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Arthur Asa Berger Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity 1

It is understood that…concepts are purely differential and defined not by their

positive content but negatively by their relations with the other terms of the system.

Their most precise characteristic is in being what the others are not.

(1966:117)

Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics.

Amongst the central features associated with postmodernism in the arts are: the

effacement of the boundary between art and everyday life; the collapse of the

hierarchical distinction between high and mass/popular culture; a stylistic

promiscuity favouring eclecticism and the mixing of codes; parody, pastiche, irony,

playfulness and the celebration of the surface “depthlessness” of culture; the decline

of the originality/genius of the artistic producer; and the assumption that art can

only be repetition. (1991:7-8)

Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism

DRAFT


Tourism as a Postmodern Semiotic Activity

In tourism there are only differences. I hope that Saussure will not be

upset that I appropriated that concept from his writing. Tourism, as Dean

MacCannell has suggested in his important book, The Tourist, can be

understood as an exercise in applied semiotics by travelers who don’t realize

the semiotic nature of their activities. Let me begin by saying something

about the characteristics of international tourism.

Defining International Tourism

Let me suggest that international tourism has the following

characteristics. Tourism is:

1. temporary, done for a relatively short period of time

2. based on choice

3. tied to leisure and pleasure

4. an important part of our consumer culture

5. not involved with business (generally)

6. based on round trips

7. tied to technological developments in travel


8. a mass phenomenon

MacCannell argues that the tourist should be seen as the best model for

modern man and woman, though I will argue that postmodern is a better

description of tourists.

From a semiotic perspective we can say that tourists consume signs—

signifiers of one sort or another—of the cultures they have visited, and many

of these sign are recorded nowadays on digital cameras. I will deal in more

details with the semiotics of tourism shortly. We begin, then, with the notion

that tourism is a semiotic activity. Semiotics is, I would suggest, an

imperialistic science. For some semioticians, everything can be understood

and explained as essentially semiotic. Semioticians can be regarded as

similar to neurologists, who regards all other kinds of medicines as “sub-

specialties” of neurology.

Tourism may be a semiotic activity but is it a postmodern activity as

well? After discussing the semiotic nature of tourism, I will then deal with

reasons for understanding contemporary tourism as also postmodern in

nature. My thesis, then, is that tourism, though tourists may not know what

semiotics is or what postmodernism is (and some argue that postmodernism

is anything we want it to be) can be understood to be essentially a

postmodern semiotic activity.

It is also a mass phenomenon. A few years ago there were more than

800 million international arrivals according to statistics from the World

Tourist Organization. Since there are around six billion people on earth, it


means that approximately one person out of eight traveled abroad, whether it

was half way around the world or to a neighboring country.

MacCannell on Differentiation and the Semiotics of Tourism

In The Tourist, MacCannell suggests that his book is based on the

notion of differentiation, which he defines as (1976:11):

the totality of differences between social classes, life-styles, racial

and ethnic groups, age grades (the youth, the aged), political and

professional groups and the mythic representation of the past to the

present. Differentiation is a systemic variable: it is not confined to a

specific institution of society, nor does it originate in or institution or

place and spread to others. It operates independently and

simultaneously throughout society.

In tourism, as in language (as Saussure pointed out) we search for differences;

these differences help us understand ourselves better and see our societies and

cultures in a new light

MacCannell says that he discovered, as a result of his research into

tourism, that (1976:13):

“sightseeing is a ritual performed to the differentiations of society.

Sightseeing is a kind of collective striving for transcendence of the

modern totality, a way of attempting to overcome the discontinuity of

modernity, of incorporating its fragments into unified experience.

The term “sightseeing,” which is a major component of tourism, has, of

course, implications for a semiotic approach to tourism. Tourism is, at its


most reductionist best, a form of sign consumption. We might call sign-

seeing “sign-seeing,” to suggest its semiotic nature.

Chapter 6 of The Tourist is titled “A Semiotic of Attraction,” and

deals, in particular, with Peirce’s formulation that (1976:109) “a sign

represents something to someone.” Tourist attractions, MacCannell suggests,

are signs and thus semiotics is necessary to understand tourism. He uses the

term “marker” to deal with representations of, or information about, sights

that are found in guidebooks, magazine articles and other media. We can

make the following chart, based on his ideas, to show the relationship

between markers, sights, and tourists and Peirce’s formulation.

Peirce sign represents something to someone

MacCannell attraction marker sign tourist

Markers, MacCannell explains, represent the first contact tourists have with a

sight/site. Markers, we can say, mediate our experiences and a great deal of

tourism is based on them.

What sightseers do, he suggests, is string together a collection of

discrete previously marked sights, so that there is no “totality” to the San

Francisco experienced by tourists but, instead, a collection of certain high

profile sites such as Fisherman’s Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower,

Union Square, Chinatown, North Beach, and so on. We might ask whether

anyone, tourist or resident, ever truly “comprehends” a city or even a tourist

site. What tourists do is visit places of interest, take photographs of them


(generally speaking), and try to cover all the bases—that is, see the most

important sites that should be seen and have the experiences they have been

told, in the articles and guidebooks they’ve read, that they should have. What

unifies the tourist experience of different places for most people is the slide

show on the computer in which digital photographs are shown, one after

another.

In the Beginning was Roland Barthes

It was Roland Barthes’ Mythologies that showed how a semiotic

approach to French culture can offer astonishing insights and his study of

Japanese culture and society in Empire of Signs that showed how semiotics

can help us understand the tourist experience. Barthes was a tourist when he

visited Japan. Empire of Signs offers us a model for the semiotic analysis of

tourism. This book, first published in French in 1970 and translated into

English in 1982 It consists of 26 short chapters on such topics as Pachinko,

Japanese chopsticks, bowing, Japanese eyelids, tempura and package design.

In the first paragraph of the book, Barthes writes (1982:3)

If I want to imagine a fictive nation, I can give it an invented name,

treat it declaratively as a novelistic object, create a new Garabagne, so

as to compromise no real country by my fantasy…I can also—though

in now way claiming to represent or analyze reality itself (these being

the major gestures of Western discourse)—isolate somewhere in the

world (faraway) a certain number of features (a term employed in


linguistics), and out of these features, deliberately form a system. It

is this system which I shall call: Japan.

Then, a page later, Barthes makes an important statement. He says he hasn’t

tried to “photograph” Japan, which can be interpreted to men offer a detailed,

coherent, and complete analysis of Japanese culture and society. Instead, he

says, he has done the opposite and that Japan has stimulated in him a number

of “flashes,” or provided him with “a situation of writing” in which he will

find meaning in “gardens, gestures, houses, flower arrangements, faces,

violence.”

This statement reminds us of what MacCannell had to say about the way

tourists experience San Francisco and, by implication, all other places they

visit.

Barthes offers us a model for the touristic analysis and interpretation

of foreign cultures:

1. He will focus on “flashes,” that is—topics, that is sites and

activities that strike him as significant.

2. He will use semiotics to interpret these important cultural signs

and relate them to social, cultural and ideological considerations.

3. He will not attempt to offer a coherent picture of the country he is

analyzing.

In principle, we can posit a “good” tourist, who investigates a culture and

moves beyond the descriptions of places to see found in guidebooks and other

publications. In reality, many tourists—perhaps because they are rushing

around so frantically--don’t make much of an effort to analyze and interpret


the significance of the sights and sites they see. To my mind, tourists

planning a trip to Japan would find reading Empire of Signs an invaluable

guide to Japanese culture which would greatly enhance their visits.

Guidebooks tend to focus on historical phenomena and neglect the enriching

insights and understanding that a semiotic approach to tourism brings, though

in recent years many guidebooks have become interested in discussion social

and political matters..

For am example of Barthes’ methods, let us consider his analysis of

Japanese food in his chapter “Food Decentered.” His discussion of Sukiyaki

focuses on rawness in Japanese food. He writes (1982:20):

Rawness, we know, is the tutelary divinity of Japanese food: OT it

everything is dedicated, and if Japanese cooking is always performed

in front of the eventual diner (a fundamental feature of this cuisine),

this is probably because it is so important to consecrate by spectacle

the death of what is being honored…Japanese rawness is essentially

visual: it denoted a certain colored state of the flesh or vegetable

substance (it being understood that color is never exhausted by a

catalogue of tints, but refers to a whole tactility of substance; thus

sashimi exhibits not so much colors as resistances: those which vary

the flesh of raw fish causing it to pass, from one end of the tray to the

other, through the stations of the soggy, the fibrous, the elastic, the

compact, the rough, the slippery).

This excerpt offers a taste, we may say, of the way Barthes is able to read

important insights into Japanese cuisine and culture. Barthes analysis of


Japanese culture leads us to another aspect of differentiation—our search for

the exotic.

The Tourist Search for the Exotic

If tourism is based on the desire for difference—for the experience of

different landscapes, different foods, different styles clothing, different ways

of living—then we can say there are two kinds of differentiation: strong and

weak or “the different” and “the exotic.” An American, living in San

Francisco, would experience Paris, for example, as different. But not greatly

different from his life in San Francisco. On the other hand, a San Franciscan

who visits Japan or Bali or India finds differences of a whole order of

magnitude—what I call the exotic. In Japan, we have variations of

differentiation. Some parts of Japan are similar to what people in San

Francisco are familiar with, but others aren’t.

In his book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, Daniel

J. Boorstin discusses what he describes as our “newly exaggerated

expectations” about travel. What he says about Americans I would argue can

be said about tourists from most countries. He writes (1975:78):

One of the most ancient motives for travel, when men had any choice

about it, was to see the unfamiliar. Man’s incurable desire to go

someplace else is a testimony of his incurable optimism and

insatiable curiosity. We always expect things to be different over

there. ‘Traveling,’ Descartes wrote in the early seventeenth century,

“is almost like conversing with men of other centuries.’ Men who


move because they are starved or frightened or oppressed expect to be

safer, better, and more free in the new place. Men who live in a

secure, rich, and decent society travel to escape boredom , to elude

the familiar, and to discover the exotic.

The best way to understand the exotic is to contrast it with its opposite,

everyday life.

The chart below is from my book Deconstructing Travel: Cultural

Perspectives on Tourism, which offers, among other things, a semiotic

approach to understanding tourism.

Everyday Life The Exotic

Near Distant

The Present The Past

Familiar Strange

Modern Ancient, Traditional

The skyscraper The Hut

The Supermarket The Souk

Cathedrals Hindu Temples, Mosques

Euro-American Cuisine Ethnic Cuisines


Electronic Mechanical

Suits, Dresses Turbans, Robes, Costumes

The Exotic and the Everyday Compared

What many international tourists are seeking, I would maintain, is to escape

from everyday life for a while and experience the exotic—that which is

greatly different from their routines. There is a strong anthropological

dimension to tourism, as people seek out strange lands to visit—based on the

markers they have read and a desire for new experiences that will enrich them

and recharge their depleted batteries, so to speak.

As I explained in Deconstructing Travel (2004:34):

The erotic comes in different forms but generally it involves some

combination of that which is strange to us, distant in time and place

from us, and traditional rather than modern, as these phenomena

apply to such things as landscape, architecture, dress, food, language,

and cuisines.

I should have added sexual partners to this list. There are, in fact, many

different kinds of international tourism, such as sexual tourism, gourmet

tourism, adventure tourism and cultural tourism. Tourism is, I should point

out, the largest industry in the world.

Boorstin attacks tourism, as practiced by Americans, as being a

pernicious kind of activity filled with what he calls pseudo-events.

Americans, he says, expect to have (1975: 80) “a lifetime of adventure in two

weeks” and believe that (1975:80) “the exotic and the familiar can be made to


order..” He distinguishes between travelers (good) and tourists (bad) as

follows. What Boorstin says about American tourists can be understood to

apply, let me re[eat, to all tourists in this age of mass tourism. The chart

below was elicited from his comments in his book about travelers and

tourists.:

Travelers Tourists

Travail Pleasure

Active Passive spectator

Working at something Sight-Seeing

Undertaking Commodity

Boorstin points out that the word tourist is derived from the Latin word

tornos, which means “circle,” and sees the development of package tours as

basic to the development of mass tourism.

I would suggest that Boorstin’s indictment of mass tourism is based

on an elitist point of view and is simplistic and inaccurate. (The first edition

of his book came out in 1961, when its subtitle was “What Happened to the

American Dream.” We have to recognize that this book came out 45 years

ago.) International tourism is generally hard work, often involving long

flights. And not all tourists take package tours of the kind Boorstin

lampoons. But his comments reflect of one of the great ironies of tourism:

tourists want to go to wonderful places where there aren’t other tourists. That

is becoming increasingly difficult to do, for it doesn’t take long, in the


Internet age, for undiscovered places, where there are few tourists, to become

discovered.

Tourism and the Search for the Authentic

My analysis of the matter of authenticity is what leads to my

suggestion that tourism is a postmodern activity. Most theorists of tourism

point out that tourists are in search of authenticity and wish to avoid the fake,

the inauthentic, the manufactured pseudo-authentic. As Dean MacCannell

explains, early in The Tourist (1976:3):

The concern of moderns for “naturalness,” their nostalgia and their

search for authenticity are not merely casual and somewhat decadent,

though harmless, attachments to the souvenirs of destroyed cultures

and dead epochs. They are components of the conquering spirit of

modernity—the grounds for its unifying consciousness.

Boorstin argues that American tourists do not like the authentic because they

are incapable of appreciating or understanding it, preferring, instead,

imitations, such as French singers singing in English with a French accent

rather than singing in French. In Japan, tourists search not for what is

Japanese but which is “Japanesey.” American (and all) tourists are suckers, it

is argued, for that which is fake, inauthentic, but more easily digested.

Boorstin’s condemnation of American tourism (and I would suggest

tourism in general) goes as follows (1976:107):


Wherever in the world the American tourist goes, then, he is prepared

to be ruled by the law of pseudo-events, by which the image, the

well-contrived imitation, outshines the original.

It is here, with this matter of authenticity and pseudo-events and pseudo-

authenticity, that postmodern theory can be used to help us understand

tourism in the contemporary world.

Postmodernism and Tourism

One of the main ideas found in postmodern thought is that we now

have lost faith in metanarratives. As Jean-François Lyotard explained

(1984:xxiv) “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity

toward metanarratives.” What he means by that we no longer have faith in

the grand, over-arching systems of philosophical, religious, political and

moral thought that sustained us in the past. Instead, we have competing

narratives which has led to a crisis in legitimation, because we’re not sure

which narratives are correct. That may be one reason for travel. We become

tourists to explore the way other cultures organize life in a search for finding

a way to enrich our lives by adapting what we can.

Another idea connected with this aspect of postmodern thought,

Lyotard suggests, involves the matter of eclecticism. As he writes (1984:76)

Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one

listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch

and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and

“retro” clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games.


It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. By becoming kitsch, art

panders to the confusions which reigns in the “taste” of patrons.

Artists, gallery owners, critics and the public wallow together in the

“anything goes,” and the epoch is one of slackening.

Lyotard describing a culture in which tourism has shaped our lifestyles.

We’ve been to many foreign lands and taken from them what we want.

From this we create an eclectic lifestyle—a mixture of the foreign (in France

or other countries, McDonald’s) and the native (local cuisine). What unifies

our many eclectic lifestyles, is, he asserts, the Euro or the almighty dollar or

whatever currency in used one’s country or the countries we visit. Notice,

Lyotard mentions a number of important tourism destinations: Paris, Hong

Kong and Tokyo. In the final analysis, Lyotard argues, is it money that offers

the basic unifying aspect behind the eclecticism of contemporary postmodern

societies.

We must recognize, then, that postmodern societies are consumer societies,

where people lead eclectic lifestyles that are tied to their ability to purchase

things and experiences they desire.

There is one other aspect of postmodern thought that is of importance

and that involves Baudrillard’s theory of simulations and hyperreality. As he

writes in Simulations (1983:148):

It is reality itself that is hyperrealist. Surrealism’s secret was that the

most banal reality could become surreal, but only in certain

privileged moments that are still nevertheless connected with art and

the imaginary. Today it is quotidian reality in its entirety—political,


social, historical and economic—that from now on incorporates the

simulating dimension of hyperrealism. We live everywhere already

in an “aesthetic” hallucination of reality.

Reality has become replaced, he asserts, by hyperreality and images are now

more important than the reality they capture.

Baudrillard has suggested that there are certain phases of the

development of a world dominated by simulations. These are:

1. images reflect reality.

2. images mask and pervert reality.

3. images mask the absence of reality.

4. images bear no relation to reality in any way.

It is at stage four that the image and simulation have “replaced” reality and

are more important than reality. He makes a distinction between

representation and simulation. In representation the signs are tied to

something real. In the postmodern world of simulation, signs have no

connection with reality.

We can contrast the modern and the postmodern, when it comes to

international tourism, as follows:

Modernity Postmodernity

authenticity amusement

natural artificial

reality hyperreality


Postmodern thought is, we have seen, not terribly interested in authenticity

since it posits a world based on simulations. The implication of this

perspective is that authenticity is no longer a major concern of tourists in

postmodern societies—nor is the natural or “reality,” whatever it may be.

Sociologist Ning Wang discusses this matter in his book Tourism and

Modernity. He writes (2000:55):

Implied in the approaches of postmodernism is justification

of the contrived, the copy, and the imitation. One of the most

interesting responses to this postmodern cultural condition is Cohen’s

recent justification of contrived attractions in tourism. According to

him, postmodern tourists have become less concerned with the

authenticity of the original…Two reasons can be identified. First, if

the cultural sanction of the modern tourist has been the “quest for

authenticity,” then that of the postmodernist tourist is a “playful

search for enjoyment” or an “aesthetic enjoyment of surfaces.”

Secondly, the postmodern tourist becomes more sensitive to the

impact of tourism upon fragile host communities or tourist sights.

Staged authenticity thus helps project a fragile toured culture and

community from disturbance by acting as a substitute for the original

and keeping tourists away from it.

Wang’s argues that postmodern tourists—which, nowadays, generally means

contemporary tourists--are not worried about authenticity the way modernist

tourists were, but more interested in being entertained and amused and having

fun. This means that “staged” authenticity (or simulations) are perfectly


acceptable to them. In addition, as Wang points out, these simulated

attractions have a benefit for people living in places visited by tourists--they

help fragile tourist sites maintain themselves.

When Boorstin argued that American tourists were suckers for

pseudo-events, he didn’t realize it but he was actually making a case for the

postmodern perspective on tourism. He wrote his book in 1961, just when

postmodernism was beginning to assert itself in our culture. He wrote that

(1961:103):

Tourist attractions serve their purpose best when they are pseudo-

events. To be repeatable at will they must be factitious. Emphasis

on the artificial comes from the ruthless truthfulness of tourist agents.

What they can really guarantee you are not spontaneous cultural

products but only those made especially for tourist consumption, for

foreign cash customers…earnest honest natives embellish their

ancient rites, change, enlarge, and spectacularize their festivals, so

that tourists will not be disappointed. In order to satisfy the

exaggerated expectations of tour agents and tourists, people

everywhere obligingly become dishonest mimics of themselves.

He is writing as a modernist and his arguments have no cogency for

postmodernist tourists who, postmodern theory suggests, want to be amused

and entertained and don’t care that much about authenticity. In a postmodern

world of simulations and hyperrealities, the term “authenticity” doesn’t have

much meaning. We might even say that Boorstin’s ideas anticipate the

arguments that postmodernists make.


Tourism and Consumer Cultures

Many scholars link postmodernism with the growth of consumer

cultures. Tourism, whatever else it might be, is a form of consumption.

Tourist purchase airplane tickets, book cruises, stay in hotels, eat in

restaurants, take cabs and trains, and so on. Tourists have to decide where to

go and what to do when they are abroad. The question that arises is—how

do they make their choices. The British social anthropologist Mary Douglas

has offered a typology that helps us understand how tourists make their

choices.

She writes, in her article “In Defence of Shopping” (1997:17)

We have to make a radical shift away from thinking about

consumption as a manifestation of individual choice. Culture itself is

the result of myriads of individual choices, not primarily between

commodities but between kinds of relationships. The basic choice

that a rational individual has to make is the choice about what kind of

society to live in. According to that choice, the rest follows.

Artefacts are selected to demonstrate the choice. Food is eaten,

clothes are worn, cinema, books, music, holidays, all the rest are

choices that conform with the initial choice for a form of society.

Douglas argues that there are four ways of organizing cultures, or four

lifestyles, all of which are in conflict with one another. And that there are

only four to be found in any society.


These four groups are based on whether group boundaries are weak

or strong and whether there are many or few rules and prescriptions that have

to be followed. The chart that follows is based on her descriptions of each of

these lifestyles.

1. Individualist

competitive, wide-flung, open network, sporty, arty, risky styles of

entertainment, freedom to change commitments

2. Hierarchical

adhere to established traditions, established institutions

defined network of old friends, formal

3. Egalitarian

rejects formality, pomp, authoritarian institutions

prefers simplicity, frankness, intimate friendships

4. Isolates (also known as Fatalists)

withdrawn, unpredictable lifestyles, alienated

These four lifestyles are all in conflict with one another, Douglas argues, and

it these lifestyles, the cultural alignments that people make, which are basic in

determining their consumer choices. As she writes (1997:23) “cultural

alignment is the strongest predictor of preferences in a wide variety of fields.”

We may make decisions about where to go as tourists but these decisions are

based not on individual psychological desires but on cultural imperatives

from our lifestyle group. One of the main activities of tourists, let me add, is

shopping, so Douglas’ “defense” of shopping has relevance not only to

tourism but our whole ethos of consumption.


She concludes her article with a passage that is very similar to what

Saussure said about concepts. She writes (1997:30):

Shopping is agonistic, a struggle to define not what one is, but what

one is not. When we include not one cultural bias, but four, and

when we allow that each is bringing a critique against the others, and

when we see that the shopper is adopting postures of cultural

defiance, then it all makes sense. [My italics.]

If we accept the typology that Douglas offers us, we find, then, that there are

four kinds of tourists and their decisions about their travels are based on their

desire to avoid the three other kinds of tourists to the degree that this is

possible.

Conclusions

In this exploration of tourism as a postmodern semiotic activity, I

have done a number of things. First, I characterized tourism as an activity

based on choice and pursued for pleasure and personal enrichment. There

seems to have been a movement towards spending money for experiences

since many people are loaded up with goods. Second, I discussed the

semiotic nature of tourism, arguing that tourism can be seen, without being

too reductionistic, as sign seeing, a semiotic form of sight-seeing. I quoted

from Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist, which was one of the earliest books to

suggest the important of tourism and deal with it from a semiotic perspective.

I also discussed Roland Barthes’ Empire of Signs, whose title make the


semiotic argument. This book, I suggest, is a paradigmatic exemplar of the

semiotic analysis of foreign cultures.

I used Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Image to deal with the way that

tourism can be considered a postmodern activity as well as a semiotic one.

Boorstin’s discussion of authenticity and so-called “pseudo-events” provided

a means to consider postmodernist attitudes toward tourism, which reject

authenticity as important and focus, instead, on being amused and

entertained. Postmodernism rejects the notion of authenticity as important

and the modernist distinctions between elite culture and popular culture,

originals and fakes, and various other ideas associated with modernism. It is

Jean Baudrillard’s ideas on simulations and hyperreality that explain the

attitudes and desires of postmodern tourists.

I also dealt with the relationship between postmodernism and

consumer cultures in discussing the ideas of the British social anthropologist

Mary Douglas, who argues that there are four lifestyles or consumer cultures

found in modern societies, each of which is in conflict with all the others.

Cultural alignments, she argues, not individual psychology, shape our

preferences when it comes to consumption and shopping—and by implication

our tourism—is a means of differentiating ourselves from the other cultures.

While cultural alignments may shape our preferences when it comes

to choosing where to go, as international tourists, there are psychological

benefits we gain from our travels. As an example of this, let me cite a

passage from sociologist Mark Gottdiener, whose pathbreaking book

Postmodern Semiotics opened the way for a materialist postmodern semiotic


analysis of culture. In another of his book, The Theming of American:

Dreams, Visions and Commercial Spaces, he discusses a trip he took to

Brazil. In his description of his stay in Rio de Janeiro, where his hosts had

rented an apartment for him to use, we find him feeling excited and having

typical tourist experiences of not being able to do things that are not

problematic in America. He discusses his difficulties in buying a loaf of

bread in a bakery in which, after much confusion, he finally is able to

purchase the bread. What his exploits in the bakery demonstrate is the way

foreign travel can heighten our sense of being alive by providing various

kinds of challenges, generally of minor import. His conclusions about

foreign travel are of interest. He writes (1997:131):

In many ways, visits to foreign lands provide the best examples of the

basic work required by all of us in every successful interaction…The

tourist must, above all else, learn the methods of negotiating

everyday environments. At home these techniques have long since

passed into the unconscious, including being programmed into our

bodies so that our ways of moving, walking and talking all seem

“natural.” Only when we visit a foreign environment do these “taken

for granted” gestures become problematic. They then require

reexamination as appropriate. Hence we dredge them up from our

unconscious and deploy them as a set of repertoires in the negotiation

of the new, foreign space. The work of tourism becomes this

reexamination, relearning, and creative improvisation of methods for

successful interactions. The tourist negotiation of the environment is


only an illustration of the kind of work we all must do that is taken

for granted in our daily lives.

This passage captures one of the important benefits and gratifications of

foreign tourism—a need to employ one’s mental resources in dealing with all

kinds of interactions and a sense of fulfillment and pleasure in doing so. We

travel to escape from our everyday lives, which are based on familiarity and

recurrences.

There is a kind of joyousness and high spirited feeling found in

Gottdiener’s description of his experience at the Brazilian bakery, and as he

tells the story, the woman who sold him the bread was “beaming” when he

finally figured out how to buy it. And then, shortly after buying the bread,

Gottdiener tells us “I was back in my room drinking coffee and eating the

very nice, freshly baked bread.” His adventure in the bakery is similar in

nature to the adventures innumerable tourists have all over the world, who

venture out of their hotel rooms or short-stay apartment rentals to find a nice

bakery and whose triumphs and disappointments add zest and excitement to

their lives.

What tourism will be like in the post-postmodern world, which some

cultural theorist suggests is where we now are (since postmodernism is, they

argue, “passé”) remains to be seen. But whether we travel in a modernist,

postmodernist, or post-postmodernist world, getting a loaf of freshly baked

bread and having it with a good cup of coffee in one’s hotel room or

apartment in a foreign land (and in one’s native country, as well) is always a

great pleasure.


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