The ethics of sightseeing [electronic resource] / Dean MacCannell.

ISBN:

9780520948655

Title:

Author:

MacCannell, Dean, author.

Personal Author:

MacCannell, Dean, author.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 271 pages) : illustrations

Contents:

Prologue: I was a tourist at Freud House, London -- Tourist/Other and the unconscious -- Stage authenticity today -- Why sightseeing? -- Toward an ethics of sightseeing -- Trips and their reason -- The tourist in the urban symbolic -- Looking through the landscape -- An imaginary symbolic: from Piranesi to Disney -- The touristic attitude: acceding to the imaginary -- The Bilbao effect: ethical symbolic representation -- Painful memory -- The intentional structure of tourist imagery -- Tourist agency -- Appendix: tourism as a moral field.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Tourism -- Moral and ethical aspects.

Sightseeing business -- Moral and ethical aspects.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2011

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
338.4791 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Is travel inherently beneficial to human character? Does it automatically educate and enlighten while also promoting tolerance, peace, and understanding? In this challenging book, Dean MacCannell identifies and overcomes common obstacles to ethical sightseeing. Through his unique combination of personal observation and in-depth scholarship, MacCannell ventures into specific tourist destinations and attractions: "picturesque" rural and natural landscapes, "hip" urban scenes, historic locations of tragic events, Disney theme parks, beaches, and travel poster ideals. He shows how strategies intended to attract tourists carry unintended consequences when they migrate to other domains of life and reappear as "staged authenticity." Demonstrating each act of sightseeing as an ethical test, the book shows how tourists can realize the productive potential of their travel desires, penetrate the collective unconscious, and gain character, insight, and connection to the world.

Author Notes

MacCannell Dean :

Dean MacCannell is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Design at the University of California, Davis, and is the author of The Tourist (UC Press).

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

After a career working in the field of tourism, MacCannell (emer., environmental design, Univ. of California, Davis) breaks new ground here. He claims this study is about sightseeing and not tourism, but the opening sentence refers to "the symbolic terrain traversed by tourists, in their imagination and in reality." In particular, MacCannell argues for a "second gaze," one that assumes that something is always missing, hidden, or disguised and that tries to penetrate the cultural unconsciousness to discover the "symbolic in action." This is where the issue of ethics comes in. Given recent concerns about the morality of tourism and its negative impacts on ecological, cultural, and social structures, ethics are central to improved behavior and practices. The volume consists of a sequence of 13 self-standing essays grouped in four sections, culminating in an appendix, "Tourism as a Moral Field." Throughout, the author provides reflexive sidebars rendering the encounters and experiences that have contributed to his current approach to tourism and sightseeing. Predictably, given the scopic concern, the study is provocatively illustrated and supported by excellent references. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. B. Osborne Queen's University at Kingston