This book contains a selection of papers from the prestigious Research Committee on International Tourism presented at the World Congress of the International Sociological Association, Brisbane, Australia, July 2002. It provides a sociological and anthropological critique of existing tourism theory as well as some directions for its future development and research.

While much of the present understanding of the tourist and tourism is grounded in metaphor (e.g. tourism as a sacred journey, tourism as play, the tourist as a child, etc.) such analogies need to be linked to...