Sociology of Travel and Tourism

Catalog description

This course examines the relationship between tourism and social life from a sociological perspective, the root idea being that it is natural for human beings to make contact with other human beings and societies to create leisure institutions to engage in cultural exchange and enjoyment. This course will examine tourist practices and how they are shaped and made meaningful within a social context. As we investigate why people travel, how they travel, and what they do while they are “on the road,” we will see that tourism is not on the margins of the social world, but rather profoundly interconnected with everyday social life, from the personal to the global. Through readings, discussing, and writing, we will explore the ways tourism is a material, symbolic, and political representation of many of the features of contemporary society’s achievements and ills: modernity and postmodernity, consumption and cultural commoditization, the aestheticization of everyday life, democratization and social inequalities, questions of authenticity, embodiment and identity, gender relations, technology, social mobility and power, and globalization.