Dean Maccannell
Biographic Data
| ID | 84753 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dean Maccannell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dean |
| FAMILY NAME | Maccannell |
| SIGNATURE | MACCANNELL D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3119-4453 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1183 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Is it the “end of tourism as such” or a new beginning? Response to José López-González and Michalis Nikolakakis
Recent articles by José López-González and Michalis Nikolakakis contain extended readings of my work and the editors at TS have kindly invited me to respond. The academic standing of tourism research is central to this dialog. Tourism has become so ubiquitous that some argue we have entered a “post tourism” historical phase. According to this view, tourist studies as a special field is no longer needed if researchers in all other areas bear in mi…
Nelson H. H. Graburn - a tribute collection
Dialogue concerning tourism and religion
Alienated Leisure
The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class was published in 1976 and has been republished in multiple printings, editions and translations. The original English text has been continuously in print, unmodified from its first publication. This essay suggests that The Tourist can be read today as an account of baseline socio-cultural and economic conditions at the moment just before tourism began its rapid growth to become the world's largest in…
Authors of Their Own Lives
Back to Front
Erving Goffman never wrote about tourism and it may, therefore, seem strange to reflect, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, on his contribution to the study of a phenomenon that he never undertook to study directly. However, many lessons can be drawn from Goffman’s sociology towards an understanding of certain central issues in tourism. By the way he captured and analyzed society in the 1950s and 1960s, Goffman offers to all those who…
A economia moral do turismo
Neste artigo, sugiro que a indústria do turismo mundial está mobilizada em torno de um núcleo, a atração turística, que está afastada e protegida do intercâmbio económico. Se o turismo é, de facto, a maior indústria do mundo, é por causa e não a despeito da separação da sua principal estrutura motivacional e moral do mercado. Aqui exploro as implicações do facto de que o sistema global de atrações turísticas é uma enorme coleção de “bens gratuito…
Leisure Class
Leisure class” is a sociological construct invented by Thorstein Veblen at the end of the nineteenth century. As twentieth‐century sociology increasingly turned its attention toward leisure activities and recreation it made very little direct use of Veblen's ideas. Nevertheless, Veblen's book and concepts maintain a strong grip on the popular imagination. With the growth of tourism and the democratization of leisure that is accelerating into the …
Art, tourism and authenticity. Dean MacCannell in correspondence with José Díaz Cuyás
The launch of The Tourist: New Theory of the Leisure Class in 1976, written by Dean MacCannell (New York: Schocken Books), marked the beginning of a new academic discipline in the field of tourism studies. However, this broad consensus comes with a singularity: a misunderstanding about the theoretical foundations that have accompanied the book since its appearance
The Making of The Tourist1
The author reflects on the historical context and intellectual and institutional foundations for his (1976) study The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, especially its connections to classic social and critical theory, and its fit with post structuralism and deconstruction. The influence of Marx, Durkheim, C.S. Peirce, Barthes, Lévi-Strauss, Goffman and Derrida are discussed. The method of The Tourist is to follow tourists looking for cl…
The tourist and the local
Comment on Lau and Knudsen/Rickly-Boyd
Tourist
In this classic analysis of travel and sightseeing, author Dean MacCannell brings social scientific understandings to bear on tourism in the postindustrial age, during which the middle class has acquired leisure time for international travel. In The Tourist—now with a new introduction framing it as part of a broader contemporary social and cultural analysis—the author examines notions of authenticity, high and low culture, and the construction of…
On the Ethical Stake in Tourism Research
As academic research on tourism enters its fourth decade, the field has become amorphous, sprawling all over the place, and not just geographically. We have reached no agreement on basic questions
The Ethics of Sightseeing
Why it Never Really was About Authenticity
Empty Meeting Grounds
Empty Meeting Grounds continues Dean MacCannell's search for the cultural subject that is about to emerge from the encounter of the ex-primitive and the post-modern. It contains fascinating chapters on `Cannibal Tours', `The Desire to be Postmodern', the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., the Statue of Liberty Restoration Project and the urbanization of Yosemite Park
Geographies of the unconscious
This paper revisits a disagreement between two celebrated anthropologists concerning the ways native American groups established their territorial boundaries. A.L. Kroeber suggested that native peoples had fluid limits, with one group's space blending into neighbouring territories. R.F. Heizer argued differently: that native peoples had clear borders around their territories, lines that unambiguously marked ownership and separated lands. The two …
The Ego Factor in Tourism
Tourists travel the entire globe to be in the presence of peoples, places, and objects they cannot buy or otherwise take possession of except in a spiritual sense. This essay explores the noneconomic relation at the heart of tourism, which is now said to be the largest economic sector in the world. The dominant way commercially successful destinations have organized touristic experience has been to model themselves as closely as possible on the e…
Tourist agency
The concept of ‘the gaze’ brings a philosophical concern for the human subject and human ‘agency’ to tourism studies. Foucault’s concept of the gaze, advocated by Urry, presupposes a narcissistic subject within which there is a deterministic fit between self and society. This article proposes for tourism studies an alternative to the Foucault/Urry idea of the gaze. The second version of the gaze is structured by its understanding, conscious or no…
Devil's Bargains
The tourist
The Tourist is an examination of the phenomenon of tourism through a social theory lens that encompasses discussions of authenticity, and low culture, and the construction of social reality. It brings the concerns of social science to an analysis of travel and sightseeing in the postindustrial age. This edition includes a new foreword by Lucy R. Lippard and a new epilogue by the author."--BOOK JACKET
Ways of Escape
The Written Suburb
Working in Other Fields
Staged Authenticity
The problem of false consciousness and its relationship to the social structure of tourist establishments is analyzed. Accounts of travelers are examined in terms of Erving Goffman's front versus back distinction. It is found that tourists try to enter back regions of the places they visit because these regions are associated with intimacy of relations and authenticity of experiences. It is also found that tourist settings are arrenged to produce…
Tourist agency
The concept of ‘the gaze’ brings a philosophical concern for the human subject and human ‘agency’ to tourism studies. Foucault’s concept of the gaze, advocated by Urry, presupposes a narcissistic subject within which there is a deterministic fit between self and society. This article proposes for tourism studies an alternative to the Foucault/Urry idea of the gaze. The second version of the gaze is structured by its understanding, conscious or no…
On Sociocultural Discontinuity
M. Estellie Smith has recently attacked the concepts "tradition" and "change" as reifications which mislead us in our study of sociocultural process. She favors "sociocultural continuity" as an analytic construct that focuses attention on the interconnected processes of continuous change and persistent collective identity that characterize all human sociocultures. This approach suffers, however, from reification analogous to that it rejects, for …
Reconstructed ethnicity tourism and cultural identity in third world communities
Why it Never Really was About Authenticity
The Ego Factor in Tourism
Tourists travel the entire globe to be in the presence of peoples, places, and objects they cannot buy or otherwise take possession of except in a spiritual sense. This essay explores the noneconomic relation at the heart of tourism, which is now said to be the largest economic sector in the world. The dominant way commercially successful destinations have organized touristic experience has been to model themselves as closely as possible on the e…
Predicting the quality of life in the United States
On the Ethical Stake in Tourism Research
As academic research on tourism enters its fourth decade, the field has become amorphous, sprawling all over the place, and not just geographically. We have reached no agreement on basic questions
The tourist and the local
Cannibal Tours
Tourisme et identité culturelle
MacCannell Dean. Tourisme et identité culturelle. In: Communications, 43, 1986. Le croisement des cultures. pp. 169-186
Tourist and the new community
Negative Solidarity
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Dean MacCannell; Negative Solidarity. Human Organization 1 September 1977; 36 (3): 300–304. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.36.3.w71725275176h655 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers E…
Ethnosemiotics
Keeping Symbolic Interaction Safe From Semiotics
This article provides a critique of the particular way in which Lesley D. Harman has proposed to accommodate Symbolic Interaction to semiotic theory and method. Harman's argument rests on a belief in the reality of the nature/culture dimension as prior to semiotic or sociological theory. According to Harman's view, nature is the realm of determinism, culture is the realm of freedom, and social theory ought to align itself with freedom and culture…
Dialogue concerning tourism and religion
The Politics of Park Design
The Past and Future of 'Symbolic Interactionism
A World of Strangers
A Note on Hat Tipping
Staged Authenticity
The problem of false consciousness and its relationship to the social structure of tourist establishments is analyzed. Accounts of travelers are examined in terms of Erving Goffman's front versus back distinction. It is found that tourists try to enter back regions of the places they visit because these regions are associated with intimacy of relations and authenticity of experiences. It is also found that tourist settings are arrenged to produce…
Learning from Experience
Marihuana Users and Drug Subcultures. Bruce D. Johnson
A World of Strangers
The Past and Future of 'Symbolic Interactionism
Tourist and the new community
Existentialism and Sociology
A study of the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and of its relevance for contemporary sociology. Dr Craib sees Sartre as a central figure in modern European thought - providing links between Husserl and Heidegger on the one hand and Marxists and Structuralists on the other. He is concerned to relate Sartre's apparently abstract and often obscure philosophical work to methodological and other research problems in sociology; in particular he uses Sartrean …
Queuing and Waiting
Negative Solidarity
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Dean MacCannell; Negative Solidarity. Human Organization 1 September 1977; 36 (3): 300–304. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.36.3.w71725275176h655 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers E…
Public Places and Private Spaces
Ethnosemiotics
Predicting the quality of life in the United States
Sightseers
Commemorative essay. Erving Goffman† (1922-1982)
The Time of the Sign
Baltimore in the Morning… After
Reconstructed ethnicity tourism and cultural identity in third world communities
On Sociocultural Discontinuity
M. Estellie Smith has recently attacked the concepts "tradition" and "change" as reifications which mislead us in our study of sociocultural process. She favors "sociocultural continuity" as an analytic construct that focuses attention on the interconnected processes of continuous change and persistent collective identity that characterize all human sociocultures. This approach suffers, however, from reification analogous to that it rejects, for …
The Time of the Sign
The Time of the Sign
The Politics of Park Design
Keeping Symbolic Interaction Safe From Semiotics
This article provides a critique of the particular way in which Lesley D. Harman has proposed to accommodate Symbolic Interaction to semiotic theory and method. Harman's argument rests on a belief in the reality of the nature/culture dimension as prior to semiotic or sociological theory. According to Harman's view, nature is the realm of determinism, culture is the realm of freedom, and social theory ought to align itself with freedom and culture…
Tourisme et identité culturelle
MacCannell Dean. Tourisme et identité culturelle. In: Communications, 43, 1986. Le croisement des cultures. pp. 169-186
From the Sociology of Symbols to the Sociology of Signs
Sociology (31 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · Political science (17 works) · Tourism (17 works) · Epistemology (16 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Psychology (10 works)