Selected notes on: Urry,J. (1990) The Tourist
Gaze. Leisure and Travel in Contemporary
Societies. London: Sage [It's still going and now
in its 3rd iteration]
Dave Harris
Chapter 1. The tourist gaze is as socially
organised and systematised as the medical gaze,
but without institutional support. It often refers
itself to an opposite activity — work. There are
implications for the notion of normal social life.
It is sustained by other texts — film, TV,
literature, magazines. It is heavily signified,
for example the number of metonyms for Paris, and
this requires the tourist to become a semiotician.
The gaze can be fitted to a stratified market in
terms of class, gender, and generational taste. It
is associated with the modern era [with examples
from past historical figurations]. Tourism is the
best example of hyperreality, as we can see with
the ongoing debates about authenticity. It can be
used to inform mass society theses where tourists
come to reproduce their home. Some tourists reject
organisation and become overwhelmed by sense
impressions [Simmel is the example, but Stendhal
would do even better]. Some tourists are after
authenticity, and can even be critical, but there
is also 'staged authenticity' (9). Tourism can be
a semi-religious activity involving the
sacralisation of objects or pilgrimages. There are
even post tourists who gain pleasure from the
second-order semiotics of organised tourism.
Tourists have to read their experiences, and there
are limitless ways to read life as
'extraordinary', which is at the heart of the
tourist experience (12). This links with the
imaginary pleasures of consumption, which are
equally constructed. There is a connection to post
Fordism [a range of references, p. 13], especially
to post fordist consumption, which features more
consumer control, more volatility and the
emergence of a range of commodities which include
'natural' ones. If the holiday camp is fordist,
there are now holidays that offer access to new
worlds, and which offer freedom. Overall,
post-modern aesthetics are clearly detectable in
tourism, especially play, pleasure and pastiche.
Chapter 2 is on the rise and fall of the British
seaside resort. There is discussion of holiday
camps (36F), and an acknowledgement of the role of
the TV sitcom set in a holiday camp hi de hi.
However these fail to engage fantasies these days,
and seaside experiences are now available
anywhere, for example in leisure centres.
Chapter 3 economics. Tourism depends on external
economic growth and technology. The revenue tends
to accrue to international companies rather than
anyone indigenous or local.
Chapter 4. The nature of the jobs provided can
clash with cultural practices. In particular,
modern notions of 'service' is difficult to manage
and organise in a way that meshes with customer
expectations. The workers can resist, for example
by refusing to smile (70) [There was an actual war
of the smiles, I recall, on an airline] . The
industry is characterised by low pay, and a
preponderance of women. The outcomes are
intangible, for example there is a certain
volatility to the catering industry, vulnerable to
new technologies [a modern example would be online
ordering and delivery]. The workforce needs to be
particularly flexible, and these conditions often
mean they are difficult to train [recently, of
course we have had a good supply of overeducated
foreign nationals from the EU].
Chapter 5. Boundaries are now blurred between
tourism and other activities, as you would expect
with post-modernism as a 'regime of
significations'. There is the familiar collapse of
internal differentiation. There are trends towards
the anti-auratic, sometimes expressed in demands
for audience participation, and images and
representations tend to merge with reality [a good
discussion of this page 80 2F]. There are residues
of modernism too.
Tourism is an early example of spectacle and
implosion of boundaries. This fits nicely with the
emergence of a collective tourist gaze, although
the individual romantic gaze is still auratic.
However even here there can be problematic
representations, for example in photographs,
rather than simple perceptions of reality.
There is a connection to class power, but as in
Bourdieu (87) and allowing for different cultural
economies [a good summary of the implications
88F]. So the new petty bourgeoisie are strong on
cultural capital and offer an emerging new market
or audience in the struggle against the
traditional bourgeoisie. Their habitus (defined as
an unconscious system of classification) is
relatively weak in terms of classifications and
boundaries. This means they can attack the
traditional bourgeoisie as elitist, and the
proletariat for vulgarity (classically, too close
to nature).
The service class tends to possess no land or
conventional capital, to have relatively good work
conditions, and to try and regulate entry to their
occupations by educational credentials. The growth
of this class is associated with the baby boom
[and, controversially, with steady economic growth
post-war].
Intellectuals tend to manifest best the romantic
gaze according to Bourdieu. [Back to the NPB?]
There has also been a growth in cultural work who
are aware of the marketability of the new. Such
people are often downwardly mobile, rejected by
the traditional bourgeoisie and intellectuals
(90). I often urge a morality of pleasure as a
duty and claim it is 'ethical not to have fun',
especially if this involves bodily expression [all
drawn from Bourdieu in Distinction]. This group
has particularly provided a basis for
post-modernism.
The media tend to weaken conventional
classifications — 'grid' [so this is Mary
Douglas?] and 'group' involving boundaries between
the internal and the external. This has produced a
kind of 'institutionalised voyeurism' (91). Both
grid and group are particularly weak for the NPB,
partly because some of them feel guilty at being
middle class, especially the younger ones. So they
have to live in a perpetual present or immediacy,
enjoying pastiche and parody as in Jameson, or
'calculating hedonism' as in Featherstone, which
includes a 'myth of self-actualisation' (93).
Overall there is an aesthetic of
'irresponsibility, self-indulgence, and an
isolationist detachment [seen as] middle-class
virtues and even signs of health' (93).
As an example, Orwell and Hoggart saw holiday
camps as uncivilised and vulgar, and dealt with
only through pastiche, and stressed instead things
that were 'natural', 'authentic', that involve
travel rather than tourism, and promoted a
romantic rather than a collective gaze — although
there is now a market for them as well.
The romantic view of the countryside and heritage
appears as anti-modern, some pre-social
intervention. It clearly involves a selective
perception, for example removing all the machinery
from the 'landscape'. It can be playful to, for
example as in advertising campaigns. It has a use,
for example in informing various working-class
trespass campaigns, but it emerges mostly as a
'theme' [which seems to be a bit like a pretext].
The post tourist is able to enjoy a variety of
media gazes ranging between high culture and the
pleasure principle, as well as the pleasure from
playing a game — all of them raising expectations
of the extraordinary.
Chapter 6. The heritage industry is easily
criticised and the first assault came from the
mass society theorists. However, these were also
nostalgic for a real England. There is no
unidirectional change [towards massification] [as
Hewison thought, as he moved from ideology
critique to trying to grasp pleasures], no
complexity of reading is assumed to be required
(111), and there is no recognition of the pleasure
available, even in being critical. The heritage
industry stuff is excessively visual and ignores
or trivialises social experience [he goes on to
give some examples of local state initiatives
112F]. The spread of post-modernism is what
provides most problems — even museums have become
metonyms, and have gone in for audience
participation and commercialism (129F).
Chapter 7 the different gazes are authorised in
different discourses. Photography has a crucial
role (136F) [enhanced by modern post-editing
techniques and digital image manipulation?]. The
Haussmanisation of Paris was an early example of
the construction of a life of Paris, and of
urbanism but also with the ability to be private,
which is the essence of the romantic gaze, to be a
flaneur as well. This was achieved of course at
the price of working class community [and there
were military purposes too]. The flaneur became a
kind of hero, for example in Benjamin's work. He
was also an early photographer. Photos are
examples of how power and knowledge are connected
and become dominant, they seem real but they are
of course the result of a signifying practice
which is hidden, and we need to do semiotics to
grasp this. Photography also brought about
democratisation and rapidly became commercial and
an art form. It shaped travel: it became the point
of travel.
Social class divisions structure the gaze, so do
gender, generation, and ethnicity of both tourists
and residents, seen best perhaps in sex tourism.
Initially, single men saw clear advantages in
taking holidays, but this rapidly became something
for couples. Families are no central, to the
exclusion of others. Black people are often
excluded too, for example, especially in the
heritage industry. [There is a hint on Englishness
being interpellated by the heritage industry 143].
Asians were seen as exotics. History is clearly
'distorted' (145). We can see how hyperreality
works by looking at the Jorvik exhibition [Viking
life, in York]. [Urry's objections to the idea of
fake nature almost become criticisms of cinematic
realism].
A nice example of pastiche is the Metrocentre in
Gateshead. Shopping malls can also be seen as
deliberate spectacles, highly policed and
surveilled. There are also 'post shoppers' who
play in shopping malls, for example as in Fisk on
'proletarian shopping'[a leisure activity where
you try on lots of clothes but never buy any].
This can empower women.
Other examples include world fairs, various themed
environments which often depict post-modern
aestheticism. There can be national stereotypes on
display [he chooses Expo 88, but I think Epcot in
Walt Disney World is a cracker]. Generally though,
'no single set of hegemonic messages' is conveyed.
There can also be micro tourism, enjoyment of
simulacra, which reproduce the tourist experience
to some extent.
Edutainment is growing, with the development of
things such as factories becoming museums [or
whole villages as in Morewellham]. Professional
historians are often consulted, and sometimes the
displays can be critical — as educational and
tourist conventions interpenetrate.
Finally, we end with Foucault, but tourist gaze
and the 'spectacle – ism' of space is much more
important than surveillance technology as modes of
development of contemporary societies.
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