Literary tourism

Abstract

Tourism and cultural geography have often made much of how visitors use and appropriate tourist sites as a means of cultural identity and distinction. This article looks at how, in a globalized world where access to such once high-cultural geographic sites becomes more democratized, certain tourist groups have to resort to alternative strategies in order to maintain their high-cultural requirements for the touristic experience. The article presents an account of how one particular tourist party utilized the cultural value of authorship to legitimate and authenticate their experience. Drawing on Bourdieu, Benjamin and Althusser, this article examines how a series of lectures by authors is commissioned by the group leader to create a sense of aura, distinction and uniqueness around the geographical tourist sites themselves.