the twenty-first century is often cited as a rationale for its analysis. However, while the connection between individual locations and the world's global markets is an obvious product of tourism, the heart of the tourist experience is the construction of identity: the relation of the traveller to resident populations; the participants' views of themselves and others; tourists' search for authenticity and their testing of boundaries.This book significantly furthers current debates on tourism by asking important and vexing questions about the nature of the tourist experience: 'folk museums' that forget many of the 'folk' who live in the areas represented; the environments and events that are shaped to meet the 'imagined dreams' of tourist spectators; the categorization of visitors and returnees who take up residence and participate in the construction of 'local' identities; the evolving meanings associated with indigenous culture, tradition, heritage, representation, reality and authenticity. In renegotiating the definitions of tourism for the new millennium, this book represents a major contribution to an emerging and highly topical area of study.

This book is a collection of essays that examines the social, political and cultural impact of tourism on Irish society. Irish Tourism deals with both the historical experience of Irish tourism and with the contemporary influence of tourism on different areas of Irish life and cultural self-representation. The work situates the developments in Irish tourism within the broader context of globalisation and the role of tourism in a changing international order.

`This book is one of several indications that the sociology of tourism is on the move.... these articles raise relevant important themes in the study of tourism.... The contributors to this very readable book provide valuable insights, many of which have been derived from empirical research, that should interest anyone involved in the study of international tourism. And by moving us away from polarised positions over the social impact of tourism toward more complex but also more considered perspectives they have also helped alter the agenda for future research′ - David Harrison, University of Sussex Tourism is becoming an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary life. More of us travel for pleasure than ever before, yet the social scientific literature on tourism is relatively scant. This book provides an original contribution to the field of tourist studies. The contributors to International Tourism reconceptualize the local and the global, avoiding such crude oppositions as centre v periphery, modern v traditional, macro v micro and North v South. Instead, they demonstrate that the local cannot be understood without the global, and that the global can never be isolated from the regional setting within which it operates. Providing new insights into theories of touristic practice, this volume places tourism within the same framework as other transnational global studies.