Valene Smith, tourism, and the remapping of anthropological terrain

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Main author: Adams, Kathleen M.
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-41789
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description This article argues that Valene Smith’s contributions were fundamental for mapping out the terrain for what was envisioned as an ‘anthropology of tourism.’ As the first major collection of anthropological research on the topic of tourism, Smith’s 1977 volume Hosts and Guests offered a wide geographical range of ethnographically grounded studies of tourism, charted typologies, and chronicled tourism impacts, much as one would map a ‘field of ethnological study’. This article addresses the role of Smiths’s volume in legitimizing what had previously been an off-the-radar realm of anthropological study. It also traces one of the many legacies of Smith’s landmark volume: the blossoming of a realm of tourism studies oriented toward examining the politics, performance, and negotiation of identities (including ethnicity, gender, nationalism, and heritage) in and beyond encounters between ‘hosts’ and ‘guests.’ Finally, the article addresses Smith’s 2001 revised edition of the volume, Hosts and Guests Revisited, arguing that her essays in that volume presciently identified 21st-century realms of interest for tourism scholars, including space tourism, voluntourism, terrorism and tourism, and cyberspace.
format Journal Article
author Adams, Kathleen M.
author_facet Adams, Kathleen M.
authorStr Adams, Kathleen M.
author_letter Adams, Kathleen M.
title Valene Smith, tourism, and the remapping of anthropological terrain
publisher Taylor and Francis
publishDate 2024
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/41789/

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