How to Become a “Real Chicagoan” in No Time: The Promise and Pedagogy of Walking Tourism

Abstract

This study takes seriously the tourist’s desire to feel like a local and examines how walking tour guides work toward fulfilling that desire. The paper examines some of the techniques used by urban walking tour guides to convey local cultural cues. The tourist, armed with these cues, may feel able to fit into a new culture as a quasi-insider. Through qualitative methods, primarily participant observation, the researcher identifies three tactics that guides implement to make the tourist to feel like a local. These tactics are labeled agent alignment, urban alchemy, and material action. These tactics take place within a borderzone, the liminal time-space between insider and outsider status. A successful guide facilitates the border crossing, allowing the tourist to transition from tourist to perceived ‘real Chicagoan.’ However, the unsuccessful guide forces tourists to exit the borderzone unchanged, still as tourists. These findings highlight the uniqueness of walking tourism as a niche tourism and wade into the conceptual milieu of ‘localism’ and ‘the local.’ KEYWORDS: Walking Tourism; Urban Tourism; Tour Guides; Localization; Interculturalism; Urban Alchemy; Agent Alignment; Chicago