Tourists’ agency versus the circle of representation

Vanessa Wijngaarden

Annals of Tourism Research, 2016, vol. 60, issue C, 139-153

Abstract: Tourism studies scholars have criticized but not overcome the passivity inherent in analyses of the reproduction of stereotypes in tourism encounters. Problematizing the category of viewers, I open the black box of the circle of representation as a self-reinforcing process, showing how tourists’ (re)production of images of ‘the other’ is rooted in their agency. Using Q-method and film-assisted observations embedded in ethnography, I describe how Dutch tourists reflexively ignore, interpret and mold contrasting information when they reproduce mythical Maasai imagery. This reproduction often contradicts the ‘performance’ of their hosts and is not a post-tourist phenomenon. A typology of three tourist perspectives further underlines the non-monolithical nature of these images, and how ‘the self’ is central in their active reproduction.

Keywords: Agency; Othering; Stereotypes; Performance; Maasai; Q method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738316300937
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:60:y:2016:i:c:p:139-153

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2016.07.005

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Tourism Research is currently edited by John Tribe

More articles in Annals of Tourism Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().