Choice Review

This third edition of one of the most salient classics in tourism studies reiterates and expands the conceptual underpinnings of the previous editions (1990; 2nd ed., 2002). Urry (sociology, Lancaster Univ., UK) and Larsen (geography, Roskilde Univ., Denmark) provide a well-balanced critique of mass tourism, which is now seen by most social scientists as the epitome of all that is wrong with tourism. The authors focus on the socioeconomic, ecological, and cultural implications of tourism by examining ways in which tourists see, mitigate, and record their experiences and how these experiences bring changes to places and peoples. The tourist gaze results in the staging and commoditization of places that become ever more "Disneyfied"--ordinary, inauthentic, and predictable--through tourism. This new edition furthers the discussion by updating case material and expanding content to include photography, embodied performances, and risks to reify the influence of "the tourist gaze." The updates are welcome, but the authors mistakenly view tourism (mass tourism included) solely as a pleasure-based phenomenon, disregarding many forms of business travel and other nonleisure travel pursuits (e.g., attending a funeral), which are in fact forms of tourism by definition. These concerns notwithstanding, this updated critique of mass tourism is a worthwhile undertaking. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. D. J. Timothy Arizona State University