Bourgeois tourism as a discourse of inclusion and exclusion - the tourist gaze in late 19th century Germany

Abstract

Questions of possibilities to distinguish oneself from other groups of society and to define one's own identity often lay at the core of middle class discourse. This is especially true for the end of the 19th century and for the German Burgertum. One means of defining and developing this identity was the special, if not peculiar, behaviour of tourists. This behaviour included perceiving landscapes, processes, and even animals and human beings in a way that removed them from their primary character and be reduced to the quality of mere events for the observer. This 'tourist gaze' (Urry, 1990) and the underlying discourse enabled the bourgeoisie to differentiate themselves from those who were not able to experience this particular perception. When factories were newly considered tourist sights at the end of the 19th century, this distinction increased even further because factory workers were not only unable to be tourists, but became themselves the very object of tourist attention.