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Tourist gaze and beyond: state of the art

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Abstract

Purpose The tourist gaze remains a key concept in tourism research. The purpose of this paper is to comprehend the theoretical and empirical development of the tourist gaze notion and its contributions to tourism knowledge, identifying potential research directions by reviewing and analyzing articles that have defined, refined and applied the concept of the tourist gaze. Design/methodology/approach The study identified 109 relevant research papers primarily through the Web of Science and Scopus databases. Google Scholar, ResearchGate.net and Academia.edu were used to capturing additional work not indexed in the key databases. Qualitative content analysis was used to map the evolution of the concept, distinguish between different perspectives and identify gaps in the tourist gaze literature. Findings This “state of the art” paper on tourist gaze outlines Foucault’s original work on gaze and power, which underpins subsequent theorization within tourism. The study identifies how the tourist gaze operates in different contexts and circumstances allowing the development of gaze theory. Importantly, the evolution of the gaze theory is presented after analyzing the knowledge gaps, the contexts in which it was used, the methodologies with which it was applied. Based on the findings, the study proposes future works of gaze with the use of technology, science, nature and social media. Originality/value This paper is among one of the first states of the art papers in tourism literature that comprehensively analyzes the works on the tourist gaze, tracing its evolution and identifying future research directions to address gaps in existing knowledge.

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... Maoz (2006) introduced the concept of the mutual gaze to emphasize that gazes are interdependent; that is, attention from residents can affect visitors' actions. Scholars have expanded the scope of the tourist gaze to show that this interdependency relates to the power dynamics and mutual influence among hosts, guests, and other tourists (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021). Samarathunga et al. (2020) underscored the context-specificity of the tourist gaze, highlighting the sociocultural, political, and economic factors that shape it. ...
... Even though tourist gaze theory was established more than three decades ago, tourist risk gaze has received limited academic attention (Lin & Fu, 2021;Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021). Drawing on Urry's idea of the tourist gaze, this research integrated content analysis to explore the concept and elements of tourist risk gaze with eyetracking technology to provide visual evidence. ...
... Tourism risk and crisis management studies have conventionally relied on questionnaires, experiments, and scenarios with emphases on case studies, content analysis, and structural equation modeling (Ritchie & Jiang, 2019;Wut et al., 2021). Samarathunga and Cheng's (2021) review of tourist gaze studies showed that content analysis and thematic analysis were used to validate researchers' views. Given the principally visual nature of the tourist gaze and the tourist experience (Hollinshead, 1999;, an eyetracking approach based on visual attention is fitting. ...
Article
Gaze describes the experiential way that tourists perceive destinations during trips. Destination-related risks are inevitable in tourism; however, little attention has been given to the tourist gaze based on travel risk. Our research addresses this disparity by proposing and exploring the concept of tourist risk gaze. In Study 1, findings suggest that this type of gaze involves three interrelated aspects: risk information gaze, risky attraction gaze, and risky behavior gaze. In Study 2, we invited 50 Chinese university students to participate in an eye-tracking experiment to test tourist risk gaze. Participants displayed distinct visual attention patterns toward these three aspects when tourists encountered them during trips. This research offers a new lens through which to consider the tourist gaze and risk perception. It also introduces a novel eye-tracking method to analyze travel risk and the tourist gaze.
... A thorough review of past research suggests that tourism researchers have solely studied the gaze of a single gaze subject (i.e., tourists, local residents) or the gaze that take place at a certain stage of tourists' travel itinerary (Lin & Fu, 2020), ignoring the temporal dimensions of the gaze (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2020). Furthermore, most of previous studies have been conducted in the context where tourists have hierarchical and repressive gaze power over a destination. ...
... However, past research has been solely focused on the gaze of tourists in a specific stage of their travel (Yu & Xu, 2018;Aramberri & Liang, 2012), ignoring the temporal features in and stage-specific features of the construction of tourists' gaze. Furthermore, as suggested by a recent systematic review of gaze research (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2020), future research is urgently needed to explore the temporal dimensions of the tourist gaze, including how it forms, changes, or even decays under special circumstances. ...
... Following previous studies on tourist gaze (Li & Wang, 2020;Lin & Fu, 2020;Samarathunga & Cheng, 2020;Wassler & Schuckert, 2017) and considering the exploratory nature of this study (Aronson, 1994), qualitative methods were used to explore the gaze of Chinese tourists visiting North Korea. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, and interview texts were coded and analyzed through content analysis manually with the help of Nvivo 11, a content analysis software. ...
Article
Extant literature has rarely examined the temporal characteristics of tourist gaze in the context of a highly controlled destination. Guided by the gaze theory and studying Chinese tourists' gaze upon North Korea, this study aims to reveal the process of how tourists' gaze upon a highly controlled destination is organized and developed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and interview data was coded and analyzed. It is found that Chinese tourists' gaze represents a temporal process composed of three stages, each of which has the same structure of ‘gaze object-gaze strategy-gaze consequence.’ In a highly controlled destination, tourists respond with ‘obedience’ or ‘empowerment’ as their gaze strategies. The findings of this study contribute meaningfully to the gaze literature by presenting the temporal process and features of tourist gaze in a highly controlled destination.
... The e-mediated gaze (Robinson, 2014), the GoPro gaze (Vannini & Stewart, 2017), and the aeromobile gaze (Rink, 2017) form a fourth branch of studies (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021), the most recent one, building on the foundational studies of the tourist gaze (Urry, 1999), which, in turn, draw from Michel Foucault's (1926Foucault's ( -1984 gaze of power. It is noteworthy that the tourist gaze itself is in motion (Larsen, 2014), with constant renewals in the understanding of the gaze sought by tourists and how this gaze mediates tourists' experiences with places and fellow travelers, now calling for the development of the drone gaze, perhaps belonging to the same fourth branch (see Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021). ...
... The e-mediated gaze (Robinson, 2014), the GoPro gaze (Vannini & Stewart, 2017), and the aeromobile gaze (Rink, 2017) form a fourth branch of studies (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021), the most recent one, building on the foundational studies of the tourist gaze (Urry, 1999), which, in turn, draw from Michel Foucault's (1926Foucault's ( -1984 gaze of power. It is noteworthy that the tourist gaze itself is in motion (Larsen, 2014), with constant renewals in the understanding of the gaze sought by tourists and how this gaze mediates tourists' experiences with places and fellow travelers, now calling for the development of the drone gaze, perhaps belonging to the same fourth branch (see Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021). ...
Article
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... Photography serves as a channel for tourists to engage with and interpret their destinations, while also perpetuating stereotypes and shaping the tourist gaze, ultimately influencing how travelers perceive, experience, and document their journeys (Ritter, 2023). This process is further influenced by diverse factors, including tourists' motivations and expectations related to pleasure, excitement, recreation, spirituality, or education, which contribute to the formation of various perspectives (Lin and Fu, 2021;Samarathunga and Cheng, 2021;Snake-Beings, 2023;Urry, 1990). In this context, Urry and Larsen (2011) introduced the 'performance turn,' shifting the focus from tourism as a visual and static experience to one that emphasizes multisensory and dynamic engagement, involving sensations, emotions, and actions. ...
... Photography plays a significant role in capturing and representing this gaze, visually communicating what tourists find intriguing or attractive about a destination (Walsh et al., 2019). However, the interaction between the tourist gaze and photography raises critical questions about observation, representation, and cultural impact (Samarathunga and Cheng, 2021). Photography shapes and mediates the tourist gaze by allowing tourists to frame their surroundings through the camera lens, making choices about what to capture and what to leave out. ...
Article
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Photo-taking is frequently hailed as a powerful instrument for both consuming and constructing the tourist experience. This study, grounded in tourist gaze theory, aims to explore how foreign tourists create narratives and interpret rural landscapes in Iran through their photographic images. By analyzing visual representations shared on Flickr, a popular platform for travel photography, the research identifies key narratives that influence the construction and negotiation of the tourist gaze in these images. The findings offer new theoretical and practical insights into how visual storytelling shapes tourists' perceptions and narratives especially in the frequently underrepresented rural settings of the Global South.
... Entre os principais temas levantados estão: a construção de imagens turísticas (Pludwinski & Grimwood, 2021;Huang et al., 2022;Hermand, 2022); o turismo sombrio (Wight, 2020); o olhar do turista (Sarmadhikari, 2020;Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021); o desenvolvimento do turismo (Meekes et al., 2020;Altamirano, 2022;Sabatini, 2023); turismo e povos originários (Ampumuza et al., 2020); condições de trabalho na hotelaria (Johnson, 2020); patrimônio e identidade ( A heterotopia aparece nas experiências de acomodação peer-to-peer, considerando as percepções dos anfitriões e hóspedes do Airbnb (Farmaki, Stergiou & Christou, 2020); nas lojas de departamentos enquanto lugares de interação entre turismo e compras em Paris (Coëffé & Morice, 2020); em narrativas ficcionais que apresentam turistas como protagonistas (Parezanović, 2020); no espaço imaginativo criado em autofotografias (Brown, 2021); e na musealização de prisões (Ho, 2022). Farmaki et al. (2020) identificam e discutem as dimensões espaciais que distinguem o espaço de alojamento peerto-peer dos espaços de hospitalidade tradicionais, argumentando que o alojamento peer-to-peer representa um espaço intersticial dentro do sistema turístico que desencadeia uma reordenação de recursos, competências e significados. ...
... Choi (2020) As pesquisas com viés pós-estruturalista de inspiração foucaultiana, inicialmente, apresentaram um interesse sobre o olhar do turista (Sarmadhikari, 2020;Samarathunga, Cheng & Weerathunga, 2020;Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021) e a construção de imagens sobre os destinos (Pludwinski & Grimwood, 2021;Huang et al., 2022;Hermand, 2022) e foram se expandindo para outras questões, como a economia de compartilhamento, cujo maior exemplo é o Airbnb, que impacta a vida dos moradores e ultrapassa as regulações dos países (Farmaki et al., 2020;Armas-Díaz et al., 2021;Mody et al., 2020); o interesse turístico por lugares de tragédia, genocídio ou museus e prisões patrimonializados e festivais relacionados a morte, todos no chamado turismo sombrio, evidenciando novas relações entre os viventes e a tragédia, ora refletida, ora espetacularizada (Wight, 2020;Ho, 2022;Holden, 2023); as relações entre o discurso e o desenvolvimento do turismo, capaz de desencadear mudanças estruturais na sociedade e processos de intervenção, fiscalização e formalização (Meekes et al., 2020;Altamirano, 2022;Sabatini, 2023); a turismofobia, cujo maior exemplo vem de Barcelona (Ramos & Mundet, 2020;González-Reverté & Soliguer-Guix, 2022); e as condições de trabalho no turismo e na hotelaria, seja no questionamento do papel do discurso na formação/qualificação do sujeito, seja nas relações de poder nos locais de trabalho (Johnson, 2020;Yıldırım, 2021). ...
Article
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Este artigo tem por objetivo compreender a perspectiva pós-estruturalista de inspiração foucaultiana na pesquisa em turismo. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualiquantitativa de nível exploratório-descritivo. O método de coleta de dados utilizado foi a bibliometria, realizada nas bases de dados Scopus, Web of Science e Science Direct, a partir da busca pelos termos “Foucault” e “Foucauldian” combinadas ao termo “Tourism” em títulos, resumos e palavras-chave de artigos completos. Como resultados, foram levantados 99 artigos, publicados entre os anos de 1999 e 2023. A partir desse recorte foram identificados 158 autores. As palavras-chave mais utilizadas nos artigos levantados são: Foucault, Tourism e Discourse. Para o aprofundamento dos temas, foram selecionados os artigos publicados entre os anos de 2020 e 2023, totalizando 35 trabalhos. Nestes artigos, o turismo é discutido a partir dos conceitos foucaultianos discurso, heterotopia, relações de poder, biopoder/biopolítica, governamentalidade e ética, evidenciando temas emergentes na área do turismo que materializam preocupações e discussões da pós-modernidade, entre as quais: o olhar do turista; a economia de compartilhamento; o turismo sombrio; a turismofobia; as condições de trabalho no turismo e na hotelaria; turismo e povos originários; relações entre o lazer e o uso dos smartphones; e relações de gênero no turismo.
... The e-mediated gaze (Robinson, 2014), the GoPro gaze (Vannini & Stewart, 2017), and the aeromobile gaze (Rink, 2017) form a fourth branch of studies (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021), the most recent one, building on the foundational studies of the tourist gaze (Urry, 1999), which, in turn, draw from Michel Foucault's (1926Foucault's ( -1984 gaze of power. It is noteworthy that the tourist gaze itself is in motion (Larsen, 2014), with constant renewals in the understanding of the gaze sought by tourists and how this gaze mediates tourists' experiences with places and fellow travelers, now calling for the development of the drone gaze, perhaps belonging to the same fourth branch (see Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021). ...
... The e-mediated gaze (Robinson, 2014), the GoPro gaze (Vannini & Stewart, 2017), and the aeromobile gaze (Rink, 2017) form a fourth branch of studies (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021), the most recent one, building on the foundational studies of the tourist gaze (Urry, 1999), which, in turn, draw from Michel Foucault's (1926Foucault's ( -1984 gaze of power. It is noteworthy that the tourist gaze itself is in motion (Larsen, 2014), with constant renewals in the understanding of the gaze sought by tourists and how this gaze mediates tourists' experiences with places and fellow travelers, now calling for the development of the drone gaze, perhaps belonging to the same fourth branch (see Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021). ...
Article
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A tecnologia dos drones introduz novas imagens na experiência turística contemporânea. Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo explorar a relação entre a paisagem e a autorrepresentação dos fotógrafos, mediada pelo olhar drone, especificamente as dronies (selfies com drones). Este artigo é conceitual e empírico, adotando uma abordagem predominantemente exploratória e qualitativa. O corpus compreendeu o universo de fotografias no site especializado Skypixel com a hashtag #dronies e seus respectivos metadados. Não é de surpreender que, em termos de características da paisagem, o ambiente mais comum seja o campo. Este estudo analisa fotografias turísticas inspirando-se nas teorias semióticas de Roland Barthes. O revezamento entre fotografia e legenda predomina. O studium é mais comum do que imagens pungentes; o primeiro pode revelar a intencionalidade do fotógrafo em tornar as paisagens um espetáculo. A análise de emoções também aponta para sentimentos positivos entre os espectadores. Nas dronies ocorre uma justaposição entre a autorrepresentação dos turistas e as características da paisagem, no interstício do qual emerge o conceito de olhar drone. Esse olhar é uma proposta nossa. Embora resultante de uma combinação de teorizações anteriores, tal olhar é distinto por incluir mobilidade e compartilhamento online como fatores relevantes desde o início. Também podemos observar tanto rupturas quanto continuidades com selfies convencionais.
... A teoria do OT, na sua formulação original, propõe a investigação do consumo visual de um destino ou atrativo a partir de um senso de superioridade por parte do turista (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021), ainda que este falhe ao reconhecer tal característica (MacCannell, 2001). Já na teorização original (Urry, 1996), há um OT romântico -marcado pela visualização solitária, pela imersão e pela admiração, envolvendo a atribuição de um sentido de aura à paisagem (Urry, 1999) -e, em contraposição, o OT coletivo -atividade de grupo, a partir de encontros compartilhados, voltando o olhar para o familiar (Urry, 1999). ...
... Contudo, são hoje ampliados para a sinestesia e propriocepção [senso de movimento], e o vestibular [senso de equilíbrio], dentre outros. Apesar de reveses, retextualizações, e a partir de pluralizações, a noção do OT segue sendo abordada em trabalhos publicados em periódicos relevantes, mesmo já tendo passado mais de trinta anos (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2021), sendo inclusive recentemente empiricamente desenvolvido (Cilkin & Cizel, 2022), como elemento demarcador dos encontros turísticos, de caráter estético e performático (Kunz, 2021). ...
Article
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Com grande influência desde a origem, até os dias atuais, a teoria do olhar do turista (OT) logo suscitou questionamentos pautados nas limitações do ocular-centrismo ocidental na compreensão da experiência turística. Uma das respostas foi a introdução da ideia de “performances” e/ou performatividades, reposicionando o corporeidade dos sujeitos na investigação em Turismo. Nesse contexto, o objetivo do trabalho conceitual é revisitar as performatividades (e/ou a Performance) como dispositivos analítico-conceituais para o estudo das mobilidades turísticas (MTs). Para tal, faz retrospecto das formulações em performances turísticas, em linha com o paradigma das novas mobilidades (PNM), e a partir de conceitos ou ideias correlatas, em língua Anglo-saxã. O empreendimento é transdisciplinar, visto que os autores utilizados transitam por campos/ciências sociais diversas. Trata-se de artigo que repercute e analisa corpo de produção estrangeira, a fim de disseminá-la e problematizá-la ao campo dos Estudos Turísticos no Brasil, em particular, e países ibero-americanos, em geral.
... An absence of a clear, unique definition has, nonetheless, proliferated interpretations of this notion (Samarathunga and Cheng, 2020). Various scholars have nonetheless gone onto interpret the tourist gaze concept differently according to their own research agenda. ...
... The keywords for on-line searching were predominantly "Chinese tourist gaze" and "tourist gaze in China". Because, as aforementioned, photographic performance is an integral part of the tourist gaze (Samarathunga and Cheng, 2020), the terms "Chinese tourist photography" and "tourist photography in China" were also employed. Moreover, during the searching process it was found that "Chinese tourist gaze" was uncritically interchangeable with "Chinese tourist visual experience" and "Chinese tourist perception" in some samples' titles (perhaps, because the tourist gaze is inclusive of both sensation and cognition , two processes equally fashioned in experience and perception in human geography (Rodaway, 1994)). ...
Article
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This article reconsiders Chinese tourist gaze studies, examining the extent to which extant studies and theoretical models relating to the Chinese tourist gaze have overcome the Eurocentric limits of John Urry’s concept of the tourist gaze and elaborated the complexity of Chinese tourists’ gazes and visual practices. Content analysis is carried out, examining research articles, books, book chapters and PhD and MSc theses collected from multiple English and Chinese databases. The research results manifest that, overall, the previous studies, mobilise cultural essentialism, with an overestimation of the ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese tourists’ behavioural patterns, which are widely believed to be framed by, but also constituting of, unique Chinese culture. Overdependence on Chinese cultural values and traditional philosophies as sources for rationale has resulted in a handful of theoretical frameworks, which appear to be of insufficient magnitude in terms both of their contribution to the original tourist gaze model, and in their manifesting of the complexity of Chinese tourists’ visual behaviour. Indeed the divide that once deliberately set apart West and East, or more precisely Western and Chinese tourist gazes, seems to become accentuated in most attempts to study and write about Chinese tourist gaze(s). The previous studies thus largely serve to mirror the Eurocentrism of Urry’s gaze, rather than challenging it. Despite not aiming to reconceptualise the Chinese tourist gaze, this review article contributes to the field of tourist gaze studies by engaging critically with the bias and theoretical insufficiencies that have emerged, while this concept is appropriated and re-formulated to explain Chinese tourists’ gazes and visual practices. On this basis, we suggest a critical redirection of the extant Chinese tourist gaze studies, which would be rather significant to those researchers in future with an interest to research what the Chinese tourists prefer to see in travel and how they engage with the gazee. This study has a few limitations, especially, as we only review and analyse the studies of the Chinese tourist gaze. It means that our conclusion might not well be generalised to either the investigation of the tourist gaze in another culture or the Chinese tourist studies, at large, which might exhibit a different pattern deserving more academic attention in future. Moreover, we recommend the future researchers, who are eager to probe Chinese tourists’ behavioural pattern, to seek for new pathways and alternative paradigms, which would be useful in overcoming the limits of cultural representations, and in reducing the problematic Sino-Western divide.
... This is an upgrade of the "tourist gaze" approaches of Urry and Larsen (2011) and Urry (1992a, 1992b, 2001, that essentially reduced tourism to visual experiences. Aside from the importance of the contribution of Urry's studies on the issue, several authors have criticized his proposal, highlighting that important aspects have been neglected, such as the active use of space, interactions kept, the importance of the senses (vision is not the only dominant sense) on multisensory tourism experiences and geographic features, such as topography, accessibility, and also sound, smell and taste (Samarathunga, and Cheng 2021;Shono, Fisher, and McIntosh 2006;Thompson et al. 2016). ...
Chapter
Pilgrimage has been increasingly becoming more visible in tourism research, together with its contribution to territorial development. This research deals with the human five senses in the context of pilgrimage on the Portuguese St. James Way. Looking to the specific landscape of this route and seeking to understand the association between the human senses and pilgrimage, this research analyzes the elements that stand out along the millenary route. It follows a qualitative approach, based on 22 variables, highlighting the main realities contained in the landscape, complemented by some narratives from the pilgrims. The main results achieved tell us that the Portuguese St. James Way can be characterized as diverse, changing constantly between abundant green and urban/artificialized areas. Vision is the most intense sense to be experienced, contrary to smell. The gaps identified are relevant for local/regional actors, contributing to a better plan and management of the route.
... Höckert et al. (2018) propose a paradigm shift towards relational ethics, emphasizing a departure from the conventional tourist gaze and a focus on the observed individual. Conversely, Samarathunga et al. (2021) underscore the continued importance of the tourist gaze within tourism research, indicating its enduring relevance. Furthermore, Shekari et al. (2022) shed light on the intricate dimensions of the literary gaze, unravelling factors such as sensory experiences, affective elements, cognitive processes, behavioural dynamics, and relational aspects. ...
Article
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This literature review examines the overlooked experiences of Muslim tourists in particular women within tourism studies, focusing on their perspectives through the "tourist gaze." It explores the cultural, religious, and gendered encounters of Muslim women in tourism, addressing the challenges and opportunities influenced by their beliefs and contexts. Despite their increasing presence, there's a lack of comprehensive understanding of how Muslim women perceive tourist spaces. Employing a systematic approach, the review synthesizes existing literature, using keywords to identify relevant studies and applying stringent criteria for selection. Through rigorous analysis, key themes emerge, including religious observance, cultural identity, gender roles, empowerment, and challenges. The review sheds light on how Muslim women's gaze is shaped by faith, cultural practices, and societal expectations, influencing their interactions with tourist destinations and other tourists.
... The tourist gaze 3.0 repositions the tourist gaze as performative and embodied practices, influenced by the cultural styles and personal experiences of the tourist (by the tourist's class, age, gender and ethnicity), as well as circulating images and texts of the object of the gaze (Urry & Larsen, 2011b). Samarathunga and Cheng (2021) concluded that the tourist gaze (and associated gaze concepts) can contribute to the continued development of tourism theory, particularly with respect to issues associated with "host-guest encounters, tourism planning, destination images, sustainability issues, and other sociocultural, environmental and economic concerns" (p. 352). ...
Article
The recent closure of the Uluru climb marked a pivotal moment in Australia's tourism history. Uluru in the Northern Territory has long been a contested symbolic tourist site subject to competing narratives of its significance as a tourist icon and Aboriginal cultural landscape. This study examines tourist responses to the climb closure through a netnographic analysis of TripAdvsior content. The findings uncover enduring tensions in tourist perceptions and behaviours in relation to the climb closure. This research highlights the dynamic nature of the tourist gaze upon contested sites, such as Uluru. We conclude that despite ongoing contestation, the climb closure signifies broader societal shift towards respecting Aboriginal perspectives in tourism decision-making.
... These definitions may vary, and there is an ongoing need to discuss and examine different definitions to ensure the validity of research conducted. This is also true of other concepts used in tourism, such as subjective well-being (Liang et al., 2020), the gaze (Samarathunga and Cheng, 2020;Urry, 1990;Zheng et al., 2021), flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990;deMatos et al., 2021) and place attachment (Ramkissoon et al., 2013). It is recommended that researchers critically examine the concepts they use and their definitions as a basis for applying theories from other disciplines into tourism. ...
Article
Purpose Authenticity has been studied from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, leading to a rich but confused literature. This study, a review, aims to compare the psychology and sociology/tourism definitions of authenticity to clarify the concept. From a psychological perspective, authenticity is a mental appraisal of an object or experience as valued leading to feelings and summative judgements (such as satisfaction or perceived value). In objective authenticity, a person values the object due to belief in an expert’s opinion, constructive authenticity relies on socially constructed values, while existential authenticity is based on one’s self-identity. The resultant achievement of a valued goal, such as seeing a valued object, leads to feelings of pleasure. Sociological definitions are similar but based on different theoretical antecedent causes of constructed and existential authenticity. The paper further discusses the use of theory in tourism and the project to develop tourism as a discipline. This project is considered unlikely to be successful and in turn, as argued, it is more useful to apply theory from other disciplines in a multidisciplinary manner. The results emphasise that it is necessary for tourism researchers to understand the origins and development of the concepts they use and their various definitions.
... Tourismas a cultural phenomenon and industrylargely revolves around gazing at, visiting, and encountering a human and non-human 'otherness'; such encounters carry a gaze from both sides. While the human gaze has been largely explored (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2020), mainly as tourist gaze (Urry, 1990;Urry & Larsen, 2011), host gaze (Moufakkir, 2011;Moufakkir & Reisinger, 2012), and the mutual gaze between both (Maoz, 2006), the animal gaze has remained uncharted together with the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of this absence. Hence, a critical reflection on the animal gaze is needed to update critical tourism studies by challenging the uneven relationship between humans and animals and their gazes. ...
... Influenced by Michel Foucault's ideology, British scholar John Urry first proposed the concept of 'tourist gaze' in 1990 (Urry 1990) [16], and then developed the theory of tourist gaze. As an important research and analysis tool, 'gaze' has been paid more and more attention, and many researches have been carried out by tourism scholars from multi-perspective (Samarathunga 2020, Jane 2021, Kunasegaran, Rasoolimanesh, and Khan 2020) [7,8,13]. 'Cognition' is a process in which the learners recognize, distinguish and understand things (Meade 2013) [12]. As you can see, cognitive theory covers a wide range of topics, including perception, attention, memory, language, developmental psychology, imagination, thinking, and artificial intelligence. ...
... It is a conception that Urry draws from Foucault's concept of gaze in the context of medicine. The concept of the "tourist gaze" can be used to analyze the experiences and perceptions of tourists during tourism [19] and reveal the conceptualization of the relationship between different places [27]. Similarly, photography is the materialized embodiment of the tourist gaze. ...
Article
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The tourists gaze can deeply trigger the most real thoughts and feelings in tourists’ hearts. The sense of place of Heritage Conservation Districts (HCDs) under the tourist gaze takes a mental perception of tourists’ feeling and is an important factor in the connection between values protection and development. Famous heritage districts function as important signs, causing the formation of mental images and an emotional sense of belonging to the place in tourists. The present research aims to determine a suitable methodology for recognizing the sense of place of HCDs under the tourist gaze. This study used image-based interviews through the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) and examined sense of place factors in the Shichahai HCD of Beijing. The result shows that the sense of place in the Shichahai HCD consists of three important factors, the physical environment, immaterial environment, and activity experience. We tested these factors as determinants in a sense of place model of tourist selection and emotional state during travel, exhibiting substantial explanatory potential. This study supports the idea that the sense of place of the Shichahai HCD under the tourist gaze can be re-made, and provides novel methods for evaluating the value of HCDs.
... It is thrilling just watching the fans. This is known as intra-gaze theory (Samarathunga and Cheng, 2021 35. Sunderland is not an overtourism city (Koens et al., 2018) in fact the opposite is true. ...
... A critical review of the tourist gaze literature reveals that out of the multi-faced gaze, host-guest encounters are more dominant (Lin & Fu, 2020); Nevertheless, several studies have identified the absence of domestic institutions that significantly affect the tourist gaze (Gillespie, 2006;Moufakkir, 2011). Notably, some scholars escape discussions about the cultural preservation and improvement of cultural values due to tourism gaze (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2020). This is an important perspective to explore in that it positions a unique element of the tourism destination's ethnic enclaves, as a product that has the potential to be commoditized from tourist gaze if properly monitored through institutions that have the touree's best interest. ...
Article
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore heritage tourism within the framework of ethnic identity by examining tourism as a tool for promoting ethnic identity and traditions of the Maroons in Jamaica. Methods: Qualitative research using in-depth interviews was used to collect relevant data. The findings were analyzed using the deductive thematic analysis approach and discussed within the theoretical framework of ethnic identity. Results: A major deduction of the study is that there are factors that either hinder or promote the Maroon’s identity and traditions. The study concludes that the Maroon’s ethnic identity can be promoted through ethnic tourism which is a form of heritage tourism. This form of tourism facilitates the showcasing of their traditions which is consequently passed on to the younger generation for posterity. Implications: The findings will be very resourceful to the Maroon communities in Jamaica and across the Caribbean, especially in terms of best practices in preserving their heritage and ethnic identity. It will also inform government and other tourism stakeholders as to their role in providing the necessary resources to enable the preservation of the Maroon’s ethnic identity and traditions.
... A critical review of the tourist gaze literature reveals that out of the multi-faced gaze, host-guest encounters are more dominant (Lin & Fu, 2020); Nevertheless, several studies have identified the absence of domestic institutions that significantly affect the tourist gaze (Gillespie, 2006;Moufakkir, 2011). Notably, some scholars escape discussions about the cultural preservation and improvement of cultural values due to tourism gaze (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2020). This is an important perspective to explore in that it positions a unique element of the tourism destination's ethnic enclaves, as a product that has the potential to be commoditized from tourist gaze if properly monitored through institutions that have the touree's best interest. ...
... Based on the literary gap that there are no studies conducted on tourist gaze in non-western spheres (Samarathunga & Cheng, 2020), this paper structured as a theoretical review to investigate the two ontological paradigms between tourist gaze and the Buddhist view of avidyā. This review then attempts to make a theoretical deconstruction of the idea of existing tourist gaze 105 Faculty of Management Studies, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka in order to redefine it. ...
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This theoretical review argues that the western tourist gaze can be deconstructed through the Buddhist ontology of avidyā and prajnā. If Buddhism is about discovering the truth of 'self' (end of self and everyday ego) in which emptiness in life is enveloped in a fictional darkness of ignorance (avidyā), its ontology unfolds to overcome that emptiness and to bring in awareness about the illusion that covers the above truth (prajnā). When the ordinary consciousness is based on the sensory perception of subject-object dichotomy, the foundation of the western way of looking at a phenomenon becomes incomplete, since such experience, according to Buddhist ontology, belongs to a cosmic illusion that disturbs prajnā (true wisdom). 'The knowing of not-knowing' (prajnā) and understanding the emptiness of ego are the true Buddhist home grounds of 'being' rather than 'becoming'. In this context, with the philosophical insights advanced by the Kyoto School of Thoughts, this paper articulates that the western gaze in the discovery of the outer world can become meaningless. Hence, the western tourist gaze that seeks pleasure or leisure or even newness would be futile as it leads to avidya, the manifestation of the ego. The conclusion is that 'the union of the seer and the seen' gets deconstructed when the individual deeply realizes the fundamental nothingness that creates the above subjective-objective illusion (avidyā)-the foundation of the western tourist gaze. Reaching the Buddhist metaphysical assumption of sûnyatâ (zero or permanent void), where the ego is dissolved is only possible when one realizes that nothingness is the thread that ties both subject (tourist) and object (site) together.
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Photo-taking is frequently hailed as a powerful instrument for both consuming and constructing the tourist experience. This study, grounded in tourist gaze theory, aims to explore how foreign tourists create narratives and interpret rural landscapes in Iran through their photographic images. By analyzing visual representations shared on Flickr, a popular platform for travel photography, the research identifies key narratives that influence the construction and negotiation of the tourist gaze in these images. The findings offer new theoretical and practical insights into how visual storytelling shapes tourists' perceptions and narratives especially in the frequently underrepresented rural settings of the Global South.
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This article examines food tourism events in permanent tourist-oriented food venues, focusing on Greek tavernes. Drawing on ethnographic research in Greece since 2010, we explore how tourists' expectations and sensory experiences in food events influence culinary heritage and social sustainability. We employ Urry's “tourist gaze” concept, integrating it with a comprehensive analytical framework addressing tourists' and local attendees' sensory experiences in daily food events at culturally significant institutions like Greek Tavernes. Our study illuminates the dominance of tourists' expectations, preconceived imaginaries, and sensory engagements, revealing potential challenges to sustained cultural traditions and culinary heritage. While the “tourist gaze” may perpetuate static cultural dynamics, we identify “tourist (and resident) taste” as a counter-mechanism. Our findings reveal that Greek tavernes, catering to tourist expectations and evolving local taste preferences, strike a delicate balance, enhancing eventful and multisensorial experiences to preserve and develop culinary heritage and social sustainability.
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Beaches are public spaces for people to relax and enjoy the sea, sand, and sun. In this context, beach clubs market beach essentials and luxuries such as ambiance, delicate food, and live entertainment in a safe environment. However, certain elite beach clubs in Çeşme have adopted selective entry policies, applying criteria such as dress code, social media followers, and car brand, raising concerns about socioeconomic accessibility and inclusivity in these ostensibly public spaces. This study investigates these selective admission practices and their reflections, based on customer perspectives that fuel the popularity of these venues. Through the analysis of Google Maps online reviews, we aim to gain insight into these admission practices and understand the perspective of customers during the experience that causes high demand for these clubs. The thematic analysis revealed a relationship between customer expenditure and favorable entrance experiences; guests with lesser spending reported dissatisfaction and reluctance to revisit. We examined eight beach clubs with ratings deviating from the weighted average to ensure diverse representation. Our findings are intended to encourage action and guide the creation of more equitable, welcoming environments in beach clubs, both in Çeşme and beyond. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Pierre Bourdieu's social theory and John Urry's "tourist gaze," this paper outlines the socio-economic barriers that distort ideals of public space and leisure and invites a reassessment of inclusivity in tourist destinations.
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This thought-provoking conceptual research pioneers the conceptualization of sense of place (SOP) in tourism within a metaverse paradigm, where the convergence of real and digital realms compels us to reframe our understanding of tourism destinations. Built upon three major perspectives, corresponding paradigm shifts have been proposed: (1) SOP as an individual's cognition of a tourism destination: from multimodal–socio-psychological to embodied–augmented; (2) SOP as the interconnection between an individual and a destination: from a person-to-place bond to a multiple person–place unity; and (3) SOP as modalities that communicate meanings of a destination: from narratology (stories) to dramaturgy (plays). This study aims to catalyze further research that re-examine established assumptions and conceptualizations of tourism-related constructs, given the ever-evolving technological landscape.
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This study examines how diaspora tourists' secondary and primary image of their ancestral home is constructed and how the tourist gaze is implied within. The study focuses on the Hokkien Chinese diaspora travelling to their ancestral hometown of Quanzhou, China. 58 foreign-born Hokkien Chinese participants were interviewed. A thematic analysis of the transcripts revealed the significant influence of the collective and romantic gaze in forming both secondary and primary images of Quanzhou. Visiting Quanzhou emerges as a strategy for survival, maintaining cultural connectivity and fostering transnational mobility. The significance of homecoming visits organised by families and diaspora organisations as catalysts for cultural, educational, social, and business mobility are discussed, highlighting the importance of incorporating the diaspora's transnational experiences into heritage tourism studies. Insights into how the Hokkien Chinese diaspora's cultural heritage and transnational connections to their host communities in Quanzhou are essential in constructing the diasporic destination image are provided.
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Tourism as a right was officially stated in the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism (1999) and it would be granted normative status once the Framework Convention on Tourism Ethics (2020) is legally binding. As such, the importance of the rights discourse in tourism has been largely acknowledged and its status is increasingly being reinforced. The rights discourse of tourism is particularly important as the world is facing at the Fourth industrial revolution, which can lead to a societal transformation like previous industrial revolutions. However, the position of tourism as a right has still been confronted with an ambivalent conjuncture and it still requires the relevant etudes to provide diverse perspectives for its justification or its discursive construction within a philosophical approach. By applying a Foucauldian discourse analysis for a close reading of international statements and demonstrating the relevance and applicability of biopolitics to the rights discourse in tourism, this article argues that a fuller understanding of the discourses and arguments made regarding a right to tourism is possible through a deeper consideration of biopolitics and that its legitimation needs to take place within the realm of biopolitical production.
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This research focuses on exploring the cognitive and affective perceptions of Hokkien ethnic Chinese born abroad visiting their hometown, Quanzhou, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The study examines the interplay between the collective gaze, affective, and cognitive perceptions of diaspora visitors who visit Quanzhou to reclaim their cultural identity and explore new opportunities. The analysis was conducted using a combination of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis and natural language processing techniques for sentiment analysis, based on 44 tourist interviews and 10 local key informant interviews. The results suggest that the primary image formed after the visit has a significant effect on the affective image, and the affective attribute has a significant impact on the collective gaze and overall perceived image of diaspora visitors. These findings have important implications for destination image marketing and the sustainability of diaspora tourism.
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Purpose Considering the diversity of literary sites, various needs and motivations of literary visitors, and the limited research on literary tourists’ experiences, this study aims to explore the literary gaze at Hafez Tomb in Shiraz, Iran. As the visitor gaze encompasses various dimensions of experience, this study connected the two notions to identify the components of the literary gaze and determine the attributes that best describe it. Design/methodology/approach Data sources include semi-structured interviews with visitors and user-generated content on Tripadvisor. The deductive thematic analysis and multiple correspondence analysis were used. Findings The findings revealed the multidimensionality of the literary gaze. The dominant factors that best describe the literary gaze at Hafez’s tomb were the sensory component of the experience, including “seeing”, “smelling”, “hearing”; affective including “anticipation”, “joy”, “trust”; cognitive including “perceiving”, “thinking”, “learning”; behavioural including “literary related”, “general”; and relationship including “tourist-companion”, “tourist-tourist”. Practical implications Understanding the literary gaze can assist site managers and destination marketers in designing the literary experience and developing promotional strategies that reflect the multifaceted nature of the literary experience. Tourism authorities should identify and shape tourists’ perceptions of literary sites to build the city’s image and brand as a literary city. Originality/value This paper used the orchestra model of experience to analyse the literary tourist’s gaze. This modification could explain that the literary gaze has multiple dimensions and studying all the dimensions gives the literary experience greater significance.
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Even as the global tourism industry has begun to recover, the evolving COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact how tourism experiences are offered and consumed. This article contributes to the literature by illuminating how power operates around and through interactions in the experience co-creation, particularly in the time of COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on the way tourism experiences have been co-created and influenced by what has been termed the ‘new normal’ for the tourism industry since the start of the pandemic. This article examined the impact of the pandemic on tourism experience co-creation on-site through exploring the construction and negotiation of the ‘pandemic gazes’ of hosts and tourists in a cultural tourism village on the Indonesian island destination of Belitung. Our findings identified 4 factors, namely Pandemic fatigue, Safe zone, Setting Impracticality and Convivial relations , which influenced how hosts and tourists (re)adjusted their pandemic gazes during their interactions in the experience co-creation process.
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This study applied the concept of the ‘tourist gaze’ to investigate tourists' perceptions of slum tourism in Asia's largest slum community, Dharavi, India, using 458 reviews collected from the travel comparison website, TripAdvisor. In this study the application of the tourist gaze concept has been extended by exploring the functions of tourist gaze in the context of slum tourism. It was found that tourists tended to gaze upon the local environment (natural, socio-cultural, and economic environment) and residents (residents' spirit, residents' life, and local tour guides) during their visits. The study further demonstrated that tourists' perceptions of slums and their attitudes towards life, changed after gazing upon slum destinations. Theoretically, a model of the slum tourism travel experience has been developed, based on the findings of this study. Practically, this study offers suggestions for slum tourism operators, to better improve slum tourism from the perspective of tourists.
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Purpose The Tourist Gaze has been debated, reimagined and applied to a variety of actors and settings. This paper helps investigate how contemporary architecture operates as subject and participant in gazing practices. Design/methodology/approach Using Yelp reviews of art museums in a regional US city, a thematic analysis of text reviews and image uploads was conducted. Findings Reviewers do refer to buildings as objects of the gaze; but they also connect their experience of the building to emotions and to actions and use the building to orient themselves spatially. This article demonstrates that contemporary buildings are important components of tourist experiences as objects of the gaze, but also as frames for gazing and as stages for tourist practices. Research limitations/implications The research implications are both topical and methodological: the paper demonstrates that contemporary (neo-modern) architecture is a vibrant avenue of research, and that social networking sites are a promising potential source of data for studying architecture in the social field. Originality/value This research uses an underexplored data set, Yelp reviews, to capture what people pay attention to and think others will find interesting about architecture. It also adds important layers to studies on the tourist gaze. First, it emphasizes that architecture is important to tourists not only as an object of the gaze but also as a site for affective experience, action and daily life. Second, it addresses some building styles beyond the historical ones that are foundational to the idea of the tourist gaze.
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Purpose This paper aims to study the influence of gender on the theoretical and empirical relationships between tourists’ risk perceptions and both destination image and behavioural intentions. Design/methodology/approach An empirical study was carried out with potential tourists at home in Germany and the UK considering travelling to Spain, Egypt, Morocco, Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling with multi-group analysis. Findings Results show that gender moderates the theoretical relationships between risk perception and both destination image and behavioural intentions. Risk perception is higher for women than for men and depends on the type of risks and the characteristics of the destination. Women are more likely than men to reduce their visit to a destination whenever there is an increase in their risk perceptions. However, the influence of risk perception on destination image is higher for men than for women. Thus, results prove there are significant gender differences in the theoretical relationships between risk perceptions and destination image and visiting intentions. Originality/value This paper provides new evidence on the gender differences in risk perceptions in tourism and their impact on destination image and visiting intentions, showing that whenever there are higher risks at a tourist destination women do change more than men their behavioural intentions. The results are useful for designing risk management and promotion policies at destinations that avoid the masculinisation bias, thereby considering the impact of gender differences on travel behaviour and consumption decisions.
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The making of Micro-district II, a digital film made by the author in the edgelands of Tbilisi, Georgia, is used as a vehicle for exploring the tourist gaze and the observer’s paradox amongst ethnographic filmmaking methods and documentary modes of observation. The observer’s paradox describes how the receiver of the gaze may become influenced through the processes of being observed, altering the quality of observing ‘naturalistic’ events. The tourist gaze is a similarly two-way process where the pursuit of the authentic is negotiated or constructed according to the type of gaze encountered. Whilst this article is more about the observation of urban landscapes, architecture and street ephemera, than human subjects, the mode of observation and the gaze play a vital role in the author’s personalised accounts of ways of ‘avoiding the gaze’ and getting to what is perceived as filming an ‘authentic’ experience of the ex-soviet micro-districts of Tbilisi. Through a process of autoethnography the author examines ways of avoiding the tourist gaze including navigating the streets, filmmaking techniques and by experimenting with documentary styles of realism. Drawing on the field notes of the author/filmmaker, the problematic quest for the ‘authentic’ and ‘naturalistic’ experience of the tourist are discussed, in terms of the complex elements which determine the constructive gaze, with a conclusion that suggests the impossibility of avoiding the tourist gaze.
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The tourist gaze is a key concept in tourism literature. It explains a wide range of concepts including tourists’ visual consumption of a destination to tourists’ experience and performing at a destination. Although the tourist gaze is based on Michel Foucault’s power discourse, the gaze theory is now conceptualized on fragmented concepts including sociology, anthropology, technology, gender studies, nature, and science. Due to its distinct nature, the tourist gaze could be applied in different contexts to deliver different results. Therefore, tourist gaze could vary according to different demographics including age, gender, education, and complex social factors including politics, economy, geographical boundaries. Few empirical contributions of the tourist gaze involve city planning, destination branding, and product development. Few key concepts of tourist gaze are mutual gaze, host gaze, local gaze, reverse gaze, and intra-tourist gaze.
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This study explores how Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism is constructed in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, a postwar reunified state, through postwar travels. Sri Lankan government and the military forces have recreated Buddhist temples and monuments that were destroyed in the war and have reintroduced Buddhist signs and symbols. Thus, Sinhalese Buddhists visiting Jaffna gaze upon the region with a sense of ownership fueled by the triumphalism. This study adopts Michel Foucault's discourse on power to reach its objectives and employs discourse analysis and ethnographic analysis to analyze the descriptive data. The study finds that the Sinhalese Buddhist Gaze in Jaffna is abstracted as omnipresent in a tripartite system extracted from ancient Sinhalese Buddhist notions: Rata (country), Jathiya (ethnicity), and Aagama (religion).
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Transformational tourism is about a change in thinking and behaviour through travel and tourism. In contrast to the first volume which focuses on tourist perspectives, this second volume focuses on host community perspectives of transformational tourism. This volume shows that through the tourist-host relationships, interacting with other people and learning about other places, host communities can critically reflect on life, and shift the course of their knowledge and the meaning perspective. By experiencing tourism and tourists, host communities can generate new thoughts and ideas, create new meanings, change their social, cultural, political and environmental beliefs and, most importantly, move towards new values of openness, tolerance, sharing, empathy, compassion, justice and peace, unity and oneness, and service to others. This volume contains 14 chapters. Most of the chapters concentrate on a particular type of host experience and report on research studies conducted in various parts of the world. The volume is aimed at tourism students and academics in business and non-business schools. Studies presented in this volume are also likely to appeal to tourism businesses because they show what tourism products should be developed in order for the host communities to grow and the industry to be successful. In addition, this volume is aimed at students, academics and professionals from other disciplines that deal with human development and behavioural changes.
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This study explores how Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism is constructed in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, a postwar reunified state, through postwar travels. Sri Lankan government and the military forces have recreated Buddhist temples and monuments that were destroyed in the war and have reintroduced Buddhist signs and symbols. Thus, Sinhalese Buddhists visiting Jaffna gaze upon the region with a sense of ownership fueled by the triumphalism. This study adopts Michel Foucault's discourse on power to reach its objectives and employs discourse analysis and ethnographic analysis to analyze the descriptive data. The study finds that the Sinhalese Buddhist Gaze in Jaffna is abstracted as omnipresent in a tripartite system extracted from ancient Sinhalese Buddhist notions: Rata (country), Jathiya (ethnicity), and Aagama (religion).
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The constantly changing “tourist gaze” needs much scholarly attention for globalizing, especially in the areas of “domestic tourist gaze” and “transitional tourist gaze”. The present study attempts to fill these gaps by identifying transitional domestic tourist gaze in post-war Sri Lanka. This qualitative study employs previous literature and reviews from TripAdvisor.com to identify how the domestic tourist gaze is transforming in post-war zones of Sri Lanka. The thematic analysis method was employed to analyze tourists' reviews using NVivo 11 (QSR International) software. The study identifies that tourist gaze is changing from a “dark tourist gaze” to an “environmental gaze” and a “cultural gaze” through a strategic government mediation to reinstate conciliation in post-war Sri Lanka. The study offers implications to enhance tourists gaze in a post-war destination.
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to offer an up-to-date review of the gaze, proposing new research agendas with regard to the various gazes actively operating at destinations. Design/methodology/approach The study thoroughly and systematically reviewed the existing literature by gathering papers related to gaze research in tourism contexts. Analysis of existing knowledge is centered around the gaze and a triadic framework among three key stakeholders. Findings A theoretical schema of the gaze was developed via a thorough examination of existing studies. The framework disclosed the subject of the gaze, be it tourist-initiated and/or host-initiated, and tourist–host interactions. Along with five dominant types (tourist gaze, intratourist gaze, local gaze, mutual gaze and reverse gaze), a triadic framework among stakeholders was further revealed. Originality/value The literature review provides meaningful insights into gaze research in the tourism field, representing the first effort to delineate relationships among relevant stakeholders. Further, this study proposes future research priorities related to the tourist–host relationship for destination experience development.
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the past literature of the tourist experience and propose a new model of behavior. Design/methodology/approach It is proposed that understanding of the visitors experience from a development standpoint may be useful in understanding how tourism destinations or indeed products may be experienced so differently. Therefore, a tourist experience life cycle has been put forth as a model. Findings This model may help to outline how tourists, like destinations, also go through a life cycle. The implications may help destinations better understand the different motivations of their visitors. Originality/value While the literature has discussed the tourism experience and how the customer experience has changed, there has been little focus on the longitudinal development of how the actual tourist experiences a destination.
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Purpose This study aims to explore the meanings of solo travel for Asian women, focussing on how Asian women construct and negotiate their identities in the heteronormalised, gendered and Western-centric tourism space. Design/methodology/approach In-depth interviews were conducted with 35 Asian solo female travellers from ten Asian countries/societies and analysed using constructivist grounded theory. The interpretation was guided by a critical stance and intersectionality lens. Findings The findings show that solo travel provides a means for self-discovery but the path was different for Asian women, for whom the self is constructed by challenging the social expectations of Asian women. Western-centric discourse was identified in the participants’ interactions with other (Western) travellers and tourism service providers, as well as in the ways these Asian women perceive themselves in relation to Western travellers. In addition to gendered constraints and risks, the findings also reveal the positive meaning of being Asian women in the gendered tourism space. Research limitations/implications By labelling Asian women, the study risks adopting an essentialised view and overlooking the differences within the group. However, this strategic essentialism is necessary to draw attention to the inequalities that persist in contemporary tourism spaces and practices. Originality/value This study investigated Asian solo female travellers, an emerging but under-researched segment. It provides a critical examination of the intersectional effect of gender and race on identity construction for Asian solo female travellers. This study shows the need for a more inclusive tourism space.
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By examining the host gaze in a third space, this article proposes “liminal gaze” as a concept to study service encounter in light of liminality and cultural hybridity. The dynamics of gaze is examined through the lens of cultural distance with London’s Chinatown as the study area. Gaze in tourism has mainly been studied in relation to two distant cultures gazing upon each other. The study tries to understand what happens to the gaze when two cultures, which are neither distant or proximate nor identical but in-between here and there, gaze upon each other. The focus is on Chinese immigrant workers (the guesthosters) gazing upon Chinese tourists dining in Chinatown. Chinatown represents a third space where natives, tourists, and guesthosters meet, gaze, and perform. The gaze of the Chinese guesthosters upon their Chinese guests is negative despite their cultural similarity/proximity and norms of behavior rooted in Confucian belief. This finding challenges the postulate of cultural distance. The five themes which strongly emerged from the interviews as gaze moderators, including the perceived “boorish” dining behavior of the guests, power distance, acculturation and hybridization, and the perception of the authenticity of the food served, are explained.
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The article illuminates one of the central ethical questions concerning tourist photography: the ways in which tourists photograph local people in tourist destinations. In line with the previous research on tourist photography, the study suggests that tourists' experiences of responsible behaviour become continuously redefined and negotiated in relations with others. Through a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of tourists' accounts, the study focuses on the role of the face in photography; that is, how encountering the face of the other interrupts the photographer and calls for heightened responsibility and reflection. Drawing on the Levinasian idea of ethics as being-for-the-other, the article visualizes relational ethics that do not originate from the tourist's gaze, but from the face of the other.
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Digital technology has undeniably altered the way tourists experience destinations. Yet, the problematic use of smartphones and similar mobile devices in vacation contexts has received limited attention. Using descriptive and interpretive approaches, this study explores tourists' experiences and perspectives on the impact or lack thereof of continual engagement with mobile media devices on their tourism experiences. The broad-spectrum view was that mobile distraction takes “something” away from individual tourist experiences as well as travel groups' experiences, although interpretations of the significance of this forfeiture varied considerably. Findings highlight the perceived repercussions of various forms of digital distractions for the quality and scope of the tourist's consumption of sights and sounds; the tourist's wellbeing; social interactions; and the experiences of ‘others’. However, some tourists' cognizance of these deleterious effects may not necessarily translate into mindful use of mobile technologies in the holiday context. Findings hold key implications for theory and practice.
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This paper explores photos and texts posted by tourists on the Chinese social media networking site WeChat Moments, which is an important complementary data source when examining the representation of the destination image. The research applies Aggregated Maps and Social Semantic Networks to analyze the graphic and textual image of the tourist destination Zhangjiajie on WeChat Moments, as well as the relationship between the two forms. The findings are: (1) photos construct an image of the destination as a mountain area with natural scenery and artificial landscapes; (2) texts reflected a multilayer image with a core and subset; (3) photos and texts echoed each other and their differences contributed to an interactive interpretation. The similarities and differences between photos and texts stimulate a discussion about the internal logic of representation.
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We investigated the effects of exposure to sexually objectifying music videos on viewers’ subsequent gazing behavior. We exposed participants (N = 129; 68 women, 61 men) either to music videos high in sexual objectification or low in sexual objectification. Next, we measured participants’ eye movements as they viewed photographs of 36 women models with various body shapes (i.e., ideal size model, plus size model) and degree of dress (i.e., fully dressed, scantily dressed, partially clad). Results indicated that sexually objectifying music videos influenced participants’ objectifying gaze upon photographs of women with an ideal size, but not plus size, body shape. Interestingly, that effect neither differed among men and women nor depended upon the models’ degree of dress. Altogether, once primed with sexually objectifying imagery, participants looked at women’s sexual body parts more than they looked at women’s faces.
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Globalization has led to increasingly fierce intercity competition. At the same time, it has motivated these cities to grow and develop by building their own local uniqueness spatially displayed in urban spaces. However, poor understanding of the utilization of local values makes cities in Indonesia compete using identical methods without bringing out their respective uniqueness. As a result, their ongoing city branding efforts often become futile, short lived, and even, sometimes, confusing for the society. This paper attempts to examine the city branding processes of a historic city in which the tourist gaze can be involved directly in the development of such processes by considering all the elements of society actively. This is a case study of Surakarta City, Central Java Province, which is better known as Solo City. The research was undertaken in a historic area in Jalan Rajiman and Jalan Slamet Riyadi. What makes these findings unique is the identification of the three stages of the tourist gaze occurring consecutively in each spatial zone. In terms of the architecture, the sequence of those three gaze stages can be connected directly to the current urban space and architectural establishment.
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This paper proposes a new gaze: the refractive gaze. To provide a contextual framework for it, this paper explores Foucault's (1963) physicians gaze; Urry's (1999) tourist gaze; Maoz's (2006) mutual gaze and Bell's (2005) prescriptive and nervous gazes. We introduce the refractive gaze by examining how tourist-gastronomes negotiate food risk and how this fuels their culinary and cultural capital. The refractive gaze incorporates the subjectively experienced cognitive and sensuous elements that tourist-gastronomes encounter in their quest for 'out of the ordinary' food experiences. Our research is based on secondary case sources that illuminate the articulated theory; in particular, the work of Bell (2010) – who noted how tourist-gastronomes negotiate horse milk consumption in rural Mongolia – which emphasised the internal thought processes followed in deciding to override a fear/risk nexus in order to gain the bragging rights of cultural and culinary capital. Interpretation of Bell's (2010) case material indicates the refractive gaze has potentially broad generalisability vis-à-vis academic understanding of touristic food experience, as well as in areas beyond this domain.
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As noted through Ury's (2002) work, the tourist gaze serves as a literal and metaphorical construct describing the process involved in viewing the interculturally different Other. However, traditional understandings of the tourist gaze do not account for the reciprocity involved in the gazing process. Through the use of autoethnography enhanced with visual ethnographic artifacts, this essay dissects the presumed linear nature of the gaze, asserting that certain subjects may become objects of a (re)appropriated gaze in travel encounters. As evidenced through descriptions of travel in Mexican and Central American cultures, the tattooed female tourist serves as such a subject. Illustrating the (re)appropriated and (re)allocated tourist gaze, she is postured as an exotic Other, becoming one vehicle through which a Central American native or local may assess both U.S. American and/or tattoo culture as a whole.
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Purpose – This introductory paper aims to offer a rudimentary model that describes the antecedent recipes for creating native-visitors. The paper describes what is unique and valuable about the seven articles that follow in their descriptions and explanations of the behavior of native-tourists. This special issue is to honor the originality and value of the contributions of tourism research’s leading critic, John Urry. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a paradigm that includes eight profiles of tourists identified by low/high conjunctions of knowledge, training and authentication of performances of tourism places. The study calls for a normative stance that tourists should develop a sense of obligation to learn before visiting to enrich understanding of what they are seeing and to reduce the negative outcomes of the tourist gaze. The method includes describing the unique and valuable contributions in each of the seven following articles in the issue. Findings – The analysis and outcomes are viewable best as propositions from a thought experiment. The seven articles that follow the introduction are appropriate data for a meta-review of the development of new meanings of tourism generated from the concept of native-tourist. Research limitations/implications – This study may spur necessary additional work to confirm that native-tourists do interpret performing tourist places differently and more richly than naïve tourists. Originality/value – The article is high in originality in establishing the benefits from studying native-tourists as unique contributors to clarifying and deepening the meanings of tourism drama enactments.
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Europe has become a popular destination for Mainland Chinese in recent years and shopping in Europe is essential and very exciting to most of them. While previous research has mostly comprised descriptive marketing studies, and a few have interpreted the shopping behavior of this emerging market from the traditional Chinese culture perspective, this paper presents a dynamic sociological approach to interpret the deeper mindset behind the Chinese buying by applying the theoretical concept of tourism gaze. A typical group, 17 white-collar employees and corporate elites in a Sino-foreign joint venture from a developed city in China, was interviewed, and thematic analysis was used. Three categories of mass commodity - functional goods, adornment goods and social gifts - were found to be the major items Chinese mainland tourists like to buy when traveling in Europe, among which functional goods for practical use are the most popular. The paper concludes that the deeper tourist gaze of trust and brand admiration upon Western goods is a result of the long Chinese modernization process and is very much influenced by the global consumer culture.
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Museums are largely neglected in the tourist research literature. This is even more striking given that they are arguably designed for gazing. There is little doubt that “graying” of the Western population adds to the number and range of museums. And yet, even in adult museums, there will be children who are “dragged along.” Museums are increasingly aware of such conflicts and dilemmas. Many museums offer printed booklets with “treasure trails.” They afford a trail through the museum that forms a treasure hunt for specific objects and correct answers to questions related to the objects. This article draws attention to this overlooked, mundane technology and gives it its deserved share of the limelight. We are concerned with exploring ethnographically how trails are designed and especially used by young families in museums for gazing. The article gives insight into how children, broadly speaking, learn to gaze within museums as well as small-scale negotiations and conflicts between families gazing. So we are concerned with how family trails affect the museum visit.
Article
Purpose This paper aims to review the research on tourists and outlines future scenarios for its development. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a critical and conceptual approach to this phenomenon and provides new perspectives for its future investigation. Findings This research on tourists might consider more aspects, such as the change from purely human-centred to a broader scope including non-human tourists, non-physical space and non-current time slots. This might provide the opportunity to engage more research disciplines into the research on tourists. Originality/value The past perspective includes the comparison of research on tourists in Western Europe and North America with an often-overlooked situation in Central and Eastern Europe. The future perspectives deal with challenges that might affect tourism research in the following years.
Article
This article addresses the absence of children in tourism studies by outlining an innovative case study involving teenagers co-constructing a bus tour of Belfast. Seventeen young people, aged 14–16 took part in designing a tour of Belfast that was subsequently facilitated by a major tour company operating in the city. The article outlines how young people’s local spatial knowledge challenges mainstream adult discourses and remains an untapped resource with the potential to contribute significantly to tourism’s understandings of divided cities providing existing tourism frameworks are extended to incorporate young people’s own ways of seeing and experiencing their everyday spatial lives.
Article
Purpose This study aims to raises the question of the potential impact of posthumanism, a stream in contemporary postmodernist philosophy, on current tourism practices and tourism studies. The author discusses its denial of some basic positions of enlightenment humanism: human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism and transcendentalism. The author then seeks to infer the implications of posthumanist thought for the basic concepts and categorical distinctions on which modern tourism and modernist tourist studies are based. Design/methodology/approach This paper raises the question of the potential impact of posthumanism, a stream in contemporary postmodernist philosophy, on current tourism practices and tourism studies. The author discusses its denial of some basic positions of Enlightenment humanism: human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism and transcendentalism. The author then seeks to infer the implications of posthumanist thought for the basic concepts and categorical distinctions on which modern tourism and modernist tourist studies are based. This paper raises the question of the potential impact of posthumanism, a stream in contemporary postmodernist philosophy, on current tourism practices and tourism studies. The author discusses its denial of some basic positions of Enlightenment humanism: human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism and transcendentalism. The author then seeks to infer the implications of posthumanist thought for the basic concepts and categorical distinctions on which modern tourism and modernist tourist studies are based. The author then discusses some inconsistencies in posthumanist philosophy, which stand in the way of its applicability to touristic practices, and end up with an appraisal of the significance of posthumanism for tourism studies. Findings The author pays specific attention to the implications of the effort of posthumanism to erase the human-animal divide for tourist-animal interaction, and of the possible impact of the adoption of posthumanist practices on the tourist industry and the ecological balance of wilderness areas. The author then discusses some inconsistencies in posthumanist philosophy, which stand in the way of its applicability to touristic practices, and end up with a brief appraisal of the significance of posthumanism for tourism studies. Originality/value This is the first attempt to confront tourism studies with the radical implications of posthumanist thought. It will hopefully open a new line of discourse in the field.
Article
Purpose Halal tourism is a growing segment that represents a potentially attractive niche. However, although increasing, it is still a young and residual area of academic research. This paper aims to explore its concept, boundaries and various streams to offer a clarifying vision for researchers and tourism managers. Design/methodology/approach A systematization of the state of the art was carried out based on the papers contained in Web of Science and Scopus databases. Moreover, papers not indexed in these repositories (conference papers, book chapters, etc.) were searched through scientific social networks mainly. Findings In spite of recent efforts, halal tourism is a field of study still in a very early stage; however, on a practical level, the number of halal products and services is starting to increase worldwide. Nevertheless, there are challenges for the tourist industry in moving towards the authentication of the halal tourism offer, including among them the role of new technologies and the digital economy. Originality/value This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of halal tourism research. It highlights its main areas, gaps and questions for debate. In this line, a research agenda is proposed.
Article
The "Gaze" is a complex and overarching phenomenon comprised of diverse "Gazers" and "Gazees". This paper adopts an existential-phenomenological perspective to understand tourists' lived experiences of being gazed upon by local people. Based on thirty experiences collected from interviews with ten participants, we show that experiencing the "Local Gaze" exposes the tourist as Sartrean "Tourist-esque": an inauthentic experiencer of positivity, discrimination, alienation and self-consciousness. Moments of true human connections are at best ephemeral. Through an existentialist lens, the study questions the possibility of authentic host-guest relationship in tourism and argues that to maintain hopes for an authentic relationship, the concepts of "Gaze" and-perhaps even of "Tourism"-need to be transcended.
Article
This article investigates domestic and international tourists’ “gaze” using tourism imagery. Domestic and international tourists’ preferences are critically examined using the concept of the “tourist gaze” and “local gaze.” Through qualitative, in-depth photo-elicitation interviews (PEIs) guided by 16 photographs covering various tourist attractions in Botswana, results indicate dissimilar tourist gazes between international and domestic tourists. Culture, livelihoods, and crowded spaces, with a variety of activities, influence domestic tourists’ gaze, whereas privacy, tranquility, and quietness influence the international tourists’ gaze. The tourist gaze thus can be seen as a culturally contingent concept that is not universal. Despite the differences, results indicate the continued promotion of an international tourist’s gaze. Results help explain low visitation by domestic tourists to protected areas in Botswana and Africa. In view of the study’s results, theoretical and policy implications are also discussed.
Book
In his discussion of power, Foucault establishes a new, interpretation that challenges the typical view of power as a possession held by certain people and groups in a society. Foucault argues that it is the set of force relations that constitute a perpetual struggle among people as well as the strategies that people employ as they attempt to control the behavior of others. This differs from previous views of power in that it sees power as existing everywhere and deriving from everywhere. No person holds power. Rather, power is expressed in relationships between people. Related to this view is Foucault's argument that resistance is inextricably linked with power and also exists everywhere. No single point of power or resistance can be found. Each point at where power is exercised also reveals a point of resistance. Power is also intimately connected with discourse because discourse becomes a mechanism of power. Not only is discourse both an instrument and an effect of power, but discourse can serve both to liberate and oppress.
Article
Purpose This paper aims to examine the knowledge production on tourism gender research in Latin America and to reflect on the main challenges faced by this subfield. Design/methodology/approach The study conducts a bibliometric analysis of the journal articles on tourism gender research in the largest scientific databases in Latin America: Redalyc, Scielo and Latindex. The paper examines variables such as year of publication, journal, authors, affiliation, types of articles, research topics, methodologies and geographical location of fieldwork. Findings The study identified 153 gender aware papers from 70 journals for the period 2001-2015. The leading countries in the subfield are Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. The majority of papers are empirical and have a local scope. The main theoretical approaches derive from sociological and anthropological perspectives with a predominance of qualitative methodologies. There is a need to strengthen the theoretical and epistemological frameworks and increase international collaboration for knowledge exchange among tourism gender scholars. Research limitations/implications The bibliometric analysis was limited to indexed journals with online access. It focused on academic articles and excluded research notes, book reviews and conference proceedings. Originality/value As the main working languages of scientific production in Latin America are Spanish and Portuguese, this is the first attempt to make tourism gender research from this region visible for the predominantly Anglophone tourism academy, with the intention of identifying common challenges.
Article
While the impact of aeromobility on the growth of tourism and its destinations is well documented, the role of aeromobility in the process of experiencing and shaping place with specific regard to tourist destinations has received little attention from scholars. With the growth of commercial aviation and the increasingly mundane nature of the experience within mass tourism, I draw attention to the touristic experience of flying as the activity beyond its role in arriving at the destination. After a brief review of the genealogy of aeromobility and tourism, I reflect on examples of tourist aeromobility in Cape Town, South Africa in order to theorise the aeromobile tourist gaze. This paper analyses mobile testimonies from online travel reviews from airborne tourists performing helicopter ‘flips’ over Cape Town. Results highlight the need to focus on flying as tourism itself while they illustrate the role it plays in the aeromobile tourist gaze, a unique perspective and experience of the tourism destination as ‘tourism from above’ that emerges from the touristic dimensions of flight including the destination, the flying device and flight route. The findings underscore the role of flying-as-tourism. The aeromobile tourist gaze thus spectacularises the destination and disrupts the relationship between tourists and place.
Article
Purpose This study aimed to provide a critical review of the evolution of customer relationship management (CRM) research in the hospitality and tourism (H&T) field. Design/methodology/approach The study conducted a thorough systematical literature review by collecting papers from 14 leading tourism and hospitality journals. The examination of the literature is first based on the evolution of CRM notion and its definitions. Next, CRM studies in the literature that are related to H&T were assessed based on their timelines and themes. Third, the studies were classified based on CRM components and its impacts on firms’ performances. Findings The literature review provided an in-depth understanding on the progress of CRM based on the selected topics and suggests a redesigned research agenda for scholars, graduate students and practitioners. Implications This study provides new and meaningful avenues for further research in CRM in H&T area. Originality value CRM has a key role in business performance and increased customer satisfaction and retention, specifically in the context of the service industry. To date, scholars have produced an abundant number of CRM-related studies in tourism and hospitality journals. In this study, the progress of CRM research conducted in the tourism and hospitality sector is critically reviewed.
Article
The aim of this exploratory study is to describe, examine, and analyze the manner in which tour guides in Israel gaze at the groups of foreign tourists they lead, in light of their close familiarity and cumulative experience with them. How do Israeli tour guides view different types of tourists, tourist behaviors, and tourist worldviews? The concept of ‘gaze’ refers to the manner in which people view the world around them. When a gaze is focused, it may include both visual and nonvisual elements. The study methodology is based on a grounded theory approach and on in-depth interviews with Israeli tour guides regarding their attitudes toward and perceptions and images of the tourists in their groups. The study proposes a model of five complementary gazes that develop over time, which depicts the processes and elements that help shape how hosts understand the tourists with whom they come in contact. Although the model was based on findings generated by interviews with Israeli tour guides, who are professional hosts, it may also be applicable to other kinds of hosts in different contexts.
Article
This paper demonstrates how the landscape is an integral component in the development of tourism experiences in agricultural regions. It proposes that agricultural landscapes are composed of three components: naturescape, farmscape and culturescape. Building on the tourist gaze, this research demonstrates how tourists can move from viewing the landscape to engaging with it. A case study of the Atherton Tablelands, located in the Wet Tropics region of Australia, was conducted using content analysis and field observations. The results show that the development of activities within the culturescape enables tourists to engage with the agricultural landscape. This finding has important implications for the farmscape, where agricultural resources (produce) are often used in the creation of memorable tourism experiences in agricultural regions.
Article
During 2014–2015, we produced a short video documentary, titled The Art of Wild, which focused on the audiovisual practices of outdoor adventurers. This short written report reflects on an idea inspired by the video: the GoPro gaze. Enacted by increasingly sophisticated, portable and affordable recording audiovisual technologies such as the GoPro Hero camera, the ‘GoPro gaze’ entails not just the pursuit of pleasures derived from adventure and nature-based travel, but also the production and distribution of professional-quality independent videos for Internet audiences. Based on a series of ‘go-along’ interviews with adventure travelers/athletes/artists, this article and the accompanying video prompt us to reflect on how the affective pleasures and technological affordances of the ‘GoPro gaze’ trouble the established idea of the ‘tourist gaze’.
Article
The gaze places host and tourist in an “authority field” which is unfavorable to the development of harmonious interpersonal relationships and cultural interactions for both sides. Mutual, equal and just host–guest relationships should be established through dialogue, which will improve tourists’ understanding and experiences, awaken the hosts’ cultural consciousness and establish a new type of cultural interaction. The paper is based on analysis of the work and life experience of Joseph Rock in southwest China during 1922–1949. It uses content analysis to examine more than one thousand photos which contain visual representations of his gaze. The changing values of tourism to the ego and culture were revealed through a change in emphasis from “I–It” to “I–You” relationships as Rock turned from gaze to dialogue.
Article
This paper reconceptualises the tourist gaze as facilitated by smart phones and social media, with a focus on selfies. It presents selfie-taking as a new way of touristic looking in which tourists become the objects of the self-directed tourist gaze. The paper suggests that the practice of selfie-taking in tourism is constituted by othering, stylized performing and producing/consuming visual culture of the self. Through these processes, tourists are able to ascribe the characteristics they otherwise associate with tourist sights onto themselves. Rather than fetishizing the extraordinary at the tourist destination, tourists seek to capture the extraordinary within themselves. Traditional tourist sights and attractions take on different relative importance.
Article
Purpose – This paper aims to situate tourism within the wider context of temporary and permanent people movements and immigration as a form of permanent tourism with a deep gaze into tourists’ own national culture and even deeper gaze into the trappings of immigrants’ quotidian identity to define a modified identity. This paper offers, through auto-ethnography (AE) and confirmatory introspection (CI), a glimpse into the complex decision-making processes tourists, migrant workers and immigrants have to cope with to survive and thrive in a home “away” from their country of birth. The literature on the comparison between temporary mobility (tourism), nomadic migration (semi-permanent mobility) and permanent mobility (drifters, wanderers or denizen globe trotters) is sparse and unsystematic. Design/methodology/approach – The use of AE and CI allows the researcher with several years of cognitive and affective information and easy access to data on the private, lived experiences of the author and closely related family. Having lived and worked in several countries, supplemented by experiences of visiting over 35 countries for varying periods, the researcher has direct access to a wealth of rich data related to tourism (one- to five-week trips to Europe, USA, South America, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and the Pacific Islands), semi-permanent mobility (one-year exchange work placement in North America) and permanent mobility (more than ten years of being immigrants to New Zealand). Findings – The results show that tourists and immigrants are exposed to numerous decisions (varying in complexity and impact) before, during and after their travels that will impact on their acculturation, the genuineness of their experience and their willingness to modify their own identities, as well as the culture of the destinations they consume. Travelers have to overcome contextual and personal hurdles to achieve integration in a reasonable time. The way in which they tackle and overcome these hurdles will impact upon their modification of personal identity and acculturation. Practical implications – This paper offers practical advice to tourists, immigrants and employers on becoming adaptable consumers, highly resilient survivors and highly reliable organizations – able to thrive in today’s global marketplace. This study helps marketers, tourism professionals and employers of migrants to understand the processes consumers go through to modify identity to effectively and timely fit into new environments. Originality/value – AE- and CI-based research explores the tourist gaze and acculturation processes and discusses a two-directional model of modification of culture and identity. In addition, the paper highlights complex decision-making models tourists, nomads, globe trotters and immigrants use when considering alternative destinations and sought-after experiences.
Article
The Tourist Gaze [Urry J, 1990 (Sage, London)] is one of the most discussed and cited tourism books (with about 4000 citations on Google scholar).Whilst wide ranging in scope, the book is known for the Foucault-inspired concept of the tourist gaze that brings out the fundamentally visual and image-saturated nature of tourism encounters. However, some recent literature has critiqued this notion of the 'tourist gaze' for reducing tourism to visual experiencesöto sight seeingöand neglecting the other senses, bodily experiences, and 'adventure'. The influential 'performance turn' within tourist studies suggests that the doings of tourism are physical or corporeal and not merely visual, and it is necessary to regard 'performing' rather than 'gazing' as the dominant tourist research paradigm. Yet we argue here that there are, in fact, many similarities between the paradigms of gaze and of performance. They should 'dance together' rather than stare at each other at a distance. In this paper we rethink the tourist gaze in the light of this performance turn and of a Goffmanian dramaturgical sociology by examining the embodied and multisensuous nature of gazing as well as the complex social relations and fluid power geometries comprising performances of gazing. The Foucault-inspired notion of the tourist gaze can be enlivenedömade more bodily and theatricalöby incorporating Goffman and post-Goffman analyses and aspects of nonrepresentational theory.
Article
This paper discusses the role of impression management in the production of online tourist photography and how it works along with other underlying dimensions that shape photographic decisions at various stages of image selection. The paper illustrates that the selection of photographs is so intimately linked to impression management that it even extends to the decision of whether to bring a camera along on a trip in the first place. Tourists are constantly caught in the dilemma of who to satisfy during the selection process. This study suggests that social media and photography facilitate social comparison, thus the tourist gaze is being redefined even more rapidly nowadays.
Article
This article is about the practices of the gaze enacted in tourist sites. It draws on ethnographic research carried out in the Indian sacred city of Varanasi, on the bank of the ‘holy’ Ganges, to suggest alternative, non-Western ways of conceptualizing and performing sight and the visual. The case study focuses on the Ganga Aarti, a popular Hindu ceremony performed daily on the city’s riverfront. Celebrating the sacred vision of the Ganges, this ceremony can be considered as an expression of the ‘host’ gaze. At the same time, the Ganga Aarti and the quaint city’s riverscape constitute the focus of the tourist gaze, and draw together, in fact, diverse visual traditions and practices. Indeed, I argue that tourist places are to be understood as sites of multiple, situated gazes, where different gazing subjects negotiate different visions, meanings and practices and co-construct, both visually and physically, the tourist space.
Article
This paper offers insights into women travellers' experiences and discusses the gendered views of female travellers originating from China on cross border trips to Macao. The analysis is derived from a careful reading or ‘thick description’ of blogs posted by female tourists that may be characterised as a web ethnography or netnography. The study indicates that the perception of Macao by Chinese women travellers embodies their confusion concerning modern life and their memories of tradition. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that Chinese women travellers conceptualise travelling as a way of underpinning the status of their self-identity. Besides, travelling in Macao for them is not just a leisure practice but a means to improve and enhance personal relationships.
Article
Robinson (Current Issues Tour Res 15(4):353–367, 2012, Mediating the tourist experience from brochures to virtual encounters. Farnham, Ashgate, 2013) explored the notion of an e-mediated tourist gaze. This paper builds on this idea, in order to evaluate the context within which images are recorded, manipulated and distributed. Google Earth is selected as the medium for this because its geo-spatial format links tourist photographs to the site where the image was captured. The research adopts a primarily qualitative inductive study to identify sociological perspectives on the collection, publication and sharing of images online, using members of Google Earth forums as the sample, and asking further questions around travel planning to tie the research back to the relationship between online image and travel from a production perspective. The research identifies strong links with memory, emotion and choreography and proposes that digital images have created new areas for research into electronic visual media. Whilst Urry and Larsen (The tourist gaze 3.0. Sage, London, 2011) note that these images potentially lead an unprotected and uncontrolled afterlife, it is argued that they also serve a purpose for a future-self as a mediator of nostalgia. The research develops hypotheses for future research around the emotional relationships bound up in the creation and collection of tourism images and the role of the e-mediated gaze.