Focuses on tourism through the twin lenses of cultural theory and cultural geography. Presenting a set of case studies on tourist places around the world, this volume explores the paradoxes of the tourist experience and the implications of these paradoxes for our understanding of the problems of modernity and identity.

This innovative volume focuses on tourism through the twin lenses of cultural theory and cultural geography. Presenting a set of innovative case studies on tourist places around the world, the contributors explore the paradoxes of the tourist experience and the implications of these paradoxes for our broader understanding of modern identity as simultaneously grounded and mobile. The book examines how tourism reveals the paradoxical ways that places are both mobile and rooted, real and fake, inhabited by those who are simultaneously insiders and outsiders, and both subjectively experienced and objectively viewed. This rich blend of empirical and theoretical analysis will be invaluable for cultural geographers, anthropologists, and sociologists of tourism.