Anthropology Of Tourism Research Articles

Remembering “Hosts and Guests”: a tribute to Valene Smith (1926–2024)

Widely described as the ‘Margaret Mead of the anthropology of tourism,’ Dr. Valene Smith’s edited collection, ‘Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism’ unleashed a new generation of scholars from anthropology, geography, sociology and beyond that recognized tourism as a topic worthy of academic attention. As the tribute pieces in this issue demonstrate, Dr. Smith’s reputation as a teacher, mentor, and scholar is framed through her approachable, grounded interpretation of the world and social science. This collection of short tribute pieces is written by colleagues, friends, and students of Dr. Smith who have had the pleasure of knowing her and her work. Each author offers their unique engagement with Dr. Smith and the impact of her life and legacy. Tourism Geographies is honored by their words and contribution to Dr. Smith’s remembrance.

Indexing Valene Smith’s contributions to the Anthropology of tourism and tourism studies

Indexing Valene Smith’s contributions to the Anthropology of tourism and tourism studies

Valene Smith, tourism, and the remapping of anthropological terrain

This article argues that Valene Smith’s contributions were fundamental for mapping out the terrain for what was envisioned as an ‘anthropology of tourism.’ As the first major collection of anthropological research on the topic of tourism, Smith’s 1977 volume Hosts and Guests offered a wide geographical range of ethnographically grounded studies of tourism, charted typologies, and chronicled tourism impacts, much as one would map a ‘field of ethnological study’. This article addresses the role of Smiths’s volume in legitimizing what had previously been an off-the-radar realm of anthropological study. It also traces one of the many legacies of Smith’s landmark volume: the blossoming of a realm of tourism studies oriented toward examining the politics, performance, and negotiation of identities (including ethnicity, gender, nationalism, and heritage) in and beyond encounters between ‘hosts’ and ‘guests.’ Finally, the article addresses Smith’s 2001 revised edition of the volume, Hosts and Guests Revisited, arguing that her essays in that volume presciently identified 21st-century realms of interest for tourism scholars, including space tourism, voluntourism, terrorism and tourism, and cyberspace.

In memory of Dr. Valene L. Smith

Valene L. Smith is best known as the editor of the successful book Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism. Her life was dedicated to the anthropological study of tourism. In this article commemorating her life, I look at her work, particularly from the Japanese context in which I developed my anthropological study of tourism. This year, 2024, marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Hosts and Guests. A classic book like this will be read and updated by successive generations around the world.

Honoring Valene Smith, our prescient foremother

Written by the Convenor of the Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group (ATIG) at the American Anthropological Association on behalf of the Board and membership, this memorial article celebrates the life and multifaceted work of Dr. Valene Smith, the pioneering founder of the subdiscipline of the anthropology of tourism. It examines her prescience throughout her life that made her the pathbreaking scholar, teacher, traveler, and tourism practitioner that she was. Such foresight led to her convening the first anthropology of tourism panel at the AAAs in Mexico City in 1974, the product of which became the classic volume, Hosts and Guests. his and her subsequent publications are put into broader context of other classic tourism-focused social scientific works at the time, revealing her role in the development of tourism studies more broadly. As anthropologists are particularly keen on tracing kinship and lineage, the article argues that she rightly is considered anthropologists’ and tourism scholars’ “foremother”, or ancestral mother, who paved the way for generations of anthropologists to begin taking tourism seriously, recognizing its nature as a “total social fact” that can shed light on the holistic human experience.

Improving Cultural Sustainable Tourism: Evidence of Saba Budaya Baduy from Baduy Tribe, Indonesia

Summary Baduy Cultural Tourism is the activity of visiting the Baduy Tribes in Indonesia, which potentially threatens the resilience of the Baduy’s culture. Responding to this, the Baduy Customary Institution changed the nomenclature of Baduy Cultural Tourism to Saba Budaya Baduy . This case study explores the value and specialty of Saba Budaya Baduy as the identity of Baduy Tribes, to analyze the potential of threats and the cultural resilience from the usage of Baduy Cultural Tourism and Saba Budaya Baduy nomenclatures. It explores the values of Saba Budaya Baduy as the effort of cultural resilience to realize cultural sustainable tourism. This qualitative research is based on tourism anthropology and social psychology perspectives in line with the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) technique. The initial findings indicate that Saba Budaya Baduy is guided by the principle of fostering a strong relationship between hosts and guests, rooted in the cultural values of the Baduy Tribe. This approach aims to enhance the representation of the Baduy Tribe and improve the overall experience for visitors engaging in activities with the tribe. The results also highlight how psychological resilience, in responding to external threats, is reflected in the Baduy indigenous people, who are obedient in maintaining and implementing their ancestral traditions. Finally, Saba Budaya Baduy is oriented toward the social, cultural, tourism economy, and environmental resilience dimension of visiting activities within the Baduy Tribe. Therefore, Saba Budaya Baduy can realize and improve cultural sustainable tourism which is oriented toward cultural resilience and sustainable tourism activities. Information © The Authors 2024

Shamanic alliance in the touristic borderzone: Strategic hospitality at Surama Eco‐Lodge in Guyana

AbstractThis article explores how villagers in Surama form alliances with outsiders through strategic hospitality within the touristic borderzone. Surama is a primarily Makushi village in Guyana. Tourism began during the 1990s and is now central to the village economy. Villagers' efforts to form relationships with certain visitors (particularly tourist leaders) as partners or yakos through hospitality reflect an ontological framework associated with shamanism. This involves relational modes of interaction that are common across Amazonia but have been underexamined in the context of tourism. However, Makushi alliances with outsiders in Surama are unique in their emphasis on mutuality and symmetry, which stems from past Makushi experiences of enslavement during the colonial encounter and antipathy towards asymmetric relations. Based on fieldwork involving interviews and participant observation in Surama, this article links debates in Amazonian ethnology and the anthropology of tourism to examine how villagers in Surama manage relations with tourists to obtain external resources.

Development of Arabic Speaking Teaching Materials based on Tourism Anthropology: A Validator's Assessment

All Arabic Language and Literature departments of State Islamic Universities do not offer a particular curriculum that is based on anthropology for students with special needs. Due to this circumstance, the development of Arabic for Occupational Purposes (AOP) content lags significantly behind that of English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) material in terms of speaking skills improvement with local themes and Indonesian cultural wisdom. This study intends to create teaching resources for Arabic that are based on anthropology and include a tourism theme, such as historical tourism, nature tourism, maritime tourism, culinary tourism, religious tourism, local product tourism, and cultural heritage tourism. The Dick and Carry Research and Development paradigm, which has five stages—analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation—is used in this research methodology. Observations in the field and documentation are used as data collection techniques have implications for the presence of Arabic books that are validated and in accordance with the needs of students so that this book is feasible to be applied in improving Arabic speaking proficiency.

Anthropology of Tourism, Creative Space, Creative Tourism, Social Communication

Anthropology of Tourism, Creative Space, Creative Tourism, Social Communication

Studying tourism means going to have a look for yourself: co-research, vulnerabilities and opportunities after the pandemic

ABSTRACT Tourism Studies cannot rely upon studies of tourism alone to cover its range. While the anthropology of tourism had once sustained a revival, disciplinary inertia suggests a renewal is again overdue and anthropology might justify a reconstruction. The possibilities of tourism as ‘study’ perhaps remain unfulfilled, despite significant antecedents in Malcolm Crick’s work, where anthropology exactly glosses as travel plus study. This builds upon the desire to know worlds, to contribute to human togetherness across differences, economic disparity, languages, faiths, and political inclinations. Thus, calling for engagement with the political, postcolonial, and ontological concepts of anthropology, including multi-site ‘fieldwork’ methodologies, reanimates tourism studies via the critical idealism of study as priority for anthropologists, workers and tourists. Alongside questions of privilege, re-booting tourism studies through anthropology in the service of knowledge posits tourism as much more than study tours, finding out about heritage sites, or guides with stories to tell. Crick’s credo of ‘going to have a look for yourself’ could be a rallying cry for participatory ethnography in tourism. In a more vulnerable world, anticipating future ethnographic work in Vietnam, the paper seeks insights and opportunities for a new engagement in the study of anthropology as tourism studies and tourism more widely.

Back to Front: Erving Goffman’s Past and Future Impact on Tourism Research. An interview with Dean MacCannell

Erving Goffman never wrote about tourism and it may, therefore, seem strange to reflect, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, on his contribution to the study of a phenomenon that he never undertook to study directly. However, many lessons can be drawn from Goffman’s sociology towards an understanding of certain central issues in tourism. By the way he captured and analyzed society in the 1950s and 1960s, Goffman offers to all those who undertake to study tourism a fundamental basis for understanding its genesis. Much of what he taught us remains unexploited, and the links that can be established between Goffman and tourism are therefore mostly indirect. However, making Goffman’s sociology a source of inspiration for the study of tourism is not far-fetched. A pioneer of the anthropology of tourism was heavily indebted to Goffman. Indeed, the tour de force that Dean MacCannell achieved in 1976 with the publication of The Tourist was largely inspired by Goffman and his unique approach to sociology. By returning with its author to the Goffmanian part of The Tourist we pay homage to what tourist studies owe to the author of The Presentation of Self. As we continue the study of tourism, what, from Goffman’s sociology, opens up a new of set of problems? Not just those that, have already influenced our analyses through Dean MacCannell, but also some that remain, a source for new interrogations 40 years after Erving Goffman’s death.

Mapping Tourism Potential Based on Urban Heritage Tourism in Medan City

The city of Medan is the third-largest city in Indonesia and has historical buildings or heritage that can be revitalized as a cultural heritage with tourism potential that can be developed. However, until now, the colonial heritage buildings have been destroyed up to 70%. This research method uses a tourism anthropology approach with a qualitative research type that focuses on tourist destinations. The research location is a heritage area, a colonial heritage building in the Merdeka Square segment, Maimoon segment, Benteng segment, Youth segment, Polonia segment, and Sambu segment. The study results reveal that Medan has a heritage in the form of historic buildings that have the potential to be developed and represent the identity of the city of Medan. The potential for tourism development can be carried out in 3 (three) potential areas, namely: 1) The youth segment, which includes Gedung Juang 45, which currently functions as the Sumatran Money Museum, Tip Top Restaurant, and Tjong A Fie Mansion. 2) the Maimoon segment, which includes: Maimoon Palace and the Great Mosque. 3) The Merdeka Square segment includes City Hall, which currently functions as the Grand City Hall, Hotel De Boer (currently called Grand Inna Hotel), and the London Sumatra building. Through urban tourism based on urban heritage tourism, tourists can be invited to appreciate and interpret the objects observed. It serves as education and recreation for the community. This activity is also a means of preserving the wealth and identity of the city of Medan.

La antropología del turismo se hace mayor: ¿Más que un matrimonio de conveniencia?

Si bien la antropología y el turismo no siempre han tenido una relación feliz, la antropología del turismo ha alcanzado la mayoría de edad, y esto en diferentes tradiciones académicas. Desde hace medio siglo, este subcampo de la antropología des­empeñó un papel importante en el establecimiento de los estudios de turismo. Aquí trazo esta historia, analizando el influyente papel en los volúmenes editados de Hosts and Guests para dar forma a la relación entre la antropología y el turismo. Me acerco a cómo algunas ideas novedosas no fueron recogidas, mientras que otras empezaron a llevar sus propias vidas. Este ejercicio nos ayuda a comprender mejor la posición actual de la antropología del turismo dentro de los estudios de antropología y turismo, así como a identificar las direcciones futuras. Esto incluye el reconocimiento de que no hay un solo canon, sino múltiples antropologías del turismo. La antropología como disciplina tiene importantes contribuciones que hacer al estudio del turismo. Ofrece un enfoque holístico para el análisis crítico del turismo a través de su marco comparativo y la capacidad de unir varias escalas, reconociendo la interconexión intercultural de los ámbitos económico, ambiental y social. La pregunta que pide una respuesta es cómo los an­tropólogos deben tratar la implicación de la disciplina en el turismo contemporáneo alrededor del globo.

Antropología del turismo: ¿para qué? ¿y para quién? Crítica de la razón turística

Con base en la diversidad de enfoques antropológicos (normativos, subjetivos, mixtos…) del turismo, analizamos el papel de la etnografía en cuanto herramienta metodológica y técnica de la antropología del turismo, y también en cuanto modo epistemológico de pensar, interpretar e intervenir en turismo. En nuestro texto presentamos los modos de usar las etnografías y algunas de sus (in)utilidades en nuestras sociedades en movimiento. Unas sociedades en las cuales el turismo ha pasado a ser una parte indispensable de las identidades sociales y culturales de muchas gentes en el mundo global. En este sentido, investigar tu­rismo es estudiar personas, gentes, culturas, lugares y movilidades, para lo cual las etnografías del turismo están especialmente preparadas y llamadas, no solamente para interpretar y comprender sus problemas, como también para intervenir y gestionar mejor el turismo, por medio de estrategias de etnomarketing y planeamiento antropológico del turismo.

Implementation of competence approach in professional training of a specialist in the sphere of tourism: educational trajectory of teaching an academic discipline “Human Being and Their Needs”

This article is dedicated to the problems of implementation of competence approach in the Bachelor’s Degree Program in Tourism in the course of studying an academic discipline “Human Being and Their Needs”. The response of tourism industry to the challenges of modernity became the introduction of universal standards in the area of higher education aimed at formation of competences among the future specialist in tourism sphere that would allow tourism agencies to successfully compete on the market of travel services. The article illustrated the creation of academic content of the discipline that corresponds to the modern educational standards. The following conclusions were made: 1) educational strategy is defining for the formation of student’s competence within the framework of the course “Human Being and Their Needs”; 2) a student acquires a unique set of skills related to identification of the needs of “collective subject” as an agent of culture who consumes travel product; 3) globally, the sphere of tourism currently experiences shortage of human resources possessing the knowledge and competences in the area of anthropology of tourism that allows studying the dynamics and structure of modern tourism, which became one of the leading anthropological practices of a person of postindustrial society.

文化論的転回と日本における観光人類学 観光／文化／人類学のはざまからの視点

文化論的転回と日本における観光人類学 観光／文化／人類学のはざまからの視点

Shuzo Ishimori: a pioneer of tourism studies in Japan

ABSTRACTShuzo Ishimori is a pioneer of the Japanese anthropology of tourism. With fieldwork in New Zealand, Micronesia and Japan, he researched and taught at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. There he organized a three-year national seminar introducing the topic and engaged Nelson Graburn to assist in 1989-90. He organized conferences, published volumes and trained graduate students. He later moved to the Center for Advanced Studies in Tourism, Hokkaido University, and to the Directorship of the Hokkaido Museum. Through hard work, inspiring leadership, and frequent public and media speeches, he brought together researchers in enthusiastically promoting their common interest in the study of tourism, which he considered to be the outstanding feature of our contemporary “Age of Neo-Nomadism”.

David Harrison: a career in the anthropology of tourism and the sociology of development

This paper analyses the career of the sociologist/social anthropologist of tourism David Harrison. An important figure in tourism studies across disciplinary boundaries and regional specialisation, Harrison went from academic appointments in Britain to the University of the South Pacific in Fiji and back to Britain again, conducting field studies in the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and Asia and the Pacific. He engaged in and anticipated theoretical debates in the anthropology of tourism and the sociology of development, publishing key books, articles, and book chapters. In this paper, Harrison discusses the main theoretical position he came to take up. This entailed a political economy position that simultaneously considered the interaction of world economic and political systems with local systems of behaviour and meaning, yet based on empirical first-hand research, all with a kind of fundamental skepticism of foregone conclusions offered by pre-approved orthodox theories. The paper provides detailed information on Harrison's early life and unconventional path to the profession, his theoretical influences and directions, and his career trajectory.

David Harrison: a career in the anthropology of tourism and the sociology of development

David Harrison: a career in the anthropology of tourism and the sociology of development

Entre antropología, estudios culturales y turismo: una propuesta de reflexividad disciplinar diacrónica

This paper is a reflection of second order that relates diachronically the field of Cultural Studies with that of Tourism Studies. To this end, a road map is established according to the coordinates that establish two different, though related, historical-contextual moments. One of them refers to the context of the emergence of the anthropology of tourism and, a second one, typical of the last decades of the 20th century which, despite its marginality, will be characterized by the criticism of the very heart of Cultural Studies: the concept of culture and its arbitrariness. The proposal has the particularity of presenting ontological and epistemological discussions on culture and tourism that not only offer a historical reading but also bring into play the political meaning that these concepts acquire in the light of contemporary disciplinary tensions.