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The Paradigmatic Tourist

Richard Ek (Department of Service Management and Service Studies, Lund University, Sweden)
Mekonnen Tesfahuney (Department of Geography, Media and Communication, Karlstad University, Sweden)

Tourism Research Paradigms: Critical and Emergent Knowledges

ISBN: 978-1-78350-929-4, eISBN: 978-1-78350-930-0

Publication date: 31 May 2016

Abstract

In the Western thought tradition, the tourist has not been a subject worthy of intellectual musings and philosophical deliberations. Indeed, the tourist has been portrayed in primarily derisive ways. Nietzsche’s remark, “Tourists—they climb mountains like animals, stupid and perspiring, no one has told them that there are beautiful views on the way,” epitomizes the dominant attitude. Why does the figure of the tourist elicit such negative reactions? Do the sentiments perhaps imply something else, or is the tourist a doppelgänger, not anomalous or marginal but normative—a paradigmatic figure? If so, then what can be said of the poetics and politics of the tourist conceptualized as a paradigmatic subject?

Keywords

Citation

Ek, R. and Tesfahuney, M. (2016), "The Paradigmatic Tourist", Tourism Research Paradigms: Critical and Emergent Knowledges (Tourism Social Science Series, Vol. 22), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 113-129. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1571-504320150000022013

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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