The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class

133 Pages·1999·10.57 MB·English

by  Dean MacCannell

TOURIST
THE
Hnew theory
of the leisure class
DEHH MacCHHHELL
With a Hew Foreword by Lucy R. Lippard
and a Hew Epilogue by the Author
(I.:
METU LIBRARY
University ofCalifornia Press 1111111111111
Berkeley and LosAngeles,California
CONTENTS
University ofCalifornia Press,Ltd.. *0050379016*
London, England
First California Paperback Printing 199y
Foreword copyright © 1999byLucyLippard
Epilogue copyright 1999byDean MacCannell
Copyright © 1976bySchocken BooksInc.
Material quoted from The New YorkTimes andNew York
Times Magazine copyright © 1967,1968, 1969,1972by
theNewYorkTimes Company.Reprinted bypermission.
Chapter 5,"Staged Authenticity," originally appeared in
theAmeriam Journal ofSociology,vol.79,no.3(November
1973),copyright © 1973byThe University ofChicago, 1/Modernity and the Production of Touristic Experiences 17
andispublished here bypermission.
Commodity and Symbol
MacCannell, Dean.
The tourist: anewtheory ofthe leisureclass/ The Structure of Cultural Experiences
byDean MacCannell.
p. em. Cultural Productions and Social Groups
Originally published: New York: SchoekenBooks,
1976. The Work Experience
Includes bibliographical references andindex.
ISBN 0-520-21892-2 (alk.paper)
1. Travelers. 2. Tourist trade. 3. Civilization, 2/Sightseeing and Social Structure
modem. 4. Leisure. I. Title.
GI55.AIMI7 1999 The Moral Integration of Modernity
338.4'791-dc21 98-38832
CIP Attractions and Structural Differentiation
Printed inthe United StatesofAmerica Tourist Districts
08 07 06 05 04
9 8 7 6 5
The paper used in this publication isboth acid-free and
totally chlorine-free (fCF). It meets the minimum
requirements of ANSIINlSO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997)
e
(Permanence ofPaper).
4IThe Other Attractions 77 135
7/The Ethnomethodology of Sightseers
The Function of the Museum in Modern Culture 78
"When I Actually Saw It for the First Time " 135
Parks 80
"Truth" Markers 136
Tradition 82
The Construction of Social Reality 141
History 84
145
8/Structure, Genuine and Spurious
5/Stag~ Authenticity 91
Spurious Structure 147
Front, Back and Reality 92
Macrostructural Spuriousness 151
Back Regions and Social Solidarity 94
Genuine Structure 155
Authenticity in Tourist Settings 96
Conclusion 158
Staged Authenticity in Tourist Settings 98
The Structure of Tourist Settings 100 9/0n Theory, Methods and Application 161
Tourists and Intellectuals 102 A.pplications 161
Conclusion 105 Methods 173
Theory 179
109
Markers 110
189
Epilogue
Sight Involvement and Marker Involvement 111
205
Notes
The Relationship of Markers (Signifier)
to Sights (Signified) 117
221
Index
Contact and Recognition 121
The "Domination of a Sight by Its Markers 123
The Marker as Symbol 131
The 'Tourist's baggage is still not altogether unpacked. This is the
third edition of Dean MacCannell's classic,firstpublished in 1976,···
republished with anew introduction in 1989andnow(the intervals
are closing) again in 1999.It has not been replaced by something
more "up to date" because even after twenty-three years,the con-
texts in which this persistent text surfaces and then resurfaces are
different each time. Combined with Empty Meeting Grounds: The
'Tourist Papers, the 1992 collection of essaysin which the author
cemented his role asthe preeminent scholar oftourism, it remains
invaluableto scholarsand interested spectatorsalike.
Dean MacCannell doesnot travel"lite."When Ibeganto write
on tourism myself, I reread The 'Tourist and read Empty Meeting
Grounds andwassoimpressed that I resolutelyavoidedreturning to
them, counting on my bad memory to free me from overdepen-
denceonabodyofwriting that seemedto havesaidit all,andsaidit
sowell,that there wasno point inmyretracing that beaten track. (I
kept on writing, though, becausevisualarts,I11Y ownfield,merited
only one lonely entry in the index of The 'Tourist.)MacCannell's
book isstillrelevant becausefewofthe questionsitposeshavebeen
resolvedandmanymore havebeen added.
Like the spectators we havelearned to be, our societyand our
scholars have sat and watched deregulated tourism triumph, the
tourist rampant in the landscape.Bythe mid-1950s,cultural geog-
rapher J.B.Jackson was chronicling the changed American land-
scape from the highway with both apprehension and enthusiasm,
teaching his students to be tourists in new ways. In 1968MacCan-
mountains, no luxury,no picturesque poverty-straw-attractions are
nell began his work (in Paris) "with much disregard for theory," as created Where willit allend?
he wrote in his 1976introduction to The 'Tourist,although the book's
Before MacCannell launched into the subject, of course, there
subtitle-A New Theory of the Leisure Class-indicates that the trip
was industry and academic writing on tourism, often characterized
changed his mind. And in a sense what was new (since Thorstein by myopia, complicity, a focus on statistics and disregard for local
Veblen's 1899classic)was the broader nature of the "leisure class" communities and cultural groups. ButMacCannell (along with Nel-
itself, which demanded in turn an expanded theoretical approach.
son Graburn's pioneering anthology on the tourist arts) opened up
Later, MacCannell declared that Empty Meeting Grounds was"writ- the field to the scrutiny of an inquiring, informed, rebellious and
ten in the spirit oftheoretical activism," contending with some pas-
original mind. Few, for instance, have looked at those "other"
sion that "the proper place oftheory isnot in the notes, prefaces and tourists-the movement of refugees, immigrants, and other dis-
asides, but israther embedded in the story to the point that it isnot placed people into the centers of power-as well as the movement
possible to tell where one leavesoffand the other begins." ofthe centers' inhabitants to the remote and often "primitive" mar-
His take on theoretical uncertainty, on modernity's constantly gins. "The emerging dialectic," he writes, is between "two waysof
"shifting grounds" isalsoappealing because he deploys the specula- being-out-of-place."
tivenature oftheory in the service not ofnitpicking cynicism but of
Beyond the dialectic isanear-chaos ofwaysof being in and out
freedom to divein, to question everything about everything-espe- of place, rooting and uprooting. MacCannell's "dialogic model"
cially those concrete phenomena that he has seen, experienced, and stresses human interactions, and an extraordinary variety of them
pondered firsthand. Having adopted Veblen's general thesis that are captured in his multicentered, multi-ethnic, and progressive
"leisure reflects social structure," he departs from it by attempting writings. This book is called The 'Touristand not 'Tourism,which in-
"to go beyond chss to discover still deeper structures that might dicates aconcern for the interplay between individual behaviors and
render classrelations in modern society more intelligible"-a press- social relations, a certain reluctance to distance himself from the
ing task in anincreasingly divided and denying society.
mobile masses and to distinguish, asonce was popular, between so-
Like MacCannell's irate Iranian student who cried out .inclass' called high and low culture. He neither despises nor condones
"we are alltourists!" we are allaffected by this revelation. Sincethe
tourists, knowing none of us can cast the first stone. He identifies
late 1980s or so, tourism has even become something of a cult much of the quicksand trod bypostmodernism a decade later, espe-
among the cognoscenti, ripe as it is with alienation, displacement, ciallyin his analysis ofthe search for (and simultaneous destruction
surrealist juxtapositions, shifting grounds, and other pomo delica- of) authenticity, upfront and backstage. (His variations on Erving
cieseAt the same time that postmodernism fostered ataste for theo- Goffman's theme in particular caught the attention of the first edi-
rizing kitsch and pop culture, virtually every state in the union be- tion's reviewers.) Having begun The 'Touristas"anew kind ofethno-
gan to look at tourism as the magic solution to all th17economic graphic report on modern society," MacCannell now describes it as
losses soon to be exacerbated by NAFTA and GATT./Tourism is examining "the behavior of sightseers and the things they go to see
either on its way to becoming the world's largest in~ry, or it has for clues about the hidden structures and meanings oflifeat the end
arrived there, depending on who you read. Now there appears to be of the modern epoch." Looking back in 1989 he identified the
a social mandate: everyone must go somewhere else and spend tourist as"an early postmodern figure, alienated but seeking subjec-
money in someone else'shome, so that everyone living there willbe tivity in his[and her] alienation.... The need to bepostmodern can
able to go to someone else's home and spend money, and so on. thus be read as the same as the desire to be a tourist: both seek to
Bizarre local straws are grasped at as attractions, and where there empower modern culture and 'its conscience by neutralizing every-
are none to grasp--no history, no theme parks, no beaches, no thing that might destroy it from within." In the preface to the 1989
edition of The 'Touristhe spends a lot of time undermining certain enceout ofdifference" and climbingonceagainto that "stillhigher
negative postmodern doctrines that·have, happily,since begun to ground of the old arrogant Western Ego that wants to see it all,
subside. (He reminds us,however,that postmodernism isnot to be know it all,and take it allin." On the optimisticside,he offersthe
dismissedas"mere leisureofthe theory class.") tantalizing possibilitythat tourism might contribute tothe simulta-
MacCannell stands out because he is able to cope with both neous "deconstruction of the attraction" and "reconstruction of
popular culture and cloistered scholarship. He thinks out, from a authentic otherness ... as having an intelligence that is not our
solid basein the academyinto the breadth ofsocietyand the land- intelligence."
scape.He isnot just"interdisciplinary"byinclination,but bytrain- Thanks to The 'Tourist,those ofuswhohadneverthought about
ing aswell,with hisdiversebackgroundinanthropology,sociology, our own travel practices, who had never considered the tourism
landscape design and cultural geography,his engagement in tough phenomenon, those of us who have toured in an aura of mindless
Californiawaterpolitics,communityaspirations,and,more recently, enthusiasm or disillusion, praising this "discovery,"deriding that
with contemporary art, informed all along byJuliet Flower Mac- beaten trackwithout examiningour owncomplicity... suddenlyall
Cannell's admirablework in literature andpsychology.The tourist of us, even those who stay at home, have had to see ourselves as
by definition covers a lot ofground, so sucha kaleidoscopicback- playersin this gamethat ischanging the world.
ground isgood training. Likeagood tourist (somewould saytrav-
eller),MacCannell paysattention to thingsthat usuallygounmen-
tioned: work, for instance-leisure's defining pole. He concludes
that it isonlybyfetishizingthe workofothersand"transforming it
into an 'amusement' ('do-it-yourself'), a spectacle(Grand Coulee)
or an attraction (the guided tours of Ford Motor Company) that
modern workers, on vacation, can apprehend work as part of a
meaningful society."Similarlyhe offersanarrayofinsights that lo-
cate the ultimate victory ofmodernity in "itsartificialpreservation
and reconstruction" of the nonmodern worldwithin modern soci-
ety,the museumization ofthe premodern.
Underlying many of these arguments is an acute scrutiny of
power-whether disguisedinitscorporate regalia,aMickeyMouse
maskor aHawaiianshirt. He alsoacknowledgesfeminism'sinsights
into the waypower "pretends to behidingsomething ... asin 'this
might be a gun in my pocket''' and the correponding significance
for tourism, the ultimate study in power relationships. Like the
artist, the tourist is a usuallyinadvertent catalystfor socialchange
andMacCannell's originalideafor this book,in the late 1960s,was
to study tourism and revolution as"the two polesof modern con-
sciousness"-acceptance of things as they are on one hand, and a
desire to transform them onthe other.
On the pessimisticside,MacCannellwarnsagainsttourism'sin-
sidiouspropensity forflatteningthe fieldbelow,forsucking"differ-
If the founding claim of postmodernism istaken seriously, the
social arrangements I described more than a dozen years ago
passed out of existence almost exactly coincident with the origi-
nal publication date of The Tourist. I wanted the book to serve as
anew kind ofethnographic report on modern society, asademon-
stration that ethnography could be redirected away from primi-
tive and peasant societies,that it could come home. My approach
was to undertake astudy of tourists, to follow and observe them
with seriousness and respect, asamethod ofgaining accessto the
process by which modernity, modernization, modern culture was
establishing its empire on a global basis. Now, according to the
postmodern thesis, the edge of sociocultural change is no longer
the province ofmodernity. Lyotard, Jameson, Kroker, and others
whose thought deserves respect combine a kind of Marxism
(without the labor theory of value) with a recently developed,
powerful method of esthetic analysis, deconstruction, for pur-
posesofdescribing current cultural phenomena. Their approach
teaches us that the rise of multinational corporations and the
corresponding global extension of American economic and mili-
tary domination fundamentally altered the substance and behav-
ior ofclassiccapitalism. Esthetic production, which in an earlier
time might have provided a critique of capitalism, has become
fully integral with commodity production. This integration dis-
rupts the dialectic of surface and depth on which we could once
depend for alteration of social and economic relations from
within; the simmering or explosion of revolutionary sentiments the context of current research and scholarship I would want to
from the depths of capitalist civilization (modernity) are fully be held accountable in ethnographic terms. There are grounds
neutralized (postmodernity). Now we have all surface and no (about which more later) for theoretical disagreement. But I
depth, the death of the critical, revolutionary, and free subject, would hope that any student who enters this arena will hold to
and the end of "history." the principle of holism on a methodological level even as we
Postmodernism is not to be dismissed as mere leisure of the recognize that our subject matter is not classically "bounded";
theory class. Photorealist painting, the valorization of surfaces in that observation be detailed and based on living with the people
art, architecture, and human relationships, pastiche and the recy- we write about, even if we don't identify with them; that descrip-
cling of cultural elements, etc., are fully empirical and suscepti- tions are perspicacious from the double perspective of objective
ble to ethnographic investigation cOIlcerning their cultural specialists (e.g., social scientists, critics) and those whose lives are
significance. Much of the material that would eventually be touched by the conditions described, in this case, the tourists and
analyzed under the heading "postmodern" already put in an especially those the tourists come to see; and finally that concern
appearance in The Tourist. So if I could accept the critical theory for observation of real people in real situations always precede
of postmodernism, I would want to identify The Tourist with its the development of socio-cultural theory.
prestige and smooth over the embarrassment of republishing a On the basis of my own observations, and my reading of the
book about something that no longer exists. Perhaps "the tour- work of other students who have done research on tourism and
ist" was really an early postmodern figure, alienated but seeking modernity, I am not prepared to argue that the accumulation of
fulfillment in his own alienation-nomadic, placeless, a kind of materials called "postmodern" constitute the end of history, or
subjectivity without spirit, a "dead subject." There is even tex- .even a distinct historical epoch, nor can I say that I believe they
tual evidence for this: for example, the term "postindustrial touch humanity in its tenderest parts. They are more a repres-
modernity," is used throughout the book. The sights and specta- sion and denial necessary to the dirty work of modernity so it can
cles of tourism were specifically described as a concrete form of continue to elaborate its forms while seeming to have passed out
the internationalization of culture and as a system of esthetic of existence or to have changed into something "new" and "dif-
surfaces which are comprehensive and coercive. Even the figure ferent." I could not personally undertake the task of explaining
of the "revolutionary" has a cameo role on the first pages of The to an assembly line worker that industrial society "no longer
Tourist and then, as if on cue, disappears.
exists." And while there are strong historical grounds for the
But the interpretation I gave these matters is not the same as claim that the United States' invasion of Grenada was devised in
that which would eventually be provided by theorists of the the first place to serve as a kind of "text," I would not undertake
postmodern condition. The difference in treatment has to do to explain Vietnam as a"textual effect," certainly not to someone
with the validity of claims on behalf of the postmodeni for its who was there.2
extraordinary historical privilege and ethnographic salience. 1 In Much of our current critical and political project appears to me
as a kind of unrealized mourning in which all of life has become
l..~or example, Fredric Jameson (p. 68)hascommented: "This mes-
menzIng n~w aesth~tic J!l<.>diteselfemerged asan elaborated symptom rated in full-scaleauthentic copy; aphilosophy o~immortality as~upli-
~~the ~anIng of ~Istonclty, of our lived possibility of experiencing cation. It dominates the relation with the self,with the past, not mfre-
~IS:tO~t~In.3s01?eactiveway" ("Postmodernism, orThe Cultural Logicof quently with the present, always with Histo~y ... " (Travels in
Altahsm, The New feJt Rev!ew vol. 146,)uly-August, 1984,.pp. Hyperreality [San Diego: Harcourt Brace JovanOVich,1986]p. 6).
. ). .ndUmberto Eco: There ISaconstant mtheaverage Amencan 2.See,for example, Jameson's discussion ofMichael Herr's Dispatches,
ImagInatIOnand taste, for which the past must bepreserved and elabo- in "Postmodernism," p. 84.
reorganized around something that "died," bestowing upon the doctrine of historylessness has been articulated at least twice
purportedly dead subject, dead epoch, dead values, etc.-honors, before. It was developed during the neolithic by our ancestors
privilege, and prestige denied them in life.With all the goodwill for reasons that remain obscure, and it was developed in the
in the world, current criticism isaself-conflicted exercise.There early 1950s by strategic nuclear planners who believed that
is no way to prevent pronouncements concerning "the death of after the stockpiling of nuclear weapons we must never again
the subject" or the "crisis of historicity" from being readable as have history. Levi-Strauss has made a methodological point of
expressions of an anticreative ethos, nostalgia for the bourgeois the difference between types of society which operate in "re-
or Cartesian subject, and a Eurocentric past-the very institu- versible time," that although "surrounded by the substance of
tions and concepts which the critics seek to deconstruct. The history ... try to remain impervious to it," versus societies that
rhetoric of postmodernity virtually assures that all thought, not turn history into the "motive power oftheir development."4 Of
merely "critical" thought, will becompromised in this way.Ron- course, for Levi-Strauss, these two types of society are unam-
ald Reagan rose to power on the Berkeley Free Speech Move- biguously "primitive" and "modern" respectively. He does not
ment. He was ostensibly opposed to the movement, but now it remark on the possibility, increasingly real after Hiroshima and
isclear that no one listened more attentively to what the student Nagasaki, that modern peoples might attempt to enter "revers-
revolutionaries were actually saying, and no one would eventu- ible time," to join with primitives in deciding not to have a
ally benefit more, even directly, from the rhetorical power of history. When a major postmodernist writes about the modern
their statements. Recall that he called it "The Reagan Revolu- world,s he speaks of such things as monumental architecture
tion" and that it was the students, not he, who first enunciated and abstract expressionism: a combination of which could be
the demand to "get bureaucracy off our backs." Reagan's recy- realized only in a nuclear holocaust. But he does not address the
cling of 1960spolitics isapostmodern gesture par excellence, asif nuclear or even its declaration in modern art and architecture.
the recycling ofany form, even one which wasoriginally antipa- It is suppressed as primitives suppress from their narratives
thetic to current political goals, is automatically superior to the anything that might qualify as historical. One is reminded that
creation of something new. His politics were not technically of among the most popular types of tourist attractions are
the political right. They established the "center" as a place of memorials and tombs, and primitive and peasant peoples.
political indifference bymeans ofaviolent trivialization ofpoliti- The need to bepost modern can thus beread asthe sameasthe
cal and historical distinction. This absolute commitment to the desire to be a tourist: both seekto empower modern culture and
processofrecycling political positions, no longer aspositions but its conscience by neutralizing everything that might destroy it
aspure form, isakind ofdeath at the cultural level. It makesthe from within. Postmodernism and tourism are only the positive
ideaofthe "end ofhistory," ifnot quite aself-fulfilling prophesy, form of our collective inarticulateness in the face of the horrors
at least a self-propelling fallacy. ofmodernity: of mustard gasand machine guns, Hiroshima and'
A main procedure employed by tourism precisely parallels Nagasaki, Dachau, Buchenwald, Dresden. Tourism is an alter-
the founding theoretical gesture of postmodernism: an arbi- nate strategy for conserving and prolonging the modern and
trary line is drawn across the path of history-postmodernists protecting it from its own tendencies toward self-destruction.
jump across the line in one direction, into the historyless void, 4. G. Charbonnier, Conversations With Claude Levi-Strauss (London:
and tourists jump in the other, to "where the action was."J The Cape, 1969) p. 39. Cited by Anthony Gid~ens ,~na helpf~1 c~apter on
"Structuralism and the Theory of the SubJect, pp. 9-48 10 his Central
3. Louis Marin has suggested language for both destinations in his Prohlems in Sociological Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press,
conc.ept ofa"degenerate utopia"; See his essay on Disneyland in Utopics: 1979).
Spatial Play (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1984). 5. E.g., Jameson, "Postmodernism," pp. 56ff.
Ground zero at Hiroshima, the Kennedy assassination site, the still higher ground of the old arrogant Western Ego that wants
ovens at Dachau, the Berlin Wall-all figure in The Tourist as to seeit all,know it all, and take it all in, an Egothat isisolated
important attractions. Sightseeing, rather than suppressing these by its belief in its own superiority.
things from consciousness, brings them toour consciousness, "as Here, I can only comment in personal terms on the conditions
if" we might assimilate them. for ananswer. While Iabhor anytendency tobelittle the motives
All of this raises a question which a reader might want an- or competencies ofthe people we study, Istill doubt that a"uto-
swered: Does tourism and/or postmodernity, conceived in the pia of difference" has been established anywhere. The tourist
most positive possible way as a (perhaps final) celebration of may beinvolved in the production ofculture byhis movements,
distance, difference, or differentiation, ultimately liberate con- markings, deployment of souvenirs, and, ofcourse, the creation
sciousness or enslave it?Is modernity, asconstituted in the sys- ofentire environments for his pleasure. But this doesnot insure
tem of attractions and the mind'of the tourist, a "utopia of against the tourist building his own prison house of signs even,
difference," to use Van den Abbeele's energetic phrase~~Or orespecially,ifhe isonthe leading edgeofthe socialconstruction
does it trap consciousness in aseductive pseudo-empowerment, ofreality. Whether or not tourism, on apractical level(orphilos-
a prison house of signs? The Tourist does not give an answer. ophy at the levelof theory), can ever be a"utopia ofdifference,"
When this question arises in the text (and it does about every ultimately depends on its capacity to recognize and accept other-
ten pages)the language becomesevasiveand patently annoying, nessasradically other. To me,this means the possibility ofrecog-
for which I now apologize.' It isreally aquestion for Professor nizing and attempting to enter into a dialogue, on an equal
Derrida. Philosophy need not await the results of ethnographic footing, with forms of intelligence absolutely different from my
investigations, an answer is always only a pen-stroke away; it own.
need only be written. But current philosophical writing, to the The system of attractions as signs that mediate between the
extent that I am familiar with it, exhibits deep ambivalence on consciousness ofthe tourist and the other istreated in The Tourist
the matter of the historical arrangement, and especially the as an enormous deferral of the question of the acceptance of
rearrangement of human differences, as between men and otherness. If the tourist simply collects experiences ofdifference
women, or the First and Third Worlds. Is it not possible that (different peoples,different places,etc.),hewillemerge asamini-
any celebration of "difference" is something insidious: that is, ature clone of the old Western philosophical Subject, thinking
the sucking of difference out of difference, a movement to the itself unified, central, in control, universal, etc.,mastering other-
ness and profiting from it. But if the various attractions force
6. Georges Van den Abbeele "Sightseers: The Tourist as Theorist" themselves on consciousness as obstacles and barriers between
Diacritics vol. 10,December 1980, pp. 2-14. ' tourist and other, that is,asobjects ofanalysis,ifthe deconstruc-
7. A few examples: "Sightseeing is a kind of collective striving for a
tion ofthe attraction isthe sameasthe reconstruction ofauthen-
trans~ende~ce.of the moder~ totality, a way of attempting to overcome
the dlscon.tlOulty of modernity, of incorporating its fragments into uni- tic otherness (another person, another culture, another epoch) as
fied expenence" (p. 13)."This craziness of mere distinctions forces the having an intelligence that isnot our intelligence, then tourism
mo?er~ consci<?usnes~ t<.>explore beyond the frontiers of traditional
might contribute to the establishment of a utopia of difference.
p~eJu~hce and ~Igotr'y 10 Itssearch for amoral identity" (p. 41). "Moder-
OIty IS~ta~ge~lOg nght now, not so much as a result of its 'internal Of course, this is only a theoretical possibility which, given the
contradl~tlons asof plenitude and stagnation .... It isnot now possible dialectics ofauthenticity, someone will claimtohaveachieved on
to de~cnbe the ~nd of this particular development of culture. If our
a practical level at the moment of its enunciation. In short, I
con~CIOusn~ssfalls to transcend this, it will resolve itself in a paroxysm
of dIfferentIatIOn and collapse" (p. 86). suspect a pseudo-reconstruction of "authentic otherness" is the