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S3 #8

Contending With 50 Years of the Tourist | Dean MacCannell

My guest on this episode is Dean MacCannell, a social analyst and critic whose writings on contemporary cultural arrangements have been translated worldwide. He is best known for his path-breaking book, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. His most recent book is 18 & Out a memoir of his childhood and youth. 

In this interview we discuss Dean's pioneering book The Tourist and how it rooted the entire area of critical tourism studies. We look back into mass tourism's emergence in the 1970s and 1980s, what has changed in that time, how tourists' own homes have become destinations, the loss of human connection, hyperculture, the rise of anti-tourism social movements, how we can understand ourselves and the foreigner as radically other and how that might hold they key for interculturality in our times.

You know, nobody wants to have their entire life trashed by a bunch of people who don't really care whether they're there or someplace else. - Dean MacCannell
Themes:
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Show Notes

The Book that Started it all - The Tourist

The State of the University

Tourism’s Emergence in the 1970s-1980s

What’s Changed in Half a Century

Tourists’ Homes as Destinations

Seven Deadly Sins Tourism / White Lotus

The Loss of Human Connection and Presence

Hyperculture

Anti-Tourism Movements

The Other Remains Radically Other

Contento Tourism

Homework

Transcript

This transcript is available for our Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theendoftourism

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