Anthropology of Tourism 20-AMU-PIE-SL-AT

This Module introduces students to the field of anthropological tourism research. It gives an overview of tourism as a global phenomenon with historical dimensions, as well as illuminating the specific relationships, experiences, and identities that are fostered in tourism contexts. The students are familiarised with critical and constructive perspectives on tourism, discussing it with regards to social inequality, cultural change, and ecological sustainability. A key concern of the course is to closely look at the encounters and identities that tourism contexts afford, as well as at the affects, imaginations, and narratives that individuals co-create and circulate through their participation in transnational tourism mobility, tourism cultures, tourism politics and economies of tourism. The course further links up tourism anthropology to other areas of anthropological interest – the ritual, kinship, home, magic, memory, place-making, post-socialism and post-colonialism. We will also consider the tourist as a key figure in post-modern thought. As part of the module we also discuss the similarities between the tourist and the ethnographer and look at methodologies of researching tourism anthropologically.

Semestral Program:

WEEKS 1-2: THE HISTORY OF TOURISM OR TOURISM HISTORIES?
i. The History of Tourism: The Western-Centric Tourism Narrative
ii. Multiple Tourisms a) Tourism in Socialist Europe
iii. Multiple Tourisms b) Egypt as Crossroads of Tourisms
WEEKS 3: CLASSIC TOURISM THEORIES AND CRITIQUES OF TOURISM:
i. The tourist as a protagonist of Western modernity and its pitfalls
ii. Zygmunt Bauman: Tourist-Vagabond
iii. Dean MacCannell: Staged Authenticity
iv. John Urry: The Tourist Gaze
WEEK 4: HOSPITALITY IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND TOURISM
i. Rethinking Hospitality as a key concept in Anthropology
ii. Tourism as an intersection of different ideas and practices of hospitality: Couch-Surfing in Morocco, Xenophilia in Greece
iii. Host and guest: How valid are these concepts as categories in tourism?
iv. Blurring the boundaries between hosts and guests: Second Home owners in the Masurian Lake District
Week 5: TOURISM, PILGRIMAGE AND THE SACRED JOURNEY
i. Social Time between Sacred and Profane: Tourism as transformative realm
ii. Structural intersections between tourism and pilgrimage, Tourism as rites-of-passage
iii. Israeli Youth Voyages to Poland, Taiwanese Pilgrimage to Japan
iv. Critiques: Tourism as a space for transformation - but for whom?
WEEK 6: PLAY, EMBODIED LEARNING AND MORE-THAN-HUMAN CONVIVIALITY
i. Tourism as space for embodied learning, play and conviviality
ii. Learning nature, race, tourism and localness in Belize
iii. Entangled memories, materialies and tourism mobilities: Knitting mittens
iv. Tourism conviviality with post-mining landscapes: Svalbard
v. The Anthropocene as the age of re-learning conviviality?
WEEK 7: ADAPTATIONS, RESILIENCE, RIGHTS: THE LABOUR OF TOURISM
i. Biography of a skilled tourism worker in Bulgaria
ii. TOURGUIDING?
iii. Sex Tourism in Bahia and their workers association
iv. COVID-19 and resilience of Southeast Asian tourism workers
v. Non-human labour
vi. FIELD PRACTICE: INTERVIEW
WEEK 8: CULTURAL PERFORMANCES IN TOURISM: COMMODITIZATION OF CULTURE?
i. Commodification of culture and (staged) authenticity: justified critiques?
ii. Festivals in Malta, Basque Country, and Bali
iii. Alternative perspectives on cultural performances in tourism
WEEK 9: MOVING IMAGINARIES OF OTHER (AND SELF)
i. tourism as a space of moving ideas and images about the other
ii. living under “the tourist gaze”/ consumed places
iii. Orientalism and reverse orientalism
iv. Looking back and methodological symmetry
v. TOURISTS
WEEK 10: NEGOTIATING THE TOURISM ENCOUNTER
i. Tourism and friendship in Cuba
ii. Class and domestic Tourism Encounter in Poland
iii. Colonial Encounter in Turkey: Hazel Tucker
WEEK 11-12: (IM)MOBILITIES, IMPERIALISMS, INTERSECTIONS?
i. Tourism as Imperialism
ii. (Post-)Colonialism in Tourism
iii. Understanding tourism at the intersection of (im)mobilities
iv. Anthropology and Tourists
v. Shared mobilities & Solidarity
WEEK 13: AFFECTIVE INTERSECTIONS OF TOURISM, MEMORY, (BE)LONGING
i. Place replace: Experiences in Malta
ii. Genealogical Tourism in Scotland
iii. Post-Nakba Tourism in Palestine
iv. German Heimweh-Tourism
v. Jewish Poland Revisited
WEEK 14: TOURISM AND/AS ACTIVISM AND MORAL ENDEAVOUR
i. Favela Tours
ii. Toxicity Tours
iii. Nuremberg Rally Grounds
iv. Voluntourism
v. Tibetan Refugees
WEEK 15: TOURISM FUTURES – SPECULATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR THE FIELD OF TOURISM

Module learning aims

After finishing this module, the student: o Will be familiar the large debates of Tourism Anthropology; ability to voice oral and written opinions within these debates and its critical, analytical and constructive strands. o Knows the specificity of anthropological approaches to tourism in comparison to those of other social sciences and the humanities. o Be able to choose appropriate research methods to conduct anthropological studies on tourism-related phenomena o Understand and value tourism as an self-standing domain for generating anthropological knowledge about human ontologies and epistemologies o Has a knowledge of a range of ethnographic field studies on tourism matters and is able to use them for making academic arguments. o understand tourism as a historically grown field of complex transnational social, economic and political relationships; a space in which human desires, imaginations and emotions are produced; a site of cultural performances and experiences of human-and non-human conviviality; a part of the global intersection of (im)mobilities o will be ready to knowledgeably and confidently engage in and contribute to discussions that address tourism with reference to current crises (pandemic, war) and global long-term challenges (climate emergency, global mobility inequalities, armed conflicts)

Information on where to find course materials

Find course materials here: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/team/19%3aKd87gpysyMLrRUIx0Z4MTBwCx6cEEqZlH06k0FiFXsU1%40thread.tacv2/conversations?groupId=764cab56-95ad-4dae-abd9-9bfd079efe59&tenantId=73689ee1-b42f-4e25-a5f6-66d1f29bc092

Major

Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Erasmus+

Number of hours

Methods of teaching for learning outcomes achievement

Flipped Classroom. Key readings and reading diary, short video lectures, quizzes, and in-class-discussion of theoretical readings and ethnographies.

Course module conducted remotely (e-learning)

Yes. Name of the course on Teams: Anthropology of Tourism

Student workload (ECTS credits)

30 h, 5 Points ECTS

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences

Term 2023/SL:

good command of English in speech and writing. Interest in socio-cultural aspects of tourism as well as in current anthropological thought.

General:

English language

Term 2024/SL:

good command of English in speech and writing. Interest in socio-cultural aspects of tourism as well as in current anthropological thought.

Course coordinators

Hannah Wadle

Module learning aims

o Will be familiar the large debates of Tourism Anthropology; ability to voice oral and written opinions within these debates and its critical, analytical and constructive strands. o Knows the specificity of anthropological approaches to tourism in comparison to those of other social sciences and the humanities. o Be able to choose appropriate research methods to conduct anthropological studies on tourism-related phenomena o Understand and value tourism as an self-standing domain for generating anthropological knowledge about human ontologies and epistemologies o Has a knowledge of a range of ethnographic field studies on tourism matters and is able to use them for making academic arguments. o understand tourism as a historically grown field of complex transnational social, economic and political relationships; a space in which human desires, imaginations and emotions are produced; a site of cultural performances and experiences of human-and non-human conviviality; a part of the global intersection of (im)mobilities o will be ready to knowledgeably and confidently engage in and contribute to discussions that address tourism with reference to current crises (pandemic, war) and global long-term challenges (climate emergency, global mobility inequalities, armed conflicts)

Learning outcomes

o Will be familiar the large debates of Tourism Anthropology; ability to voice oral and written opinions within these debates and its critical, analytical and constructive strands.
o Knows the specificity of anthropological approaches to tourism in comparison to those of other social sciences and the humanities.
o Be able to choose appropriate research methods to conduct anthropological studies on tourism-related phenomena
o Understand and value tourism as an self-standing domain for generating anthropological knowledge about human ontologies and epistemologies
o Has a knowledge of a range of ethnographic field studies on tourism matters and is able to use them for making academic arguments.
o understand tourism as a historically grown field of complex transnational social, economic and political relationships; a space in which human desires, imaginations and emotions are produced; a site of cultural performances and experiences of human-and non-human conviviality; a part of the global intersection of (im)mobilities
o will be ready to knowledgeably and confidently engage in and contribute to discussions that address tourism with reference to current crises (pandemic, war) and global long-term challenges (climate emergency, global mobility inequalities, armed conflicts)

Assessment criteria

Reading diary, weekly assignments, class participation, final essay

Additional information

Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system:

Description of 20-AMU-PIE-SL-AT in USOSweb