HNRS 292-01: World on Tour: Understanding Tourism
While the mass commercial tourism and leisure industry originated in the nineteenth century, pilgrimage and other forms of travel for non-commercial purposes existed in most societies. Today, tourism is the largest sector of the global economy, with annual revenues of approximately $3 trillion, and is the primary venue through which people traverse socio-cultural spaces and encounter other peoples and cultures. Tourism’s impact on sending and receiving societies is complex and hotly debated. While travel is generally viewed as a means to broaden a tourist’s worldview, tourism businesses often limit the scope of travel by promoting particular places and sights and providing travel arrangements, accommodation, food, entertainment, and even souvenirs. Many poorer regions, meanwhile, consider tourism to be the road to economic development and an improved quality of life, but others see it as a new form of economic and cultural domination by the wealthier regions that is destructive of the local people’s natural environment and cultural identities.
As such, tourism has been a central dimension of economic and cultural globalization, and it offers a useful lens through which we can examine many key questions about the globalization processes: cultural identity and heritage, representation of Self and Other, historical authenticity and ownership, neoliberalism and commoditization, transnational corporation and inequality, gender relations, and environmental sustainability. Relying primarily on sociological and anthropological literatures, this course will explore tourism not only as an important human activity and a key industry for economic development, but also as a way of achieving a better understanding of the complex relationship between globalization and culture. As a Honors course, the course will involve numerous student research, presentations, and discussion-leading, and a few field trips to tourist destinations in Ohio and guest speeches by those who are involved in tourism, in order for us to get a better grasp of the actual practices of tourism.
Term: Spring 2009
Credits: 4
Fulfills: GE Requirement in Interdisciplinary Studies (I)
Cross-listed: INTL 200-03, SA 346-01
Pre-requisites: INTL 100 or SA 100 preferred, but not required
Meeting times: 14:30-15:50 MW
Instructor: Taku Suzuki