illustrates his argument with examples from Kaep- In the contemporary world,the tourist gaze is pler's essay. all-consuming.It is a visual practice and a cultural Wolfgang Kemp examines the mnemonic devices disposition enacted as much in the suburban mall present in the images produced in the early and high as in the"natural wilderness"of the Rift Valley.The Middle Ages,comparing two depictions of the tourist gaze is also paradoxical.There are systematic Prodigal Son,one in stained glass and the other in ways of seeing that define the tourist's experience as the form of a tapestry.In an analogy to the mne- unique-that "mythologize"it in a particular fash- monic elements of poetry,such as meter and rhyme, ion-and yet the tourist gaze has become universal- he suggests that the figural geometry of these two ized as the way postmoderns construct and under- forms constitute an art of memory,producing im- stand the world.It is this all-consuming and ages that are good to remember. paradoxical phenomenon of postmodern tourism Gillian Feeley-Harnik examines ancestor com- that Urry problematizes historically,socially,and memoration among the Sakalava of western Mada- culturally in his book. gascar,among whom remembrance is enacted in In the first four chapters,Urry considers how the performance of service on royal tombs.The act tourism became a uniquely modern leisure-time of dismantling and rebuilding these tombs figures in activity and a focal element of cultural change in the regeneration of the royalty in the bodies of those what he calls the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism. who remember them,while also renewing the archi- Modemn tourists seek activities outside the sphere of tectural embodiment of ancestral power. the regulated everyday work world in order to visit Arthur Miller examines two ways in which mem- exciting and exotic places for short periods of time ory may be preserved yet simultaneously withheld Once in these unique settings,they gaze and,guided in acts of resistance.He focuses on how the Zapotec by their looking,are transformed by the experiences transposed their calendrical system into Spanish in they have.The tourist industry was built on repro- order to circumvent its prohibition.He also postu- ducing "new"objects upon which to look.Such lates that indigenous representations of space-time tourist spectacles are constructed and sustained by as in glyphs that marked both place and date,were the fact that they are objectified,framed,and pur- elided in naive,one-dimensional maps produced at chased as reproducible "daydreams."Urry draws the behest of the Spanish. out the irony of all of this."S]ince 'reality'can never Richard Vinograd compares art and memory in provide the perfect pleasures encountered in day- European and Chinese painting. For example dreams,each purchase leads to disillusionment and whereas European pictorial art is commonly de- to longing for ever-new products.There is a dialectic signed as an object of witness,Chinese scroll paint- of novelty and insatiability at the heart of contempo- ing was intended as an extension of an occasion rary consumerism"(p.13). involving the viewer in the process of witnessing.He Take the rise and fall of the British seaside resort, also traces changes in Chinese literati painting-in- one of Urry's best examples of this irony at work.As cluding privatization and,later,personalization- British tourism became a dominant industry in the and evaluates the impact of these processes on their 1960s and 1970s,the seaside resort-which had the mnemonic value. infrastructure to take advantage of this boom in the Missing from this stimulating collection of essays tourist market-declined.Urry explains how the is a conclusion that addresses points of agreement "social tone"of working-class resorts once was set and difference among the authors,for example, by the cheap accommodation and the variety of fun whether the mnemonic properties of art are organ- to be had.But this tourist experience and the condi- ized in terms of a grammar (Kaeppler)or not tions that supported it did not last long.By the (Kuchler),as image-schemata (Johnson),or accord- second half of the 20th century,with the accelerated ing to the requirements of different artistic genres.It proliferation of leisure forms and tourist sites,con- is also interesting to note that three of the four sumers had become more critical about the wide "ethnographic"cases presented fall within the pur- range of experiences available to them-be they view of that oddball category of ethnographic"high spectacles of sex,fashion,ecology,or family fun. art,thus perpetuating rather than revising the idi- Even commercial services are judged as part of the osyncratic manner in which non-Western art is se tourist gaze,and they are carefully managed as lectively memorialized in Western canons. impressions to be consumed as part of a holiday Given its position at the intersection of the hu- experience. manities and the social sciences,Images of Memory Today,the seaside resort is advertised as a nostal- makes a strong case for readers from both fields to gia site,a place to visit as part of a quest for the consider the implications of art as the (re)presenta- authentic British past.The irony is that the process tion of memory. by which portraits of the past are created and framed is the same one that subverts its authenticity.As the seaside resort becomes a mythologized rendering of "authentic British history,the "reality"beyond the The Tourist Gaze:Leisure and Travel in Con- temporary Societies.JOHN URRY.Newbury spectacle for which the tourist so ardently searches turns out to be just another picture available for Park,CA,and London:Sage Publications, consumption,attractive because of its new and im- 1990.ix+176 pp.,photographs,bibliography, proved fidelity and intensity.Urry has a chapter on index. the making of Britain into a spectacle in the form of a heritage refashioning of its urban and rural land- KENNETH LITTLE scapes.Following through on the irony of the gaze, York University he demonstrates how it is that Britain has become 940 american ethnologist
appealing to international tourists as a series of tional Academy for the Study of Tourism-the schol- "historical sites."This has inspired developers arly body chartered by the World Tourism Organi- scholars,tourist boards,and local and national gov zation"to investigate the theoretical nature of tour- ernments to work on redesigning built form as image ism and its global role"(p.xiv).Applying thinking to coincide with this novel theme of "historicity."In about sustainable development to questions of man- other words,the late-20th-century tourist gaze is aging the impacts of international tourism in more fashioned in terms of a media-inspired breakdown equitable,culturally,and ecologically sound ways in the modernist signifying chain and the incumbent the essays explore possibilities ranging from state- "crisis of the real,"what Urry (after Lash)calls the supported farm tourism to ecotourism to spontane- "de-differentiation"of the cultural domains of mod- ously generated small-scale tourism in isolated,cul- ern social hierarchies like elite and mass forms of turally "pristine"sites.Less explicitly delineated is consumption.It is caught up in the proliferation of the trajectory of studies of alternative tourism devel- reality simulations that are consumer spectacles opment:are they to be directed toward tourism as a used to fashion self-images. tool for development,or tourism development itself? In the final three chapters,Urry describes who the The subtitle of this volume is ambiguous on this new self-image-seeking consumers are and the ironic important question,and understandably so.For the culture within which their consumption habits are production of scholarship under the aegis of an formed.Urry's "post-tourists"are "self-conscious, intemational body with substantial commercial in- 'cool'and role-distanced"(p.101).They are mem- fluence is itself an endeavor with potentials and bers of mass media influenced,service white-collar problems.Marie-Francoise Lanfant and Nelson classes,who together make up the category of the Graburn point out in their contribution to this col- "new"bourgeoisie.Their everyday work is tied to lection that while the scholars at the Zakopane the production and consumption of symbolic value; conference conceptualized alternative tourism as a that is,they work in the fields of media,advertising. education,and the like.These classes are strongly means to achieve the sustainable development of society,a scant two months later,alternative tourism committed to lifestyle and the marketing of the "new"as images for others as well as themselves to was deployed by participants at the World Tourism consume.They are highly self-conscious about im. Organization meetings "as a way to ensure the age production,and in their consumption habits sustainable development of tourism itself"(p.11 2). they seek the "extraordinary,"the "exotic,"and the Thus,even as the essays in this volume contribute "erotic"as vehicles of their changing self-creations important new material on tourism to general dis- they are also particular about the spectacles they cussions of sustainable development,their most sig- desire to consume,the self-images they want to nificant contribution is a collective one.Read as an experience.For them,every gaze is a vacation ex- ongoing dialogue among individuals with long- perience that creates a specialized market to service standing and varied experience in tourism scholar- it. ship and practice,these essays bring to light the It is this cultural disposition of the "new"bour- problematic of a scholarship that endeavors to ana- geoisie that Urry claims turns culture into consump- lyze a social practice and a system of production that tion and contemporary society into spectacle.Mass is the most powerful arm of development in the media forms define the horizons of postmodern world today and simultaneously to set an agenda to consciousness as visual and our gaze as that of the establish policies for such development. tourist.Urry also suggests that they have helped to The scholarship in this volume is divided into two democratize culture,making it less hegemonic categories:theoretical essays and case studies.The more ironic,and,on occasion,the locus of resis- theoretical essays move between general questions tance.The question remains as to how powerfully of definition and contextualization,and the prob- ironic the spectacles we make for and of ourselves lems and consequences of implementing altemnative are if they are constantly being recontained by this forms of tourism.Douglas Pearce's opening litera- objectifying gaze.Nevertheless,Urry's work repre ture review responds to the question "An alternative sents an important synthesis of the role of the gaze to what?"with a list of suggestions guiding locally in contemporary society that skillfully organizes the relevant tourism development.Meanwhile,Richard themes of postmodernity into the historical and cul- Butler's essay responds to the same question by tural contexts of tourism. arguing against the notion of alternative tourism as in any substantive way different from the mass tour- ism to which it is frequently contrasted.Butler's Tourism Alternatives:Potentials and Problems contention that "there is little evidence of any real in the Development of Tourism.VALENE L ability to manage and control tourism at the interna- SMITH and WILLIAM R.EADINGTON,eds tional level,and even less ability to identify,accept, Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania and maintain appropriate levels of tourism"(p.33) Press,1992.xv+253 pp.,tables,figures,maps is mirrored in essays by Emanuel de Kadt and John photographs,references,indexes. Pigram,expressing skepticism about the utility of a concept that,as Pigram asserts,"is rapidly attaining the status of 'motherhood'as a desirable objective COLLEEN BALLERINO COHEN Vassar College for tourism zones"(p.87).Similarly,Lanfant and Grabur question whether the tum to alternative The essays in this volume grew out of a 1989 tourism isn't simply an easy way "to avoid the symposium on alternative tourism held in Zak- dilemma of having to decide whether to reject tour- opane,Poland,at the first meeting of the Interna- ism completely or accept it unconditionally"(p.89). reviews 941
