Culture On Tour

by Bruner, Edward M.

• ISBN13: 9780226077635
• ISBN10: 0226077632
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-11-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Recruited to be a lecturer on a group tour of Indonesia, Edward M. Bruner decided to make the tourists aware of tourism itself. He photographed tourists photographing Indonesians, asking the group how they felt having their pictures taken without their permission. After a dance performance, Bruner explained to the group that the exhibition was not traditional, but instead had been set up specifically for tourists. His efforts to induce reflexivity led to conflict with the tour company, which wanted the displays to be viewed as replicas of culture and to remain unexamined. Although Bruner was eventually fired, the experience became part of a sustained exploration of tourist performances, narratives, and practices.Synthesizing more than twenty years of research in cultural tourism, Culture on Tour analyzes a remarkable variety of tourist productions, ranging from safari excursions in Kenya and dance dramas in Bali to an Abraham Lincoln heritage site in Illinois. Bruner examines each site in all its particularity, taking account of global and local factors, as well as the multiple perspectives of the various actorsthe tourists, the producers, the locals, and even the anthropologist himself. The collection will be essential to those in the field as well as to readers interested in globalization and travel.

Author Biography

Edward M. Bruner is professor emeritus of anthropology and criticism and interpretive theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has written numerous articles on tourism and has coedited three previous volumes, including International Tourism: Identity and Change.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Introduction: Travel Stories Told and Retold	1	(32)
PART ONE Storytelling Rights
1. Maasai on the Lawn: Tourist Realism in East Africa (with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett)	33	(38)
2. The Maasai and the Lion King: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Globalization in African Tourism	71	(30)
3. Slavery and the Return of the Black Diaspora: Tourism in Ghana	101	(26)
PART TWO Competing Stories
4. Lincoln's New Salem as a Contested Site	127	(18)
5. Abraham Lincoln as Authentic Reproduction: A Critique of Postmodernism	145	(24)
6. Dialogic Narration and the Paradoxes of Masada (with Phyllis Gorfain)	169	(22)
PART THREE Tales from the Field
7. The Balinese Borderzone	191	(20)
8. Taman Mini: Self-Constructions in an Ethnic Theme Path in Indonesia	211	(20)
9. Reincorporations: Return to Sumatra, 1957, 1997	231	(22)
Acknowledgments and Credits	253	(4)
Notes	257	(12)
References	269	(22)
Index	291