Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism

by Valene L. Smith (Editor)

Overview

Tourism—one of the world's largest industries—has long been appreciated for its economic benefits, but in this volume tourism receives a unique systematic scrutiny as a medium for cultural exchange. Modern developments in technology and industry, together with masterful advertising, have created temporarily leisured people with the desire and the means to travel. They often in turn effect profound cultural change in the places they visit, and the contributors to this work all attend to the impact these "guests" have on their "hosts."

In contrast to the dramatic economic transformations, the social repercussions of tourism are subtle and often recognized only by the indigenous peoples themselves and by the anthropologists who have studied them before and after the introduction of tourism. The case studies in Hosts and Guests examine the five types of tourism—historical, cultural, ethnic, environmental, and recreational—and their impact on diverse societies over a broad geographical range

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812208016
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	06/13/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Lexile:	1440L (what's this?)
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Valene L. Smith is Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Chico.

Editorial Reviews

"Provocative and theoretically stimulating."

AmericanAnthropologist

"A pioneering collection of 16 scholarly papers in the anthropology of tourism. . . . It has much to interest the casual reader. . . . A mirror of human behavior."

New York Times

"A pioneering collection of 16 scholarly papers in the anthropology of tourism. . . . It has much to interest the casual reader. . . . A mirror of human behavior."—New York Times

"Provocative and theoretically stimulating."—AmericanAnthropologist

From the Publisher