Unpacking Tourism

Tourism shapes popular fantasies of adventure, structures urban and natural space, creates knowledge around difference, and demands an array of occupations servicing the insatiable needs of those who travel for leisure. Even as migrants and refugees have become targets of ire from far-right parties, international tourism has grown worldwide. This issue posits a radical approach to the study of tourism, highlighting how tourism as a paradigmatic modern encounter bleeds into diplomacy, militarism, and empire building. Contributors investigate, among other topics, how the United States has used tourism in Latin America as a tool of interventionist foreign policy, how Bethlehem’s Manger Square has become a contested space between Palestinians and the Israeli state, how Spain's economy increasingly relies on northern European tourists, and how the US military's Cold War–era guidebooks attempted to convert soldiers stationed abroad into "ambassadors of goodwill."

Contributors. Ryvka Barnard, Daniel Bender, Julio Capo Jr., Rüstem Ertuğ Altinay, Steven Fabian, Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, Max Holleran, Rebecca J. Kinney, Scott Laderman, Katrina Phillips, Mark Rice, Jason Ruiz, Daniel Walkowitz, Kim Warren