Tourism in Global Society Place, Culture, Consumption [Hardcover]

There is a wealth of case study material on tourism from a variety of different disciplines, but few attempts to synthesise the broad themes into a coherent analytical framework. This book addresses this problem by analysing tourism in light of contemporary social theory. By focusing on tourism in terms of consumption, commodification, and the political and cultural economy, the relationships between tourism, globalisation, people and place are explored in an empirically grounded but theoretically informed analysis.

Theorising Tourism.- Creating Tourist Spaces: from Modernity to Globalisation.- Tourism Development and the Political Economy.- Tourism Modernity and Consumption.- Authenticity and Heritage.- Whose Culture?.- Whose Place? Tourism, People and Change.- Place, Culture and Consumption.- Selected Further Reading.- Bibliography.- Index.

KEVIN MEETHAN is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Plymouth where he is also Convenor of the Consumption and Representation research group. His current research into tourism policy at both regional and national levels, focuses on issues concerning globalisation, consumption and cultural change.We are all tourists now', or so it would seem, and tourism is often blamed for destroying other cultures by turning them into mere spectacles for tourist consumption, leading to the erosion of authentic ways of life.

Tourism in Global Society sets out to challenge assumptions such as these, which have often been uncritically applied to the analysis of tourism as a global phenomenon. It investigates the links between the political economy and culture and it provides a critical analysis of key concepts such as alienation, authenticity, the modern and the primitive, and the problem of cultural commodification. By focusing on these issues in terms of the social production of place, culture and consumption, the relationships between tourism, globalisation, people and place are explored.